For Maundy Thursday and the Spring Equinox, which coincide today, we are listening to the Easter Saga of 17th century Icelandic poet Hallgrímur Pétursson. Unless I am gravely mistaken there is footage of both Iceland and the Faroes, where I would love to be this spring.
Via Rebel Girl we are also reading Kenneth Rexroth, Orion Walks Waist Deep.
SPRING, COAST RANGE
The glow of my campfire is dark red and flameless,
The circle of white ash widens around it.
I get up and walk off in the moonlight and each time
I look back the red is deeper and the light smaller.
Scorpio rises late with Mars caught in his claw;
The moon has come before them, the light
Like a choir of children in the young laurel trees.
It is April; the shad, the hot headed fish,
Climbs the rivers; there is trillium in the damp canyons;
The foetid adder’s tongue lolls by the waterfall.
There was a farm at this campsite once, it is almost gone now.
There were sheep here after the farm, and fire
Long ago burned the redwoods out of the gulch,
The Douglas fir off the ridge; today the soil
Is stony and incoherent, the small stones lie flat
And plate the surface like scales.
Twenty years ago the spreading gully
Toppled the big oak over onto the house.
Now there is nothing left but the foundations
Hidden in poison oak, and above on the ridge,
Six lonely, ominous fenceposts;
The redwood beams of the barn make a footbridge
Over the deep waterless creek bed;
The hills are covered with wild oats
Dry and white by midsummer.
I walk in the random survivals of the orchard.
In a patch of moonlight a mole
Shakes his tunnel like an angry vein;
Orion walks waist deep in the fog coming in from the ocean;
Leo crouches under the zenith.
There are tiny hard fruits already on the plum trees.
The purity of the apple blossoms is incredible.
As the wind dies down their fragrance
Clusters around them like thick smoke.
All the day they roared with bees, in the moonlight
They are silent and immaculate.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Thanks. I am starting to expect these musical contributions on weekends chez vous. Boy, those Moravians, they went everywhere.
On the upside of not being in the Faroes: I bet it is warmer where you are. Here it has been icing and snowing for several days.
Why they got around so much is what I don’t know. Does it have to do with all the wars, shifting of national boundaries in the area, and so on? The capture by the Swedes?
Snow and ice: you’re making me think you’re closer to Scandinavia than I’d thought. I was actually thinking you were somewhere nearer Moravia! (I’m not asking – and it’s cold there too, anyway.)
Your original suspicion was correct. Easter is early this year, and the weather is on the down side of normal. However, it is hard, here, to tell what “normal” weather is any more.
The Moravians were the first Prot. missionaries–they attributed this decision to a group conversion experience they had in the early 18th c. They were driven well about during the 30YW, but I think these Icelandic visitors must have traveled there as a result of the conversion experience.
Evil tongues might say that they had the conversion experience because once all of the turmoil was over and they were allowed to live together peacefully in Upper Lusatia, they couldn’t stand each other…
Aha 1: Missionaries, I should have known! But their music preceded them to Iceland, it seems: Pétursson’s composition here is mid 17th century. I wonder how Moravian music got so popular: this sounds to my uneducated ear a lot like the Grundtvig hymns, which are Danish and 19th century, and 17th century Puritan compositions here. (“A mighty fortress is our God…”.) All that unison and those parallel harmonies, I don’t know any more how to describe them musicologically.
Aha 2: Landlocked central Europe with dumplings and other heavy food, I knew you were near Moravia! And you speak German. Your location seems Germanic but vaguely Slavic, or Slavic with German influence. Your department chair reminds me of my Czech colleague, from Brno. Now, your town must be of some size since it has a university and a Brazilian restaurant. But it does not seem to be a really urban place, and you go around on a bicycle. Therefore I have eliminated Berlin from the list of places you could be. If I really thought about it, I’d eliminate some more cities. I like the mystery.
Well, Xty went to Iceland long before the Moravians, as did the Reformation. A lot of Xian missionary activity was really directed at converting people who were already Xians to some other kind of Xty. The Moravians spent a lot of time in North America essentially appealing to other Xians. Not to out myself too much, but I was studying this question recently on a professional level. It turns out that one of the most popular German sermon collections of the 16th c. was translated into Icelandic and printed within about ten years of its original publication. I encountered a copy in Uppsala last summer and put Icelandic on my list of possible next languages to learn as a consequence. These genealogies are hard to trace because much of the elite population of various Scandinavian areas spoke Low German and was probably consuming devotional materials in that language very early on. But yes, the harmonies were definitely there much earlier. “A mighty fortress” is a 16th c. composition, but the evangelical forces of hymn production hit their high point in the 17th c., during and after the 30 YW. Moravians were important beneficiaries of that tradition.
Indeed, I am not in Berlin, where there are many bikers but where it is probably easier to use mass transit. I will continue to maintain the mystery for now, though.
What a fascinating study. I’m interested for personal reasons. In my exchange student family, the father was an important Faroese composer and poet (recently deceased). Part of his work was semi-sacred music and it has these harmonies. There are recordings of it but I only have one early one. I need to go to DK and buy them, or else my lazy family needs to send them (are you listening, Hedvig? 😉 ). His father was an important Bible translator in the Faroes. The whole thing is such a large and different universe, and I am utterly transfixed.
In my field, the Scandinavian countries have been almost completely excluded from the subject as it is studied in North America, where universities only seem to want to hire people who study England, France, Germany, Italy, and now Spain/Portugal. So it’s sort of easy to forget about them. But they are huge!!! And they were central movers in early modern politics. You are right, it is somehow like another universe. I’m trying to bring it more into synch with mine, though.
Ah that is excellent. My graduate program made me give up Scandinavian for English, on the theory that this would make me more marketable. I kept saying Scandinavia was a central mover but they kept saying it was only of interest to itself. I said they were not well informed and they said they must be better informed than I because they were professors.
But Scandinavia is a huge world and Scandinavians got around a lot – have Viking boats not sailed up the Seine at some point? I’m so glad you’re bringing it in. And I would also love to learn Icelandic.
What is sad is that your advisers were probably right. If someone wanted to work with me on Scandinavian history right now I’d say “only in a transnational or transcultural project with Scandinavia as the minor field” because I don’t know how they would get hired. And that would be the crowning defeat: after who knows how many years of grad school to be unhirable…
There are lots of reasons to study things Scandinavian: the working welfare system, for example. The aesthetic issues. Their interesting role in the development of egalitarian gender ideals. But somehow we always forget them.
Yes … there is no work. But I am going to pay more attention to Scandinavia recreationally, at least, I have decided! 🙂