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Article on THE ORKNEYINGA SAGA in WOOL-GATHERER 4:
‘A Holiday Romance’: an intriguing clash of cultures in the Orkeyinga Saga and the poems of George Mackay Brown.
EXTRACT:
... One of the most intriguing parts of the Orkeyinga Saga is the pilgrimage to the Holy Land undertaken by Earl Rognvald Kali Kolsson. Rognvald was a predatory thug, naturally, otherwise his tenure would have been ephemeral, but he is one of a handful of characters in the catalogue of slaughters, vendettas and treachery to have a personality you can walk round. He has a sense of humour, with a taste for practical jokes; in a world of dizzying coup and counter-coup he has the rare quality of patience; he is a poet, much given to impromptu epigrams. Other Earls travel – to Shetland, Norway, Wales, Ireland, the Isles of Scilly – but only to plunder, or do some Machiavellian networking. The idea of a Norseman in the Mediterranean is odd enough; that it should be ostensibly for purposes other than murder, rape and pillage is odder still. What happens when North meets South?...
FULL CONTENTS OF WOOL-GATHERER 4:
‘A Voice in the Wilderness’: an introduction to George Borrow’s Wild Wales; the story of Davy Gam.
‘The Gamut of Emotion’: can one analyse the emotional effect of music? – Alan Bennett, E.M. Forster and Jack Buchanan.
‘Tips for Fledgling Bards’: a tentative investigation of the Welsh poetic form, the englyn.
‘What Dramatists Found in the Underdowne’: a Greek novel by Heliodorus in translation; its impact on Elizabethan dramatists.
‘Riding the Tiger’: narrative trickery in Life of Pi by Yann Martel.
‘Split Personalities’: the battle between soul and body – Andrew Marvell, W.B. Yeats and Margaret Atwood.
‘In a Byzantine Garden Centre’: the golden bird, and escape from a mundane world – The Achilleis, W.B. Yeats and Thomas Nashe.
‘Smart as Paint and so Forth’: seeing humanity from a distance – Tom Stoppard, Lucretius, Samuel Johnson and James Hervey.
‘More Men than Sheep’: some aspects of Yorkshire life – Camden’s Britannia and Thomas Fuller’s The Worthies of England.
‘A Holiday Romance’: an intriguing clash of cultures in the Orkeyinga Saga and the poems of George Mackay Brown.
‘Mr Bluebeard? It’s the Locksmith here’: the tale of Mister Fox, and how it links Shakespeare, Dante, Chaucer, Edmund Spenser and Bob & Carole Pegg.
‘School Poetry Crisis Probe’: readers comment.
To purchase WOOL-GATHERER 4, please send a cheque for £2.50 (UK destinations – for overseas postage rates please enquire) to:
D.H. Parry
Bryniau
Uwchmynydd
Pwllheli
Gwynedd LL53 8BY
Visit the homepage to see contents of other WOOL-GATHERERS and miscellaneous pamphlets.
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