Winter                                                                     New (Cold) Moon

Ancientrails.  A name happened on by accident, now 8 years ago.  Still, it stuck and its meaning seems to grow.  Dug deeper into my psyche as those years have gone by.

Recently discovered a book, The Old Ways, by Robert Macfarlane.  Here’s a bit from a book review in the Guardian:

“…this is the story of many journeys. Fifteen of them are made by Macfarlane himself, along paths in the British Isles and, further afield, in Spain, Palestine and Tibet. He invokes, as he goes, hundreds of previous walkers, and hundreds of pathways – across silt, sand, granite, water, snow – each with its different rhythms and secrets. So the book is a tribute to the variety and complexity of the “old ways” that are often now forgotten as we go past in the car, but which were marked out by the footfall of generations. And it is an affirmation of their connectedness as part of a great network linking ways and wayfarers of every sort.”

In a word, yes.  Yes.  These are ancientrails.  In this case actual trails and paths, but ones that encompass in their reality the more archetypal meaning I have when I use the term here.  Just as there hundreds of pathways across all manner of surface there are even more pathways of the heart, the mind, the genetic paths, the orbits of planets and the movement of stars and galaxies.

Then, yesterday while at lunch with Allison she mentioned, again, Emily Johnson, one of the videoed artists whose life size figures graced the Thaw exhibit at the MIA a couple of years ago.  Allison had become a disciple of sorts, going to a three-day workshop, making a fish skin lantern and even dancing within one of Emily’s pieces last year.  Allison’s fish skin lantern is now on stage with Emily at the Baryshnikov Ballet.  Allison thought of ancientrails in relation to Emily’s work.

Here’s why from a recent NYT piece:

“Structurally Ms. Johnson sees her new “Niicugni” (nee-CHOOG-nee) as encompassing “The Thank-you Bar.” Within an installation of 51 handmade fish-skin lanterns, created by Ms. Johnson and participants from workshops held in conjunction with residencies around the country, the work explores ideas about how a place, including a body, can tie everything and everyone together. It focuses on the wholeness of land, rather than its territorial borders.

“I know what it feels like to walk on the land I grew up on,” she said. “It’s very spongy. The trees and the ground smell earthy and piney. I’m really interested in not forgetting that there’s ground underneath this floor, and that we are all connected, via land, via ground, even in the sense that the ground is made of the remains of all creatures that have ever existed, including our ancestors.”

In “Niicugni” Ms. Johnson performs intricate duets with the dancer Aretha Aoki; some of the choreography is rooted in improvisations that required them to imagine they were dancing on earth. Part of the inspiration for the piece came from a picture of a mountain. “You see a huge physical structure that seems so permanent and so still, but then you can see where there was maybe a rock slide,” Ms. Johnson said. “You can see the precariousness of it. The contradiction between presence and movement is a possibility at every moment.””

Winter                                                                       Moon of the Winter Solstice

The Lay of Thrym.  It recounts how Loki convinced Thor to visit jotunheim (home of the giants) in drag.  Thor woke up one day and his hammer, the famed mjollnir, had gone missing.  He complained to Loki and Loki agreed to set off on a quest to find it.

(detail from Marten Winge’s Thor’s Battle with the Giants)

Find it he did.  Thrym had it.  “Eight rasts below the surface of the midgard.”  A rast, according to one website, was a bit more than a mile.  Too far to dig, in other words.

Thrym offered Loki a deal.  He wanted Freyja, a goddess among the Aesir famed for her attractiveness to giants.

Loki agreed, returned to Asgard, told Thor and then went to see Freyja who rejected the idea.  A lot.

Loki had another idea.  He convinced Thor to wear Freyja’s bridal wear, including her famed Brisinga necklace.  Thrym was so taken with her appearance at jotunheim that he ordered mjollnir brought in and placed on her knees.

The lay then says, “Laughed Thor’s soul in his breast…”  And in the very next sentence:  “He first slew Thrym…and the jotun’s race all crushed…”

“So got Odin’s son his hammer back.”

Winter                                                        Moon of the Winter Solstice

Another day amongst the Eddas.  Reading.  Hearing.  Seeing.  Letting the world of the Nordic gods wash over me, immersing myself in its rhythms, its logic, its conflicts and wonders.

(Walhall by Emil Doepler)

Like the Celtic myths these suffer from an interpretation problem.  That is, they were recorded by Christians or by Romans.  In either case the translators and compilers of these myths had an ax to grind.  A fundamental conflict with the metaphysics, a desire to wipe out the pagan world motivated many Christian redactors of folk traditions.  Though, it must be said in fairness, not all.

In the Roman case there was a general willingness to let conquered people have their own religions, so in that sense there was not the same kind of problem.  Yet, there was a similar one in that Romans and pagans alike often compared folk deities to Roman deities.  But, more to the point, there was the assumption of cultural superiority on the part of Romans.  Since many of the conquered peoples were pre-literate, the first written evidence of their cultures comes in Latin.  That very act, transforming local stories into Latin entails translation, interpretation and assumptions, all from a single direction, the Roman, since the conquered peoples could not write.

Fortunately, for my purposes in this case, I don’t care.  Much.  It’s the spirit and the tenor and the names and the stories that I want, not scholarly accuracy.  At other points I’m very interested in the question of what was truly Celtic or Nordic and what an overlay from their interpreters.  Today, not so much, though I do look out for obvious interpolations of Christian or Roman assumptions.