I did, however, forget to post last night's reviews here, so I will double up today and post both (separately).
~
If it wasn’t already apparent from the image of the
stereotypical horn-helmetted, axe-wielding bearded berserker on the overhead
projector, my first talk of the Way with Words Festival was to be on Vikings.
Delivered by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Ice
and Fire was a highly intellectual lecture on the passage of our Nordic
ancestors from their homeland in Finland, Sweden, and Norway, across some parts
of Europe, the outer Arctic, and even America. This revealed just how much of
our own native language owes some of its diction to the Vikings (even the word
glitter!) following their settlement in the UK, particularly towards the
Midlands which on Barraclough’s map showed up as an infected blue mass of dots.
It was here, she remarked, that many place names, like Grimsby, Ormskirk, and
Twatt show their Norse etymology. Ormskirk, for example, derives from the Old
Norse Ormr meaning serpent and kirkja meaning church, while Twatt, also
from Old Norse, is รพveit
meaning a small parcel of land. And each of these words, and later passages
from sagas and alliterative poems – of which the Vikings were also fond – was
read by Barraclough in a fluid tongue which, along with her beautifully Nordic
hairstyle, could’ve fooled me into believing she was a Viking too. She had,
after all, spent her last two summers in Greenland as part of her research –
which unfortunately didn’t include the country’s lack of roads. In place of her
plan to hire a car, she hired a gorgeously photogenic Icelandic pony with blue
eyes (a photo of which she showed us, partially silhouetted as it stared out
across the Greenland wilds). She went on to remark on a walrus ivory statuette
‘reject’ of a polar bear she found in a midden, discarded as one would a first
attempt at a love letter. And then to her bizarre knighting ceremony with a
walrus penis bone at the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society in Arctic Norway.
This was followed by a run-down of several inscriptions left across the North
(including Orkney) by Nordic pilgrims, which often translated to ‘I woz ‘ere’
or whatever the Norse equivalent is. And finally, a trip to Svalbad, believed
to be the home of monsters, trolls, and the gateway to the Underworld. Upon her
return to her seat for questions, I was mentally shaking the snow from my shoulders
as if I had come along for the ride.
By contrast, my next two speakers were presented through
on-stage question and answer sessions. First Lucy Mangan with Childhood Reading. With her slightly
dishevelled hair, simple frock dress and glasses, she visibly emanated the
introvert she claimed to be: the bookworm who, through her voracious appetite
for literature, could experience the world ‘without going out to meet it’. Yet
her drily humorous remarks belied this introversion, referring to her father as
her ‘dealer’ of books, and her mother as the ‘Noisemaker 2000’, always speaking
her mind. When questioned on her interest (or disinterest) in certain
children’s authors and story tropes, she always had something witty to say,
from being ‘allergic to [the] whimsy’ of anthropomorphised animals to the
anxious questions raised by The Tiger Who
Came to Tea (Where did it come from? When would it leave?) And while
poetry, for Mangan, has ‘too much’ feeling, fairy tales apparently possess ‘not
enough’. Concerning Ladybird books, however, she began to extol their
educational virtues, not just on the history of the Greeks and Romans which she
learnt from them, but pretty much every subject on Earth. To the point that one
could feasibly pass an exam on their information alone. ‘I passed my history
exam on Blackadder’ she joked. Having displayed the voracity of her literary
appetite, one question regarding books she might be proud not to have read threw a metaphorical spanner in the works. ‘I wish
I hadn’t read Twilight’ she offered, but overall, Mangan had to admit her
varied taste in genres means she simply wants to read everything. And I can’t
blame her.
My final stop of the day was John Lister-Kaye’s Looking Back, a talk regarding his most
recent publication The Dun Cow Rib (which
I decided to purchase after the first twenty minutes). From my position at the
back of the Great Hall, Lister-Kaye’s most distinguishing feature was his
fluffy white owl-like eyebrows, and as the best known British naturalist, it
only seemed fitting that he resembled such a creature. His answers during the
first half were even simple and unassuming as an owl, yet he describes himself
as once being a ‘rambunctious hyperactive child always in trouble’ and
apparently hasn’t changed. Only after these first twenty minutes did he begin
to open up, colourfully reciting parts of his book with additional accents and
humour, and describing scenery with his eyes shut as if reliving his childhood
right there on the stage. But what really helped me to identify with
Lister-Kaye was the well-contained emotion regarding his relationship with and
the death of his mother. As a boy of 5, sent off to boarding school, nature was
his only diversion from the confusion of her illness, and it seemed to ring
true for me too, having lost my own mother 6 years ago. This knowledge lent him
a gentleness which jarred with the boy he once was, who was expelled for
cutting the tail feathers off his headmaster’s peacock. Now he is an older man,
engaged with projects in restoration ecology – a term he prefers to ‘rewilding’
– and has founded the Aigas Field Centre in Strathglass, near Inverness. His
passion for nature and its conservation seems limitless, and even from reading
the first few pages of The Dun Cow Rib, I
can see where that passion stems. His mother – as did mine – meant a lot to
him, and her memory seemed to guide his work, just as I hope mine is.
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