The Northern Path

The Icelandic documentary Screaming Masterpiece includes an excerpt of the ancient Icelandic poem Odin’s Raven Magic. This work is an extraordinary musical performance on a large scale. While Screaming Masterpiece covers a lot of ground in the Icelandic alternative music scene, and is jammed full of exciting music, Odin’s Raven Magic was a real high point for me.

According to the Reykjavik Arts Festival website, the Icelandic group Sigur Ros collaborated with composer Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson and ballad chanter Steindor Andersen to stage this poem in the Edda tradition:

Here they embark on their most ambitious work so far: restoring Odin’s Raven Magic, a forgotten masterpiece of ancient Icelandic poetry, to its rightful place of honour. Here, Iceland’s ancient song tradition merges with the most exciting new horizons in modern Icelandic music. New light is shed on the past, ancient motifs are revitalized in our modern age. Also engaged in the performance are a string section, a choir and a huge harp hewn from Icelandic rock by sculptor Páll from Húsafell. Choir conductor: Árni Hardarson. This work has been eagerly awaited ever since word first got around that it was being specially produced for Reykjavík Arts Festival.

Odin’s Raven Magic is an Icelandic poem in the ancient Edda tradition, thought to have been composed in the 14th or 15th century. Its anonymous author clearly had an intimate knowledge of the Edda literature and mythology and alludes to a number of pagan motifs which are now lost. The poem recounts a great banquet held by the gods in Valhalla. While they are absorbed in their feasting, ominous signs appear that could foretell the end of the worlds of the gods and men. Odin’s Raven Magic had been relegated from mainstream ancient literature ever since 1867, when Norwegian scholar Sophus Bugge claimed it was a 17th century fabrication. This theory has since been toppled with literary and linguistic arguments, and Jónas Kristjánsson, probably the most renowned scholar of ancient Icelandic literature today, has even hailed it as “a new Edda poem”.

Curious readers can examine a side-by-side translation of the Icelandic text into English. Sigur Ros plan to relase a  CD and DVD in early 2008. The band has also provided some video and audio clips, but the Screaming Masterpiece video material is way better. (Screaming Masterpiece is also available on Netflix.)

Between this piece and the upcoming Sequentia concert, this is turning out to be an exciting season for Heathen-themed performance works.

The Winter 2007 issue of the American Saami journal Baiki has a review of an English-language reference work on the Saami:

The Saami: A Cultural Encyclopedia
Ulla-Maija Kulonen, Irja Seurujärvi-Kari and Risto Pukkinen (eds.) Helsinki, Finland: Sumoalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2005, 498 pages.

The review was quite positive, and indicates that the book would be of interest to the general lay reader. The book is available in the US from Finnbooks. Their website goes on to describe the book in more detail:

The multidisciplinary book is an outcome of a project launched and coordinated by the Saami Studies Work Group at the University of Helsinki. It presents the national character of the Saami and its manifestations from a point of view within the Saami culture itself. It is part of the great change in Saami research, which began in the 1970’s: the shift from Lappology to Saami Studies. In general and specialized articles, the encyclopedia presents not only the languages, history, mythology, folklore, music, economy, livelihoods and media of the Saami but also the indigenous peoples’ movement, human rights questions, education, art and social conditions. The nature and environment of Sápmi (Saamiland) are also dealt with as important background factors. Words and concepts that are characteristic of Saami culture are defined, and there are etymological articles about many Saami words. The encyclopedia is illustrated with numerous photographs and maps.

As this book aims to ensure that the voices of the different Saami groups themselves are heard, particular emphasis has been given to information about their own minority groups, such as the Kola Peninsula, Inari and Skolt Saami, who until now have been largely ignored by mainstream Saami Studies.

The book is a result of the efforts of more than 50 writers, which represent a number of academic institutions in Finland, Sweden, and Norway as well as various Saami institutions.

Sequentia, led by Benjamin Bagby, will be performing The Rheingold Curse at the Boston Early Music Festival in June. I’ve just gotten my tickets in the mail.

I’ve been “prepping” for this concert for awhile already, listening to to Edda - Myths From Medieval Iceland. I’m glad that I’ve spent some quality time with this CD, because even if one has some familiarity with early music, foreign language operas, modal Scandinavian folk music, and even Old Icelandic, this is just … really, really different.

The Edda CD was quite inexpensive. Now that I’ve been listening for some time, I’m ready to take the next step, and I’ve ordered the Rheingold Curse CD.

At first I was quite put off by the use of reconstructed 13th-century Icelandic pronunciation and the original modal musical “language” that Sequentia employs on the Edda disc. I was searching for something “authentic,” but found myself listening instead to a new idiom that no one had ever heard before. But this is really not all that different from the project of “reconstructing” Northern culture or spirituality: we use the research that’s available, but we fill in the gaps with our own creativity, and the product is something new and beautiful. It’s not quite the music that was heard a thousand years ago, but the song itself lives on.

According to a recent announcement on a Heathen discussion list, Steve McNallen of the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA) will be speaking at a pan-Pagan gathering in front of the White House on July 4th. The gathering will celebrate the Veterans’ Pentacle victory, and advocate for further Pagan religious rights, including the placement of the Thor’s Hammer and the Druids’ Awen symbol on gravestones of Heathen and Pagan veterans. Diana Paxson of The Troth and the Fellowship of the Spiral Path will also conduct a ritual at the event. The gathering is being organized by Caroline Kenner and the Chesapeake Pagan Community. Further details will be announced on a new website on May 18, and on Witchvox on May 20th.

Here is the text of the announcement from the Heathen list:

Please consider this your invitation to join with
other heathens in a show of support for adding the
Thor’s Hammer to the list of acceptable symbols on
military headstones.

The good men and women of heathenry, who put on that
uniform and defend our nation, should be able to be
buried beneath the Hammer. We owe them at least that
much.

Pagans from various faiths will come together in front
of the White House in Washington DC this 4th of July,
to voice our concerns regarding this most worthy
cause.

Representing heathenry, the featured speaker will be
Steve McNallen, founder of the Asatru Folk Assembly.

Please join us to show your support.

Benjamin Bagby appeared today on the National Public Radio program Here and Now. The occasion was the release of his Beowulf performance on DVD.

According to the host, the performance is a show-stopper, with audiences hanging on every word. Bagby discusses returning the piece from written to oral tradition, and how the mentality is rooted in the tribal past. Of course, there are some vivid sound clips. You can hear the interview here.

The mysterious death of US bee populations, called Colony Collapse Disorder, has been very much in the news lately. At this point the causes of this crisis are not yet understood. Of course the threat is not only to meadmakers: the broader environment and the entire agricultural system are at risk.

Among the potential responses, there is an online campaign circulating to send the honeybees a “message of appreciation” today.

For some reason, this idea puts me in mind of the Anglo Saxon Bee Charm. A beekeeper faced with a group of bees swarming before they fly off to start a new colony addresses the bees with a marvelous poem, asking them not to depart:

Sitte ge, sigewif, sigað to eorþan!
Næfre ge wilde to wuda fleogan.
Beo ge swa gemindige mines godes,
swa bið manna gehwilc metes and eþeles.

(Alight, victorious women, descend to earth!
Never fly wild to the wood.
Be as mindful of my good
As every man is of food and home.)

I’ve always loved this charm, especially for its use of the term “sigewif” (victorious women) to address the bees. I can’t help thinking that the poem is somehow apt, although some Heathens have sensibly pointed out that the problem we have on our hands here is a dearth of bees, not a swarm of them. Still, this is an interesting and powerful piece, which uses earth as part of the ritual and addresses the bees with respect. So if I pause to send a message to the bees today, it will be in Anglo-Saxon.

Wið ymbe nim eorþan, oferweorp mid þinre swiþran
handa under þinum swiþran fet, and cwet:

Fo ic under fot, funde ic hit.
Hwæt, eorðe mæg wið ealra wihta gehwilce
and wið andan and wið æminde
and wið þa micelan mannes tungan.

And wiððon forweorp ofer greot, þonne hi swirman, and cweð:

Sitte ge, sigewif, sigað to eorþan!
Næfre ge wilde to wuda fleogan.
Beo ge swa gemindige mines godes,
swa bið manna gehwilc metes and eþeles.

(Take earth, cast it with thy right hand under thy right foot, and say:

I put it under foot; I have found it.
Lo, the earth can prevail over all creatures,
And against injury, and against forgetfulness,
And against the mighty tongue of man.

Cast dust over them when they swarm, and say:

Alight, victorious women, descend to earth!
Never fly wild to the wood.
Be as mindful of my good
As every man is of food and home.)

(Text from the Free Man’s Garden blog)