In Part 3 of this special series, OrcadianTom Muir MBE brings us deeper into the dramatic world of Viking Orkney — where rival jarls, shifting loyalties, and legendary figures shaped the islands' history.

If you're curious about the Orkneyinga Saga, Viking Scotland, or the real stories behind St Magnus and the Norse earls of Orkney, this episode offers an accessible and atmospheric introduction to one of the most compelling medieval sagas.

In this episode:

• The next chapter of the Orkney jarls

• Rivalries, alliances and betrayals

• Viking-age Orkney history

• Storytelling rooted in landscape and place

• How the Orkneyinga Saga connects to modern Orkney

Perfect for listeners interested in:

Orkney history • Viking Scotland • Norse mythology • Scottish islands • Medieval history • Storytelling

• Part 3 of 4 — listen to Parts 1 & 2 to follow the full saga. (Part 1 is episode 14; Part 2 is episode 16)

History

Scottish History

Viking History

Norse

Orkney

Storytelling

Cultural Heritage

Scotland

Medieval History

Folklore

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You'll hear this and more:

• How Heather ended up in Scotland from Chicago, and was raised deeply immersed in traditional storytelling

• Scottish caleighs as early training for storytelling

• How Heather met some legendary Scottish Traveller storytellers as a child

• Tom's memories of Traveller folk in Orkney, and the specter of racism

• Influences of different cultures on folk tales

• Travellers' stories and Jack Tales

• Anecdotes about the great Shetland storyteller, Lawrence Tulloch

• A PhD on Jack Tales from Appalachia

• Heather Yule tells a spooky Stanley Robertson story!

• "Burker stories", relating to the horrible days of Burke and Hare, and the dangers to Travellers in particular

• Press gangs, and the relationship to "disappearance" stories

• Stanley Robertson - storyteller, seer, fortune teller, and how Tom's "fortune" worked out; and second sight

• Christianity and how it was woven together with the ancient Scottish/Celtic traditions

• The most haunted and evil house in Shetland - the true story of the sadistic laird

• Telling other people's stories as a way of continuing the connection and honoring the memory of the teller

• Hearing the voice of the storytellers no longer with us - "Kist o' Riches" online

• The anglicizing of Scottish place names by incomers and map-makers, and re-learning the original meanings

• Harps, harp-makers; playing the harp while telling a story

• The beginnings of The International Scottish Storytelling centre, The Netherbow and the storytelling festival

• Bursary for young storyteller: Meeting with Lawrence Tulloch and shadowing David Campbell

• Heather pays a beautiful piece of harp music in the manner of the old tradition

• Working with children and stories

• Heather tells a Lawrence Tulloch Shetland story with a harp

• Bouncing stories off other storytellers, like being around the kitchen table

Links to mentioned:

A Jack story: Silly Jack and the Princess - find it near the bottom of this page, under tales especially for the bairns. https://www.orkneyology.com/tales-from-tom.html

Heather's website/TRACS https://tracscotland.org/storytellers/heather-yule/

Heather's commission art: https://www.heatheryulepapertales.co.uk/paperdesigns

Story Harvest ~ revered Scottish storyteller David Campbell's book of traditional stories and tips for telling stories: https://www.orkneyology.com/David-Campbell-Orkneyology-Press.html

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If you're inspired to do so, you can buy us a dram on Ko-fi, with our hearty thanks: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Join the conversation to find out such things as ...

• Who was King Arthur? Was he a real person?
• The time when the English were unwelcome invaders who came into Britain by boat (ironically)
• What was the first written account of Arthur and his court?
• King Arthur, the national hero of Wales
• The French connection: where did Lancelot come from?
• Was Arthur an "English" king?
• What if such a magical thing as an honourable king really did happen?
• The tragedy when those trying to do right fail
• Cornwall and King Arthur
• The return of the king
• Glastonbury and Avalon
• The Holy Grail and the Spear of Destiny
• The dark genius behind Arthur: Merlin and his terrible crimes
• Tennyson's act of evasion in his Arthurian vision, and how he was made a "freeman" of Kirkwall
• Vortigern's last stand; who keeps tearing down his tower? The story of the two drgons of Wales
• The sword in the stone - is it Excalibur?
• Morgan leFay
• Lot (Earl Lyot of Orkney?) and his wife, the powerful Morgause; Lot's sons, knights of the Round Table
• The moving circle of stones at Stonehenge
• Are any of the details based in historical fact?
• Camelot and Guinevere
• Mordred the "monster"
• Arthur's birth and the Questing Beast
• Who is in the boat, coming to fetch the wounded Arthur to take him to Avalon?

About Simon: https://shonaleigh.uk/about/simon-heywood/

Simon's books: https://www.waterstones.com/author/simon-heywood/1465389

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If you're inspired to do so, you can buy us a dram on Ko-fi, with our hearty thanks: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Winter is for stories. As we round the bend of a new year, Tom will tell us some stories in their entirety, as well as sharing selected readings from his History Press books. So snuggle in and draw closer to the fire, even if it's an imaginary one. Happy New Year to you all, friends.

Along with readings from stories of sea witches, second sight, doomed lovers, the devil, lovers returned from the dead and runaway princesses ... full stories Tom will tell are:

• The Three Questions
• The Selkie's Revenge
• The Three Gifts

Mentioned in the episode:

Hjorliefur Helgi Steffanson: podcast episode 10; Ailsa Dixon: podcast episode 9 - https://www.orkneyology.com/orkneyology-podcast.html

The Green Man of Knowledge, told by Tom: https://www.orkneyology.com/tales-from-tom5.html

Tales for Troubled Times folktale storytelling archive: https://www.orkneyology.com/tales-from-tom.html

History Press books by Tom: https://thehistorypress.co.uk/contributor/tom-muir/

Anthologies: https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/the-anthology-of-scottish-folk-tales/

https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/the-anthology-of-scottish-folk-tales-volume-ii/

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If you're inspired to do so, you can buy us a dram on Ko-fi, with our hearty thanks: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Tonight, Tom Muir and Peter Lord have a talk about these things and much more:

• Early days with good friend David Sproxton, and a fondness for plasticine - schoolboys on a kitchen table
• Ray Harryhausen inspirations
• Morph in Orkney and elsewhere: almost 50 years, and forever young
• A new career in advertising: fun and lucrative!
• Enter Nick Park, "brilliant and stubborn" genius
• The return of the evil penguin
• Academy Awards
• War Story
• Filming Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer video ... amongst decaying fish and chickens
• Chicken Run, plasticine on the big screen: The Great Escape ... with chickens
• Wallace and Gromit - when Gromit had a mouth!
• Curse of the Warerabbit
• Handmade, human animation in a world of AI
• And last but not least, Shaun the Sheep, who has "many more stories to tell".

Aardman's website: https://www.aardman.com/about/

Our deep thanks go to Fionn McArthur for permission to use the musical interludes between dropped calls to Peter. Fionn recorded these lovely peedie musical bits for us a few years ago to use in a story app set in the Orkney West Mainland landscape. You can find out more about the Orkney Foklore Trail app on Orkneyology.com: https://www.orkneyology.com/orkney-folklore-trail.html

Fionn has many more talents other than music. His professionalwebsite for his photography and film work is here:https://www.startpointmedia.co.uk/about-us

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If you're inspired to do so, you can buy us a dram on Ko-fi, with our hearty thanks: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Tonight, Tom and Sally have a talk about these things and much more:

• Sally's father, the "proudest Icelander"- Magnus Magnusson - journalist, translator of sagas, writer and television presenter
• About Sally's journalism work and being a presenter on Scottish TV since the 1980s
• Icelandic sagas and the Icelandic landscape
• Sagas as "extremely good historical fiction"
• Are small communities isolated, or are big cities isolated - who is more remote?
• The importance of knowing your kin
• The literature of Iceland: was it the adition of Celtic dna that brought it to flower?
• The tendency to romanticize the Viking era
• Viking women - strong and scary!
• The Flying Scotsman: The Eric Liddell Story - Sally's first biography
• Dreaming of Iceland - a personal account of the geography, history and legends of Iceland, written by Sally and her father
• Other books of fiction, non-fiction and children's books
• Marketing books and making choices about how to spend one's creative time
• Writing as a way to work out what we think about things
• Sally's mother's dementia
• Sally Magnusson's charity, Playlist for Life - music as positive therapy for dementia
• About inhabiting the characters you're creating
• Have we lost the more fleshed-out female characters from old Norse mythology?
• "When everything is lost to us, the stories in our heads allow us to continue."

Sally Magnusson's website: https://sallymagnusson.com/about/

Playlist for Life: https://www.playlistforlife.org.uk/

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Tonight, we'll have a blether about these things and more:

• How Dennison first heard the stories from the old crofter folk of Orkney
• How he recorded and published them
• And - maddeningly - hints of many stories that got away
• Assipattle the Viking
• Who pulled the roof off Noltland Castle?
• And who on earth would burn a boat burial?!
• Making a cog for Time Team in Sanday
• The story of the mester ship
• The Mither o' the Sea - a goddess who rules Orkney's seas in the summertime
• Find out what Valkyries weave with ... if you're not squeamish.
• The story of Assipattle and the Stoorworm
• The terrible Nucklavee, description by Dennison
• What Dennison recorded about sea trows, the finmen and Eynhallow
• How Tam Scott Lost his Sight
• Beauty amidst poverty: the story of Arthur Deerness and the Mermaid
• And of course, a selkie story
• Other writings of Dennison, including the first written Orkney dialect

Link to Historic Environment Scotland's film about the Sanday shipwreck, featuring the voice of Orcadian Tom Muir MBE

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  • Guising traditions in Shetland, masks, ceremonies, folklore, the hidden people of Iceland, storytelling around the world and how all is connected to performance - even (or maybe especially) politicians!

  • Walter Traill Dennison - the first person to write in Orkney dialect - and his importance to preserving Orkney's stories, customs and traditions

  • How is an Orcadian different from a Scot?

  • Iceland/Scandanavian connections to Orkney/Shetland?

  • Why the national spirit lives within the working classes and what national tales have to do with creating culture

  • Why the Danes were annoyed with the brothers Grimm, and are Swedish stories really "better than the Danes"?

  • Collectors from many lands - searching for identity

  • "The broken isles of Orkney" and Viking romancticism

  • The "varden" spirit in Orkney and its similarities to the banshee

  • Orkney at the Scandanavian/Celtic crossroads, how the stories are shared and Orkney's own myths

  • Do Orkney stories emphasize the supernatural/witches as evil, vs simply supernatural?

  • Book of the Black Arts stories in Orkney and Iceland

  • The difference between mermaids and finnwives in Orkney

  • Tom and Terry swap and compare Scandanavian/Orkney folktales: Witches, magicians, beach creeps, sea creatures, selkie, hidden folk, mermen and mermaids, trolls, land and sea nature spirits; spirits in the mounds, changelings, hogboy/hogboon, the nucklavee, land trows and sea trows

  • About Terry's project, the Icelandic database of 10,000 Scandanavian legends to be found in writing, with maps tracing the spread of the tales; also a sound archive to listen to on location - bringing stories back to the land.

  • What has the Black Death got to do with communications bewteen the Nordic lands?

  • Are Orkney stories more Nordic or Scottish?

  • Terry tells about Iceland's Wild Ride

  • Wintertime as darkness, earth, knowledge of past present and future, and women

  • Bibles, light, mullaca beans (Mary beans) and salt, and how they were used in protecting vulnerable souls in transitional states; in Iceland, it was silver and steel

  • Icelandic beliefs in ghosts, power points, premonitions, hidden people, protective animal spirits and dreams; haunted families vs haunted houses; and other supernatural beings

  • Three Orkney stories of unbaptized babies

  • Trolls in Orkney, and how they developed from Norwegian trolls

  • Stories as maps of behavior

  • Finding drowned people and the connection with revalatory dreams

  • The liminal, dangerous place between high tide and low

  • Are the finfolk a reference to the Sami?

  • The seen but unseen within the landscape

Links: 

Sagnagrunnur folklore database: https://sagnagrunnur.arnastofnun.is/orkney/

More about Terry Gunnel: https://english.hi.is/staff/terry

Terry Gunnell's lecture on family ghosts: https://isfnr.org/2025/08/the-next-online-lecture-terry-gunnell-17-september-2025/ 

Earlier lecturer on nature of belief: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-3_Gq7iSsg 

Terry Gunnell on Shetland guising traditions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lC4O46oyFQ 

Support Orkneyology on Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Orkneyology shop: https://shop.orkneyology.com/

Orkneyology on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHQSp7iqejatLV9g5OAF7FA

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If you'd like to, you can buy us a dram on Ko-fi one-time or regular: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Tonight we have a moonlit blether about these things and more ...

• How early educational prejudice and discouragement ("You'll never amount to anything, Richards.") led to Colin's early career as ... a television repairman
• Putting the lie to the misaprehension that only "really clever people" can get a degree
• Indiana Jones as archaeological inspiration
• Balanced judgements of voices writing from the past
• When Tom met Colin, summer of 1985, Broch of Howe, Orkney
• How Colin (and partly due to his friend Miranda) discovered the Neolithic village of Barnhouse, and other Neolithic settlements
• Descriptions of how an archaeological site is excavated
• Stories from Colin's many archaeological digs in Orkney
• Ongoing discoveries: re-evaluating and changing assumptions in Orkney Islands archaeology
• Barnhouse, Skara Brae, Maeshowe, Ring of Brodgar, Stones of Stenness, Ness of Brodgar, Knap o' Hower, Stonehall ...
• Why were these settlements abandoned? What were they up to?
• What happened when Colin Richards spent the night inside Maeshowe?
• Guardian spirits in the mounds!
• What will Tom never forgive Colin Richards for? (Hint: It involves archaeology.)
• The Spirit of the Corn
• "We're all Jock Thomson's bairns" - people are the same, through space and time

Podcast theme music courtesy of Fionn McArthur.

"Ower wi' the moon" artwork created by Jenny Steer.

Support Orkneyology on Ko-fi one-time or regular drams: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Tom Muir's Tales in the Landscape Crowdfunder: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/tales-in-the-landscape

Orkneyology shop: https://shop.orkneyology.com/

Orkneyology on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHQSp7iqejatLV9g5OAF7FA

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Tonight we have a blether about these things and more ...

  • Why we need to react creatively to the world around us 

  • Finding the right stories to tell with heart 

  • Exploring stories of the natural world and its features 

  • Finding inspiration from the Scottish landscape

  • The joy of writing poetry

  • Lending a helping hand with our non-human neighbors, the wee hoppy people, via the toad bus

  • Gordon shares a story told to him by a nine-year-old boy

  • Working with children and imagination

  • Who owns the selkie stories, anyway?

  • The violence inherent in old tales

  • Keeping vigil with the unknown dead

  • Tom tells the true story of Betty Corrigal, Hoy

  • The story of the hundred-handed giants

  • Similarities between the story of Odysseus and an Orkney finfolk tale

  • A story-swap between two Scottish storytellers

  • Ragna, the AI Viking woman at Orkney Museum ... and what's she got to do with Tom?

  • Raven tales through different cultures

  • About the London Creativity Conference

Support Orkneyology on Ko-fi one-time or regular drams: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Tom Muir's Tales in the Landscape Crowdfunder: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/tales-in-the-landscape

Orkneyology shop: https://shop.orkneyology.com/

Orkneyology on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHQSp7iqejatLV9g5OAF7FA

More from Gordon MacLellan: 

https://creepingtoad.com/

https://creepingtoad.blogspot.com/2024/05/witches-snow-and-wonderful-creatures.html

https://giftsfromcrows.bandcamp.com/album/whisper-along-the-wind

https://www.creativityconference.is/gordon-maclellan

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Episode 18: June 11, 2025 - full "strawberry" moon with Angus Konstam, naval historian and author of The Pirate Menace: Uncovering the Golden Age of Piracy

Tonight, Tom is joined by his friend, Naval historian and writer Angus Konstam. Interestingly, this full moon night coincides with the 300th anniversary of the hanging of Orkney's pirate, John Gow.

Hear about:

   • The Valient Book of Pirates - early days

   • Unraveling the difference between pirate fact and fiction

   • Cuddly pirates?

   • Why not to use a live parrot at a pirate event

   • Orkney's most-known pirate, John Gow - not the stuff of legends

   • Did an oppressive system create piracy?

   • The pirate John Gow's early days in Stromness

   • Privateering - the big business of licensed piracy

   • The difficulty of tracking down information about a pirate's early life

   • Gow, a navigator and a literate pirate

   • Gow's first failed attempt at a life of piracy

   • Dire happenings on the Caroline, and the birth of the Pirate Gow

   • Re-imagining the Caroline, according to pirate tradition; enter the Revenge

   • About drying fish for transport by ship

   • The Navy's pirate pardon scheme

   • Gow the fish pirate?

   • Finding a place to lie low when the scene got too hot - Stromness! - and how Gow's story came to an end

   • Love pirate-style: Helen Gordon, the Odin Oath, and what happened to Gow's hand?

     The pirate press gang

   • The attack on the Hall of Clestrain - pirates soundly defeated by clever women

   • Where was the original Hall of Clestrain?

   • Final bungled attempts at Carrick House, the home of Gow's old schoolmate

   • The pirates' come-uppance "sooth"

   • Where was Execution Dock in London?

   • Twice-hang-ed Gow

   • How Pirate Gow's telescope came to the Stromness Museum and a shoe buckle from James Fea the pirate-catcher in the Orkney Museum

   • What is known about John Fullerton: Orkney's other pirate?

   • Mrs Captain Mary Jones the pirate-killer

   • A bit about the dread pirate Blackbeard and psychological warfare, and how many times did hid headless body swim around his ship?

   • Women pirates from the Bahamas, who "pleaded their bellies"

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The Jim Baikie exhibition is showing at the Orkney Museum in Kirkwall from May-September, 2025.

Help preserve Orkney's stories by joining our Tales in the Landscape Crowdfunder: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/tales-in-the-landscape

Tonight we have a visitor! Ellen Pesci, Orkney lass and Social History Curator at the Orkney Museum, talks with Tom Muir about the life of her father, the celebrated comic book artist and all-around good guy, Jim Baikie.

Among other things, you'll hear about:

• Jim's early years: the war years in Orkney
• The post-war landscape, and how it garnered inspiration and adventure for the bairns
• Jim Baikie's The Dome painting (on display at Lyness' Scapa Flow Museum) and what it represented to Jim
• "The phony war" as experienced from London, contrasted with what was happening in Orkney at that time
• What washed up on the shores of Hoy that changed the course of Jim Baikie's life?
• Where do science and art meet?
• How poor families in Orkney used to be discouraged from attending art college, and how Jim Baikie overcame that early evil
• The "jaw harp" and getting started in the music scene
• Jim meets Wendy: "sex on legs!"
• Bonus: Ellen shares a genuine 1970s recipe for Potato Jane!
• The modern disturbing fashion for changing history
• Jim and Wendy's early married life; the Cyprus and London years
• "Ready, Steady, Win!" and running from screaming teenagers
• Jim's musical life, the opportunities he had and the folk he met: Eric Clapton, Screaming Lord Sutch, Brian Jones, John Ford, Jimmy Hendrix, The Eagles, The Kinks, Deep Purple, Spike Milligan, Santana, Jack Bruce ...
• The Baikies return to Orkney
• Jim's father, and his strong link with Hoy and the Scapa Flow Museum
• Jim's avant garde idea (at the time) of remote working
• Comic book art at last: doing what he loved and being able to feed his family
• The wisdom to know the life that will make you happy
• The full family circle at the Scapa Flow Museum, Hoy

Links:

An article that Tom wrote for an earlier Jim Baikie exhibition, with photos can be found here: https://www.orkneymuseums.co.uk/orkney-artist-jim-baikie/

The Jim Baikie Facebook page, tended by his family: https://www.facebook.com/taucetiorkney

Show notes: https://www.orkneyology.com/orkneyology-podcast-show-notes.html#episode17

Orkneyology Press books: https://shop.orkneyology.com/collections/orkneyology-press-books/books

Orkneyology on Youtube: (Tom's Orkney stories collections) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b54G57-vLc&list=PLzYF_h_h5O1GsxP7DuhKGKQ8oEfSp-Axz

Tales in the Landscape Crowdfunder: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/tales-in-the-landscape

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Tales in the Landscape Crowdfunder: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/tales-in-the-landscape

WARNING: Tonight's chat involves some descriptions of gore and violence, as you might expect with the Vikings.

Tom will tell us a few very old family stories by the light of tonight's full moon. We'll look deeply into Orkney's Viking history, as preserved in the Orkneyinga Saga. If you've ever considered reading the sagas, this episode of Ower wi' the Moon will set you up for a more informed first reading. You'll get a condensed overview of the myth, the stories, the culture and the thinking behind these tales, to prepare you to tackle the Orkneyinga Saga in full. This is part II of III.

Tonight we discuss:

• What happens after the last pagan Jarl of Orkney dies at the Battle of Clontarf in Ireland in 1014?
• We hear about some rather unlikeable, greedy and grasping sons of Sigurd the Stout - Einar Wrymouth among them, who wasn't a very successful Viking
• Holding a Thing at Dingieshowe in Orkney's East Mainland (the assembly mound), where a young farmer, Thorkel, makes a bold move ... and lives to regret it.
• Sigurd's youngest son, Thorfinn Sigurdsson, gets involved in the fight for the family jarldom of Orkney
• Specific locations in Deerness where treacherous events took place
• A promising two-year-old hostage, Rognvald
• Kings being killed and Vikings getting around: Constantinople and Russia, for instance
• What Olaf's Wynd in Kirkwall has to do with the Vikings
• How Kirkjavagr (Kirk Bay, Kirkwall) got its name
• Papa Westray or Papa Stronsay - where did the malt for the Yuletime ale come from?
• The perils of a slip of the tongue
• A Pictish monastery on PapaWestray
• The old Christchurch in Birsay
• Making a bid for the English throne
• And along comes Magnus Barelegs - another great Viking name
• The early days of Saint Magnus
• Treachery in Egilsay and a mother's plea
• The connection between St Magnus and Orkney's skald, George Mackay Brown

Tales in the Landscape Crowdfunder: https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/tales-in-the-landscape

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Support our heritage work here, if you'd like to: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Tom and Nick's conversation wends its way through the centuries touching on these topics and many more:

   • The "earthy" tales of Giambattista: Find out if it's true that "everybody likes a shart joke", where the cockroach hides and old versions of Cinderella and Rapunzel

   • Hannah Dyab, who was responsible for preserving Aladin and Alibab, among others

   • Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and her vision and backstory of Beauty and the Beast, and the difficulties of being a woman creative in her day

   • Dortchen Wild, and how did she benefit the brothers Grimm? And what does this woman have to do with the trope of girls doing housework in fairytales?

   • Ivan Khudiakov and Somadeva

   • Hans Christian Andersen: there's more to him than you might know, and isn't The Snow Queen an amazing story?

   • What can we get away with through satire when those in "authority" aren't paying attention?

   • Why are ogres the speakers of truth in some fairy tales, and why we should always listen to the "monsters".

   • Wicked stepmothers ... or wicked mothers?

   • Is a monster who can tell a story a monster?

   • Should the originator of the "gathered" stories be credited?

   • "Original" fairy tales, new and old

   • Is a selkie a monster? Read Nick's new book, Monsterland, and get his viewpoint!

Nicholas Jubber's website and books

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tom will tell us a few very old family stories by the light of tonight's full moon. We'll look deeply into Orkney's Viking history, as preserved in the Orkneyinga Saga. If you've ever considered reading the sagas, this episode of Ower wi' the Moon will set you up for a more informed first reading. You'll get an overview of the myth, the stories, the culture and the thinking behind these tales, and of course, you'll hear a few rip-roaring Viking stories!

Support our heritage work, if you'd like to: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Tonight we discuss:

   • Sagas are about people; Nordic tales of kin and myth

   • The powerful jarls of Orkney and how the stories were preserved (Thank you, Iceland!) ... and how many of the precious sagas were lost

   • Snorri Sturluson, Saxo Grammaticus Christians with a love for the stories of the old gods

   • Some familiar characters' names that Tolkien borrowed from the sagas

   • What saga would Tom recommend for a new saga-reader?

   • Fáfnir the dragon

   • The Orkneyinga Saga: the pagan jarls of Orkney - 874 through the year 1014, Brian Boru's Battle, or the Battle of Clontarf

   • Some great Viking names, such as: Harald Finehair; Rognvald Mørejarl ; Thorri the Dry One; Snær the Old; Aud the Deep-minded; Calf Scurvy, Thorir Treebeard, Halfdan Highlegs, Thorfinn Skullsplitter, Erik Bloodaxe, Einar Butterbread, Sigurd the Stout ... and many more!

   • How did the first Vikings end up in Orkney and Shetland, and where did they come from?

   • Deeper cultural understandings of the mythological beginnings of the sagas

   • The races of giants, and their relationship with the elements and seasons

   • The gods of the north

   • The weird revenge of the Pictish king, Maelbrigte the Tooth; and similar folk tales, including "the origin of the Kirkwall Ba' game"

   • The story of a strong and wise Viking woman, Aud the Deep-minded

   • The problem of the wild Viking raiders

   • The blood eagle

   • From Odal society to Fuedal society

   • Strong women and bad press

   • The story of Sigurd the Stout and the raven banner

   • The terrible weaving of the Valkyries

   • The Victorian obssession with Vikings, and the racial discrimination behind it

Also mentioned in this episode: A Halloween Visit with Hjörleifur Helgi Stefánsson, episode 10 https://www.orkneyology.com/orkneyology-podcast.html

Podcast theme music courtesy of Fionn McArthur.

"Ower wi' the moon" artwork created by Jenny Steer.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tonight you'll hear about:

• Orkney: Where are all the trees?

• Farming and language in Orkney and Wales

• Inspired by storytelling at eight years old

• The Welsh landscape in traditional stories: site-specific storytelling

• Reimagining folktales from scraps

• King Arthur is Welsh!

• A few types of Welsh tales

• Stories you'll hear in this podcast: The Eagle of Gwernabwy; Taliesan; The story of the Welsh flag

• The Welsh language - preserving, learning, using and celebrating the language in all its dialects; compared to Scottish Gaelic

• Losing the beautiful nuances of language and culture by the misuse of "Celtic"

• A bit about the story of Taliesin and the Mabinogian

Hear more Ower wi' the Moon podcasts on Orkneyology.com https://www.orkneyology.com/orkneyology-podcast.html

Orcadian author and storyteller Tom Muir has been recognized with an MBE for his lifelong work in recovering, restoring and promoting Orkney Islands folk tales, heritage and lore. These various Orkney and Scotland-centered films, audio and podcasts are enhanced by the growing articles and stories on our Orkneyology.com website. https://www.orkneyology.com/

If you're moved to support our ongoing work of preserving and promoting the Nordic / Scottish folklore and heritage from the Orkney Islands, we gratefully invite you to encourage us with a wee dram on our Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology.

As part of our work of preserving our islands' heritage and lore, Tom and I publish unusual niche books through our indie press, Orkneyology Press. We invite you to buy our books directly from our website, which is one way to give extra financial support to both publishers and authors at no additional cost to you. https://shop.orkneyology.com/collections/orkneyology-press-books

If you'd like to help us continue and expand our Orkney folklore and heritage work, you can easily buy us a dram or two on our Ko-fi page. Many thanks! https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

All materials © ℗ 2024 Tom Muir & Rhonda Muir

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• What is it about A Christmas Carol that it remains such a classic and a powerful story?
• In defence of Scrooge the businessman - not a complete villain?
• Charles Dickens' early childhood with a father in debtor's prison, child labor, humiliation, lonliness and parental abandonment
• The importance of books and stories in Dickens childhood
• The Man who Invented Christmas
• Dickens' writings and his marvelous descriptions of food, celebration and togetherness
• The tradition of ghost stories for Christmas, and Dickens' love of ghost stories
• The haunting tale of TheSignalman, and its real-life, deadly inspiration
• Dickens' terrible PTSD related to rail travel
• Gerald Dickens' favorite A Christmas Carol films
• Gerald's American tour of his one-man show of A Christmas Carol and how he got started working as an actor with his grandfather's writings; the eucatastrophe of forgetting his notes!
• How Charles Dickens' stories lend themselves to actors' interpretations
• Favorite lines from A Christmas Carol
• Was Marley Scrooge's only friend?
• Noticing something new in A Christmas Carol every time we read it
• Dickens' influence on our now-traditional celebrations of Christmas
• Gerald Dickens talks about his own books, including his experiences over 30 years of touring with A Christmas Carol - Gerald Dickens: My Life on the Road with A Christmas Carol
• What it's like to stand on the same stages as his great-great grandfather
• Another book by Gerald Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst: A Biography of a Rail Crash - the real life traumatic incident that led to the writing of The Signalman

Mentioned in the podcast:

On the Road with Gerald Dickens blog - https://geralddickens.wordpress.com/

Gerald Dickens' website, videos and books - https://www.geralddickens.org/

Charles Dickens' books read as audiobooks by Gerald Dickens: https://www.audible.co.uk/search?searchNarrator=Gerald+Dickens

Denholm Elliott in The Signalman - I couldn't find it on Youtube at the moment, but Tom and I were able to watch it here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6c73c3

Tom's stories recorded during lockdown, Tales for Troubled Times: https://www.orkneyology.com/tales-from-tom.html

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(Please pardon the scratchy voices and coughing in this epsode. We'd been having a lovely time together roaming around Orkney together with RC and Will and their wives, Pam and Sherry, for several days before we recorded this. Unfortunately, along with the stories, music and breaking bread we also passed around a pretty bad cold.)

We're so pleased to bring you this far-reaching and musical conversation among friends. Join us to hear about these and many other things:

• R. Carlos Nakai speaks of ancient tribal history from his early home in Arizona
• About ceremony, culture, storytellers and gathering knowledge from the elders
• Will's early beginnings with drumming; being born to a musical family in Philidelphia; What's in the "boom boom room"?
• The musical marriage of RC's Native flute and Will's passionate percussion
• The Native "culture of women" - life creators
• RC: Learning how we belong - "Who are you?"; philosophies and stories of all of our clans all over the world
• Will: finding his Swedish Sámi roots; the Sami Pathfinder and the ceremonial drum
• Singing the songs of humanity, and the ancestors' residing in the music
• We all have one human story
• The magic of music, improvisation and what the listener brings to the music
• Anthropologists as listeners
• Shapeshifter and the wallaby dance
• Working with children: mythic creation, mask-making and storytelling; the power of saying, "Yes!"
• A musical treat, and a bit about how RC and Will approach performing together
• Singing to the sea; praying to the water
• Drumming inside the Dwarfie Stane
• Will tells a Sami raven tale, and other stories from RC and Will's Indigenous cultures
• The freedom of poetry and making music
• Elders in many cultures; the knowledge within us

Website for R. Carlos Nakai: https://rcarlosnakai.com/

Website for Will Clipman: https://www.willclipman.com/

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No Picts were harmed during the making of this podcast.

A peedie warning: Not surprisingly, some of the conversation is a bit dark for the very sensitive, or bairns. See topics below and proceed informed.

Join us for a blether between two storytelling northmen, mildly spooky at times as is suitable for the Halloween season, where you'll hear about:

• Storytelling traditions old and new in Iceland
• "Destination Sagalands" (EU project) - friends made in the Nordic lands, and fun personal stories
• Finding a unique voice for stories and storytelling
• Hjörleifur's book, Icelandic Folk Tales
• Storytellers like being admired!
• Hjörleifur's family stories tradition
• Life in an Icelandic turf house
• Hjörleifur tells the story, The Merman Laughs (and eating rotten shark!)
• The dark details of making of a supernatural slave to steal neighbors' milk from the cow; the primal fear of the people living in turf houses
• How to make necropants
• Raising the dead
• About Icelandic rímur, and samplings of rímur, "sung with gusto" by a man with a golden voice
• Iceland and her trolls
• A troll folktale
• An Orkney ghost story from Tom
• A comparison of Orkney and Icelandic tales
• Announcing a new book-in-the-making with Hjorleifur and Orkneyology Press!
• Hidden People tales

Also mentioned:

Cape Clear festival website https://capeclearstorytelling.com/ and Rhonda's personal Cape Clear video https://youtu.be/mEInv4Miz3A?si=CpvVk6pbwc1-VXK_

Hjörleifur's Icelandic Folk Tales book link: https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/icelandic-folk-tales/

Heather Yule, storyteller: https://www.heatheryulepapertales.co.uk/my-story

Liz Weir: https://www.lizweir.org/

Terry Gunnell's Hidden People book: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/1687155.Terry_Gunnell

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In this episode you'll hear about:

• Ailsa's experience of learning about her heritage from Tom
• Orkney stories and their histories
• letting folk stories continue to grow in our own time
• encouraging new storytellers
• the delights of spontaneity in storytelling
• a wee tale from Aberdeenshire - Fittie's Portion
• "young" storytellers, and how not to be defined by age or other labels
• Ailsa's School of Storycraft for kids
• telling stories about things you care about; defeating apathy and reconnecting emotionally
• local history storytelling
• stories about kindness; "heart stories"
• Ailsa tells her heart story, Kate Crackernuts, which is not - as is commonly misunderstood - an English tale, but was collected in the Orkney Islands
• finding earlier versions of folktales
• Gaelic waulking songs
• ... and a bonus story, which Ailsa first heard from her granddad, Fraser Dixon: The Story of Tam Bichan - from Dingieshowe, Orkney
• contact Ailsa Dixon here: https://tracscotland.org/storytellers/ailsa-dixon/

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Join Tom and Rhonda as we continue our discussion around old Orkney customs and traditions. This time you'll hear some quite surprising and amusing details of marriage and death customs in Orkney.

A few things you'll find out in this Ower wi' the Moon podcast:

• Signs and dangers around the Orkney wedding celebration: good luck, bad luck and how to evade the trowies
• The costs of speerin' night, when the prospective groom asks the bride's father for her hand; warning: don't show up empty handed!
• The exact nuances of arranging the marriage banns in Orkney and its surrounding legalities
• About the Westray "dons" of the Spanish Armada, and what allegedly happened if they married "outside" the dons
• What did the moon, the tide and the "airt" of the wind have to do with the fortunes of an Orkney marriage?
• Old-style wedding invitations ... and drams (naturally)
• All about the Orkney foot-washing ritual, and the general hilarity that ensued
• Withershins - "going against the sun"
• The dangers of bodily bits as relating to curses; and what's this got to do with the king's poop?
• A wedding story from Noltland Castle in the island of Westray
• How to make your hogboon part of the wedding celebration, and why it's important to do so!
• The wedding walk - much longer than a walk down the aisle; hijinks along the way; and the importance of wiping out your tracks
• The origins of pre-wedding blackenings in Orkney
• The mesterhousel, the hansel wife, the bride's cog and other Orkney wedding celebration rituals
• Orkney wedding games, bog cotton (Loki's oo) stockings and feminine divination mysteries
• Baking. brewing, eating, drinking and dancing!
• 
  
• Different kinds of Orkney cogs
• Curses, ill omens and selkie abductions: dangers to watch out for during weddings
• The tragic story of Henry Graham and his love
• Orkney death customs, traditions and beliefs
• Omens of death: rainbows, ravens and angels' music
• Wailing vardens and ganfers in Orkney
• The story of the Bokie Hound of the Balfours
• Forebodings of death in dreams
• The leekwak, touching the corpse and of ladies losing their senses
• The danger of grieving too much
• Supernatural Orkney death customs: good luck and bad, and getting the biggest blessing
• What did you do with a drowned sailor?
• The posh end of the cemetery
• Unbaptized infant stories
• ... and many more interesting Orkney traditions.

Encourage us in our heritage preservation work on Ko-fi

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We hope you enjoy this blether among friends.

Join us to find out ...

• About North Ronaldsay toonships ... and what's a toonship anyway?
• Hogmanay traditions; North Ron as compared to Sanday (and other Orkney) traditions, where half of Tom's folk come from; where was the whisky, and what finally stopped the auld Hogmanay traditions?
• On home brew
• Old milling and brewing practices, which Ian observed in his miller-father's life and work
• The old and new North Ronaldsay standing stone Hogmanay traditions, and what's it all got to do with the full moon?
• The reluctant uptake of the Gregorian calendar in Orkney
• Cold evenings in warm places: visiting and playing games with folk in the mill ... and other warm places
• Orkney schooldays in earlier times: What was it like boarding in the hostel for school in Kirkwall Grammar School (and a year in Holm) as a bairn the old days, when they only returned home on rare occasions? Powdered milk, snowball fights, freezing "digs" and unmarried teachers.
• And what about those hair-raising postboat rides before the ferries and planes were available?
• Crops and old-style thrashing
• What it was like studying at Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen
• Orkney's thriving arts community
• Ian's paintings and sculptures, including his favorite sculpture: the Longhope Lifeboat Memorial
• Ian's lobster fishing days
• The North Ronaldsay praam, how it came about and why it's such a good boat design for Orkney sea conditions
• Ian's artistic study trips in Shetland, Iceland and Faroes
• About sculpting and Ian's most well-known public works, including the Longhope Lifeboat Memorial, the statue of Arctic explorer John Rae in Stromness, the George Mackay Brown busts and the Stanley Cursitor portrait, all of which can be seen in Orkney.
• Sylvia Wishart, Ola Gorie and other Orkney artists
• The story of North Ronaldsay's Old Memorial Hall

Mentioned:

A Letter from North Ronaldsay - buy it direct from the publishers, Orkneyology Press (if you'd like to purchase the book in the way that best rewards the author and publishers) :https://rebrand.ly/2e9qpuf

Ian Scott's author page on Orkneyology: https://www.orkneyology.com/ian-scott-orkneyology-press.html

Don't Tell Bab! - Annie Harcus (Annie Rousay)

The Longhope Lifeboat Memorial - https://hoyorkney.com/attractions/hoy-history/lifeboat

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Join us to find out ...

• Why you should avoid insulting a witch when you're about to go sailing (which has nothing to do with our topic, but is interesting and perhaps valuable information nonetheless)
• Natural signs of an upcoming birth; precautions taken to avoid trouble during the precarious time of pregnancy and the earlierst months of life; how to avoid attracting the evil eye; keeping the trows from kidnapping mother or child
• All about the howdie wife - an important and respected woman who takes folk into the world and helps them out of it
• The Orkney meaning of "wifie"
• The story of the bairn of Langalour
• Different strengths of home brew, their names and when to drink them
• Christening stories
• Why Orcadians never let the hearthfire die
• Divining customs for discerning the identity of one's future spouse
• Why one of the Stones of Stenness has holes in it
• Tales from the Odin Stone, and the unbreakable Odin Oath (with a handy escape clause)
• The pathetic story of Pirate Gow and the Odin Oath

Mentioned in this episode: The story of the Hudson's Bay Company man who was a woman: https://www.orkneyology.com/isobel-gunn.html

In Part 2 of Orkney Customs: Hatch, Match, Dispatch Tom will tell us more about "match" customs - courtship and marriage - and also Orkney death customs. See you on the next full moon!

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•  Erin's abiding passion for worms: giant worms causing creation and destruction, the The Muckle Mester Stoorworm; Jörmungandr the world serpent, Ragnarök ... and a bonus: a charm against the worm in your tooth (toothache)!
•    Looking at the landscape from a seafaring position
•    Researching and preserving oral history in Scotland
• Stories of the old lighthouse keepers, including our mutual friend, Lawrence Tulloch of Shetland
• The Grey (bearded) Lady; and deep storytelling
•    Sir Walter Scott in Orkney
•    Acedemic writing as energy vampire vs. stories of the people
•    Dundee roots: slavery; sufferagettes; carving out a place through poetry; William McGonagall; and stories around the Tay Bridge disaster
•   Storytelling and the pressure to achieve; the rewards of taking things slowly
•   A telling of the story of Jockie Barefoot from Erin's book, Angus Folktales - a tragic Angus tale of an evil lanlord
•   The Twins of Edzel as performed by Tania Allan - A BSL interpretation of a Scottish folklore tale. Inspired by ‘Angus Folk Tales’ by Erin Farley. The Twins of Edzell is the story of a dedicated mother of deaf twin brothers and the hearing world that is unable to accept them. Filmed on location at Balvaird Castle, Perthshire. https://sfdh.org.uk/project/the-twins-of-edzell/

So come thee wiz, pour yourself a dram and settle in for a good old-fashioned blether among friends.

Orkneyology website: https://www.orkneyology.com

Podcast theme music courtesy of Fionn McArthur.

"Ower wi' the moon" artwork created by Jenny Steer

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We muse about life lessons embedded in all good stories, look at some differences in stories originating from inland areas as compared to tales told by those whose lives are constantly endangered and controlled by the sea, how Orkney differs from Shetland and how folktales in this area of the world were influenced by the Vikings. And Tom tells a really fun story from the book at the end!

So pull up a chair, pour yourself a dram and settle in for a good, old-fashioned blether among friends.

Be sure to drop by on the NEXT full moon, when we'll be having a blether with Scottish storyteller, researcher and author of Angus Folk Tales, Dr Erin Farley of Dundee.

Show notes: https://www.orkneyology.com/orkneyology-podcast.html

Podcast theme music courtesy of Fionn McArthur.

"Ower wi' the moon" artwork created by Jenny Steer

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Tonight we have a moonlit chat with our very dear friend, Scott Gardiner. Tom and Scott have a lovely, wandering blether across the bothy ballad and traditional Scottish song scene, touching on the history of this unique music and how it stands today. They talk about the culture and lifestyle that created the bothy ballads, a bit about the bothy system in the Orkney Islands and reminisce about "Bothy Nichts", an old Scottish bothy songs television show. Tom and Scott speak about the sad passing of many of the great old singers and songwriters they both admire, including recently Orkney's own Billy Jolly. Scott tells of some of the singers who inspired him and he even favors us with a few of his favorite bothy ballad songs, including one of his own!

So pull up a chair, pour yourself a dram and settle in for a good, old-fashioned blether among friends.

In this episode, we're treated to these traditional songs:

• Guise o' Tough (traditional), 1890s
• Generations of Change, by Matt Armour, 1975
• Princie and Jean, by George Corrigall, 1959
• ... ending with a tongue-in-cheek song that Scott wrote for the Out of Doors Radio Scotland programme!

Drop by again on the NEXT full moon, when Tom will talk about Scottish coastal culture and stories and tell a few tales from his new book with History Press, Scottish Folk Tales of Coast and Sea.

Podcast theme music courtesy of Fionn McArthur.

"Ower wi' the moon" artwork created by Jenny Steer

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

• the difficulties of childhood dyslexia (before there was a name for it)
• beloved childhood storybooks that helped Tom overcome traumatic school years
• how Tom stumbled into storytelling and overcame fear (terror, really) of public speaking
• how the Orkney Storytelling Festival first began
• warm reminiscenses involving some of the amazing storytellers and other people that Tom met through international storytelling opportuities (Lawrence Tulloch from Shetland, Bob Pegg, Donald Smith, David Campbell, Hjörleifur Helgi Stefánsson, Joseph Naytowhow, Stanley Robertson, Duncan Williamson and many more beloved friends)
• advice for newer storytellers
• and Tom tells a local Orkney story that took place in a mound site he once dug as an archaeologist!

Drop by on the NEXT full moon, when we'll be having a blether with award-winning Scottish bothy ballad singer, Scott Gardiner.

Podcast theme music courtesy of Fionn McArthur.

"Ower wi' the moon" artwork created by Jenny Steer.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this first episode of the Orkneyology Podcast (with the encouragement of some steaming mulled wine for Rhonda's sake) we introduce ourselves: Tom Muir - Orcadian traditional storyteller, historian, author and publisher; and Rhonda Muir - an American expat who moved to the Orkney Islands to marry the love of her life (yes, Tom), writer, roamer in the wilderness of Orkney and publisher. We tell the story of our delighted surprise in finding each other from across the Atlantic later in life, and how we eventually came to build a life together in Scotland's Orkney Islands. We talk a bit about our website, Orkneyology.com, which explores Orkney life, travel, history, stories and archaeology. And we reveal a little about our plans for the Orkneyology Podcast, where we will be chatting with some fascinating folk in Orkney and elsewhere.

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