Off to the Shetlands

Just as the cabbages are pushing up, the onions shoots well above ground and only one more batch of potatoes to be planted, I'm off to the Shetlands.

I want to get as close to Viking life as I can, and I'm sure I can do it in the Shetlands. I want to come home with a fistful of finished poems and the beginnings of others. Most of these will, I hope, make their way into the book I'm making about women in the Viking age. One might even end up on these pages.

Even reading the placenames is like reading the characters in a story: Whales Wick, Point of Blo-geo, Easter Quarff, Lotra of Minn, Muckle Hell, West Burrafirth, Snevlabreck, Haaf Gruney. As well as exploring the numerous islands, I'm going to swim. Not in the sea, you understand, but in Shetland's indoor pools. Apparently there is a pool for every 2000 people, but surely this generous provision must be a service for visitors who might otherwise be facing lashing rain?

I'll also be visiting the Shetland Library's collection of local books in Lerwick, and I note that there is a Lerwick bookgroup which read Mister Pip recently, as did my group here in Suffolk. It's interesting to think of a discussion taking place in a very northerly island about a story set on an island in the South Pacific.

And this afternoon there's just time for me to get those potatoes in.

Submissions

Submitting manuscripts always takes longer than I expect. First, there's the question of deciding which agents/publishers to submit to, and then it's essential to check out precisely what each of them wants. Some want the whole ms, some the first three chapters or 10,000 words. Some insist on it being sent by e-mail while others prefer a hard copy. Most, but not all, want a synopsis and some info. about the writer. The websites of helpful agencies give details of how the submission will be processed and - importantly - a time framework.

Eighteen months ago when I was submitting the ms of my last novel several replies bounced back within two weeks. Others took months - sometimes many months - and there remains a couple which I have still had no reply from, despite having been assured over the phone that my ms is with them. "Sorry - but we'll get round to it." Really? On the other hand. one agency sent me four replies, all dated within a month - just to make sure there was no doubt over their refusal, I presume.

Having decided what I'm going to send to whom, the next job is to make sure that the right letter goes out with the right attachments, or, if it's by post, that the right stuff is put into the right package. And even though it's 2009, some companies still want an SAE.


If you've got a funny experience with submissions, I'd love to hear about it.


But, all bar one, a small batch of submissions is out there, winging my ms towards an in-box or a letter-box. And now I must forget them for a while and concentrate on other things.

It won't be hard because this weekend I'll be in London to hear the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra's Latino concert, see my family and babysit, and visit the re-furbished Whitechapel Gallery and its current show-piece: a replica tapestry of Picasso's Guernica.

Spring

On Saturday we went for our first canoe trip of 2009, along the River Stour from Sudbury to Henny. It was calm and warm, and a heron flew slowly up from the bank ahead and settled where we couldn't see it, but when we approached it a second time it took off again. Then in the car on the way home, we saw our first swallow of the year. Such sightings are like blessings.

And our pond must now contain a couple of firkins of frogspawn, and several dozen newts, some of which are easily caught by dipping one's hand under them. So it's spring - time to be on a bike or in a canoe or just having coffee in the garden.

This description of a very different spring comes from the book I'm reading set in 14th century Norway, Kristin Lavransdatter.

One evening in the early spring Rangfrid had to send down the valley to old Gunhild, the widow who sewed furs. The evening was so fair that Kristin asked if she might not go; at last they gave her leave because all the men were busy.

It was after sunset, and a fine white frost haze was rising toward the green-gold sky. Kristin heard at each hoof-stroke the brittle sound of the evening's ice as it broke and flew outwards in tinkling splinters. But from all the roadside brakes there was a happy noise of birds singing, softly but full-throated with spring, into the twilight.

When I checked the meaning of brake, I found that although it meant a thicket of bushes, it had quite a few other meanings: a cage, an instrument for peeling the bark from willows, a baker's kneading-machine, a nose-ring for a draught ox.

And here's part of John Milton's Song on May Morning, which I quote in my novel Companion to Owls

Now the bright morning star, Day's harbinger,

Comes dancing from the east, and leads with her

The flowery May, who from her green lap throws

The yellow cowslip , and the pale primrose.

Norse and Nordic

In the interests of research for a book I'm intending to write and make, (yes, really make - by hand), I've just spent a couple of days at a seminar organised by the Viking Identities Network at Nottingham University entitled Language, Texts and Gender in the Viking Diaspora. It may not sound exciting to you, but I really enjoyed it. Admittedly, there were papers which I could hardly understand let alone benefit from, but one called Text and Textiles summoned up wonderful connections between what was woven and what was spoken. And as for those Viking burials, I had never before recognised the huge amount of work involved: all that food to be assembled, all those horses to be killed and butchered. Indeed, it was being suggested that such occasions were indeed performances, a concept I found totally believable.



The seminar was held at Beaumont Hall at the University of Leciester, situated in the Botanic Gardens. Feeling Vikinged-out at one point, I escaped and made my way to a beacon of natural loveliness - a magnolia in full blossom.



Back in Suffolk I'm embarking on Sigrid Undset's Kristin Lavransdatter, a trilogy first published in 1930. It's set in 14th century Norway, and though this is well past the Viking era, I reckon that the changes to peasant life in rural fjordland would not be pronounced.





The person who recommended this book to me was not a Viking scholar at the conference, but someone at Norwich University College of the Arts where we are both studying. Not only is Chris a textile artist but she is Norweigan. Over a cup of coffee we discovered that her father and my brother had both worked on a Norweigan whaling ship, the Balaena. My brother Gordon, when newly qualified as a marine zooologist, was the scientific officer, and Chris's father was a flenser - one of the men who slices the blubber off the whales with huge knives on poles, a bit like a scythe. Now this seems appalling, but fifty years ago there was a big market for whale oil.


So, my life feels a bit Norse and Nordic at present, and that pleases me.