It feels like ages since I’ve posted here. I loved it when I was making myself post something every day – structure and a sense of accomplishment, even if the ‘accomplishment’ was really only a making ready, a setting the scene, a beginning. And now it almost feels like beginning again.
Part of the time away from here has also been time away from home. We spent a week away, culminating in a weekend on snowy, icy, beautiful Dartmoor. Now, there’s a landscape so different from Norfolk, but what do they have in common besides heathland? That’s right – hills.
Of course, the Dartmoor hills are dramatic and they’re not cluttered up with views of buildings or agricultural monstrosities. But the basic beauty of a curve against the sky remains constant. And the evocative names, too. The weekend workshop I was attending was meant to include a walk at Bone Hill, but the roads were too icy to attempt it. Still, Bone Hill ….
It’s time to admit to myself that I now have nothing in the way (apart from work and Christmas) of getting this project properly off the ground, so to speak, and this must happen. True, weather conditions here have made it impossible to physically travel to any hills, but as I know I need to create performance pieces there’s nothing to stop me finalising the work and organising props.
One aspect of the folklore surrounding hills I definitely want to focus on is the way that stories remain fundamentally the same despite the vagaries of translation. I’ve searched and searched online for different versions of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Elfin Hill and have only been able to find two different ones. I find the differences between the two quite fascinating, though, as it’s easy to tell they are the same story but certain nuances feel quite different. I thought of translating one of the versions into the Norfolk dialect, referencing the cultural/genetic/intangible influence of the Scandinavian settlers – the Vikings in Norfolk were mainly from what is now Denmark, and Hans Christian Anderson was Danish. I may also try finding a translation programme to turn the story back into Danish, or perhaps Old Norse, and then translate it back into English, and then back to Swedish … but I haven’t looked into the practicalities of this. Perhaps that should be the first task – and one that can be accomplished without needing to brave the icy roads …
I’ve been thinking about leaving a piece of a story at the top of as many hills as the story has pieces … perhaps painted onto fabric and cut into pennants to fly in the wind, the shape of the pennant being pretty much identical to that of the wind vanes on Scandinavian stave churches – and most likely on heathen temples before that. And perhaps on heathen temples here, too. Which does tie in with another property of hills that I hope to explore, as there is debate over whether Anglo-Saxon or Viking temple buildings actually existed in England, as there is so little evidence. There seems to be a fairly general view that both the Celtic people and the Anglo-Saxons saw their deities as immanent in the landscape, so they had no need of temple buildings. They could go to a hill, or a stone, or a body of water, or a tree, and commune with the gods in those places. The pennant shape is also that of the rune Wyn, which has the interpreted meaning of everything being in harmony because you are aligned with the currents around you; a beneficiant rune of comfort and happiness. Why not spread that around – at the top of lots of hills, for example??
Also, of course, it may not be a coincidence that the shape is reminiscent of the flags that are sold in beach kiosks to adorn the top of sand castles (or should that be sand barrows?).
