Tiel's Saga: Scottish Lore, Norse Roots

By Thom Simmons

For seven centuries, Vikings raided and settled the coast of Scotland and the Hebrides Islands. During that time, the Norsemen and Gaels formed a unique culture as they intermarried and shared belief systems, folklore, and traditions. In this groundbreaking work, the author looks at five pieces of Scottish folklore and illuminates the influence of Norse myths in each.

In Tiel's Saga and four additional tales, the book reveals the crossovers in mythology. Each tale is accompanied by end notes that go beyond mere citations, but which describe the sources and variations uncovered in author's research. Historical commentary as well as academic support is provided in appendices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Aug 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986431116

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

They sat on long wooden benches on either side of thick, oaken tables. Large platters of slowly cooked meats, which had taken the women all day to prepare, along with fresh oat breads, fresh-picked berries, and mixed root vegetables, were passed up and down the length of the hall, as people shared tales from the day’s activities. The feasting was punctuated by a fair number of shouts across the hall and good-natured joking. Many of the men had been out fishing that day, and the one who returned with a meager catch was sure to be the recipient of some ribbing. About thirty people had filled the hall, half of whom were related by blood or marriage, including distant cousins who had lived among them for generations. Others were recent additions to the area, but the bond between them was just as strong.

The meal, of course, was just a precursor to the remainder of the evening. Once all were filled and the tables were cleared, they headed down a steep, wooded path, past a huge pile of stones that had been there as long as anyone had remembered. It seemed that each time a child would ask an adult what the origin of that structure was, they received a slightly different answer, which only lead to more questions. Some said it was a burial site; others believed it to be a worship or ceremonial site for some ancient people. At the end of the path was another wooden hall, larger than the first, with an enormous fieldstone fireplace that accommodated short pine logs dripping pitch; the fire was already roaring. On some nights, some of the more musically inclined would take up their instruments, and the dancing would start. Elbows locked, bodies swinging about, and feet stomping, everyone would have known the steps – or learned very fast. Children would join in, being gently guided or pushed in the right direction to help them learn the patterns.

But tonight was not one of those nights. Instead, the older folk were breaking out the whisky, and the storytelling began. Once again, the story of a local woodsman who could fell a tree with deadly accuracy, was being re-told. That would eventually give way to hunting stories, as someone referenced a huge set of deer antlers on the wall. Someone would bring up the tale of a local man known for the finest pair of work horses in the region, which everyone somehow attributed to his fine singing of old ballads to them. Then, of course, there were stories of ancestors who lived some hundreds of years earlier, and their exploits on the seas. An elderly woman sat quietly, murmuring from time to time in disagreement. That’s not how it happened, she would quietly say to no one in particular, with a subtle shaking of her head. The storytellers may not have heard her, but the child at her side did. Curious, the child would seek her out the next day and ask for her version.

Of course, while some younger children’s attention was held captive by these great stories, some of the adolescents grew quickly bored of hearing the same tales over and over, tales they were sure that they could recite in their sleep. Instead, they would throw more logs on the raging fire, or quietly slip out of the hall in the hopes of pursuing some romance.

The night grew dark, the moon rose over the water, and then the ‘play’ began. Carefully chosen from a set of oft-repeated scripts, the adults took on roles and re-enacted one of the stories. Depending on the day and the amount of spirits consumed, it could be serious, or it could be hilarious, with ad-libbed elements working their way into future versions of the performance.

At some point, the revelers would begin heading out for their homes, knowing that the next day’s fishing, logging, carving, and cooking would start early and a good night’s rest would be required.

* * *

Where did you picture that description? What time period did you placed it in?

It could be a crofter’s community in the 15th century Scottish Highlands, or a Norwegian fishing port in the Viking era, or an Irish town before the Great Famine. The image of community meals and community story-telling fits neatly in many older European cultures; indeed, with some minor adjustments, it could also be a Native American scene, or somewhere in Sub-Saharan Africa, or in a desert culture in the middle east, or on the steppes of central Asia.

But these memories are mine, from the 20th Century, in the United States.

I grew up on Long Island, outside of New York City. Most of my school friends had a similar family history and structure: their grandparents moved from Europe to Brooklyn or Queens, and their parents escaped to the good life in the suburbs, and that’s where they were being raised. I figured out early that my family was very different.

In the mid-late 1800s, my great-great grandparents arrived in New York from Ribe, Denmark, a city that was known as a center of Viking culture for hundreds of years. They didn’t arrive alone, but as an extended family that included cousins and neighbors. And before long, they purchased a tract of land in Searsmont, Maine, and began developing what we affectionately called camp. Like my mother, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, great aunts, second cousins, and others before me, this is where I lived in the summer, ‘working’ at camp.

I developed a strong bond with my grandmother, who lived on an adjoining parcel of land. Her father, who died when she was only nine, was a Dane. She was proud of her Danish heritage, and I can still remember her shouting Skal! when toasting in the hall, and cooking ebelskiver in the kitchen. Her mom, however, was a Scot, the daughter of an immigrant with strong ties to Clan MacThomas, a small highland clan that to this day maintains communal clan property in the Spittal of Glenshee in Perthshire, Scotland.

I grew up surrounded by an extended family that maintained old-world habits. I learned their stories, though I wish I had paid more attention than I did. Nonetheless, the ethos of oral lore and storytelling was simply a part of the fabric of who I am today. And it was this love of that lore that compelled me to begin this book.

* * *

The study of Celtic and Norse mythology invariably starts from epic tales that were recorded in the medieval period. Any enthusiast of Norse lore will point to the Poetic Edda and the Prose Eddas as critical source texts. The Poetic Edda, which survives in several forms, is a collection of 31 poems written in the 13th century, based on material that is much older. There are no known authors of these poems, and scholarly consensus is that they were passed down orally, as songs or poems, for centuries beforehand. The Prose Edda, written by Icelandic scholar and historian Snorri Sturlsson, is written in more of a traditional story format, and draws from the Poetic Edda as well as other sources. Other written Norse sources, such as the Icelandic Sagas, the Saga of the Greenlanders, the Orkneyinga, the Heimskringla, and the Saga of the Volsungs are dated to roughly the same period, although a carving of a scene from the Saga of the Volsungs on the Ramsund rock in Sodermanland, Sweden, can be dated back to 1030, providing archaeological evidence of the oral tradition of these stories for hundreds of years prior to being written down. It is through these texts that we derive our understanding of the of Norse gods such as Odin, Thor, Freyja, Njord, Tyr, and others, as well as a cast of heroes such as Sigurd and Ragnar Lodbrok.

In Irish lore, a similar body of texts exists. Four cycles of Irish mythology – The Ulster (or Red Branch ) Cycle, the Mythological Cycle, the Kings Cycle, and the Fianna Cycle – along with the Book of Invasions (Lebor Gabála Érenn) - constitute a large corpus of information about the pre-christian belief systems in Ireland. In these writings we are introduced to The Morrigan, The Dagda, Brigid, Lugh, the heroes Cu Chulainn and Fionn MacCumhaill, and others. Perhaps the most famous story of Irish lore, the Cattle Raid of Cooley (Tain bo Cuailgne) is contained within the Ulster Cycle.

For Irish and Norse lore, we are presented with a double-edged sword: on the one hand, we have an ample body of texts to consult when wrestling with questions of historic mythology: No, Loki is not Thor’s brother, and we know this because we have texts nearly 1,000 years old that convey evidence of the actual, ancient beliefs.

On the other hand, the stories we have from both systems are now frozen in time. Oral lore, which had previously been passed down through the centuries at firesides, celebrations and communal meals, with all of their embellishments, lost details, generational additions, and geographical variances – has essentially ended.

When we turn to Scotland, we have the opposite situation: with the exception of the Norse-based Orkneyinga Saga in the Orkney Islands, there simply are no epic written tales from Scotland, from the medieval era or any other time. In northern Europe, Scottish folklore is unique in continuing on as a largely oral tradition among storytellers. While this provides for a continuing, vibrant tradition, it also leads to variances from the historic tales, the origins of which are buried in centuries of telling and re-telling. We can not point to a historic text the way a biblical literalist might, and say, A-ha! It says in this chapter and verse… Instead, we have a collection of stories and variations that need to be compared, contrasted, and researched to find the ‘oldest variant,’ if, in fact, there even was a single origin of the tale.

A well-known piece of Scottish folklore invokes a common trope, the evil stepmother. In this tale, the mother in a family dies, and the father remarries. The stepmother is cruel and hateful towards one of the children, whom she kills; she then boils the murdered child into the evening meal, and feeds him to the rest of the family. Eventually, the child returns in the form of a bird and exacts revenge by dropping a heavy item on the stepmother, killing her.

That is the basic structure of this gruesome tale. But around Scotland, there are multiple variations.

As told in the Anthology of Scottish Folk Tales by Tony Bonning, the tale takes place in the region of Dumfries and Galloway in southwestern Scotland. The murdered boy was conceived as the result of a wish upon a Rowan Tree, and he sported flaming red hair, like the tree’s berries. Poverty was the catalyst that caused the stepmother to snap and kill him; his bones were later buried under the rowan tree. The tree and ground quake, and the bones turn into a dove – a Milk White Doo, – the name Bonning gives the tale. The dove has supernatural strength, and drops a millstone on the offending stepmother.

In The Wee Bird, as told by Lindsey Gibb and C. A. Hope in Perthshire Folk Tales, the victim is a young girl, and the stepmother flies into a rage when the child breaks a favorite milk jug. The child turns into a ‘wee brown bird’ this time, but can still speak with a human voice as she communicates with her father and brothers. She brings gifts to them, but she drops a large stone on the stepmother, and eventually turns back into a young girl again.

In the Aberdeenshire variant told by Daniel Allison in Scottish Myths and Legends, the broken jug motif is repeated. The child’s bones are buried in the far end of the garden between two marble stones, one of her favorite places, rather than at the base of the rowan tree. At the rising moon, the ground quakes, and the bones become a white doo, as in the Bonning version. Like the Gibb & Hope version, she brings gifts to her family, but, unique to this account, drops an axe on the stepmother to cut off her head. She remains with the family as a dove rather than returning to the form of a child.

All three of these accounts are telling essentially the same story – but each contains a detail, a variance, or an element that illustrates the