Maelstrom

I saw no icebergs while I was in Norway in my early twenties. After a long train journey from Trondheim to Bodo, struggling to keep awake so as not to miss incomparable scenery — fjords, mountain peaks, farms where hay was strung between lines to dry and apples ripened in large orchards — I caught the coastal steamer, the Hurtigrute, to Torsken on the island of Senja. There I joined volunteers from Norway and other parts of Western Europe. For six weeks we camped in the local school. The girls slept in one classroom, the boys in another and we gathered around a long table in a third to eat. The local people supplied us with food — fresh cod from the fjord, whale steaks, sweet, golden goat’s cheese for which we gradually acquired a taste as we developed the skill to slice it razor-thin with an osthovel. Once our Norwegian volunteer cook made pancakes and assembled them with fruit and cream into a delicious gateau, and one afternoon, towards the end of our stay, we were invited into a local house for a feast of cakes and pastries. In return for this hospitality we went with picks and shovels to a stony field close to the wooden church. We repaired the stone wall surrounding it and levelled the ground, turning it into an embryonic park.

July and early August were exceptionally fine that year, but the mountain peak visible from the school was white. I argued that it was made from marble even as we climbed through fragrant shrub to reach snow. Torsken was 69°N, well beyond the Arctic circle which I crossed in the train. From the deck of the Hurtigrute, on the way home, I watched the sun at midnight, still above the horizon.

The people on that remote island had welcomed a youth camp, mainly because it was an opportunity to meet people from other cultures. I suspect we did not live up to their expectations. There was a language barrier, and, unwittingly, with youthful heedlessness, we formed a group that usually excluded them. No doubt we considered ourselves superior to fishermen and their families because we had received more education; and so an opportunity was lost.

Yesterday victims of Anders Brevik, who killed over seventy people in a bomb attack in Oslo and a nightmarish shooting spree on a nearby island, were buried. He claimed to be the defender of a Norwegian way of life, yet, according to the Independent, he despised the farmers among whom he recently lived, considering them unrefined. Tanned and using bodybuilding to make him appear like a God, he considered himself the saviour of Europe. What an Ego!

It seems that Anders Brevik is not the head of a Crusader army. There is no iceberg of which he is the visible tip; but, what he seems to have done is concentrate some of the thoughts about the power of individuals, that swirl like a maelstrom around our western world, while failing to balance them with thoughts centred on responsibility to others.

There are, course, other icebergs floating in our waters.

Free Spirits

The cuckoo comes in April,

He sings his song in May,

In leafy June

he changes tune,

In July he flies away.

True?

This year I was walking in the garden when I heard a single, unmistabable ‘cuckoo.’

Collared doves, which sing, ‘Cuckoo coo,’ nest in the conifers, and wood pigeons with their, ‘cuckoo coo cuckoo,’ come for beech nuts; but ‘cuckoo’ is a rare sound these days. I was so surprised I forgot to note when I heard it. It was probably May.

The British Trust for Ornithology managed to trap five cuckoos in East Anglia, and release them with solar-powered tracking devices on their backs. They were amazed to find that the bird they called Clement left for France on 6th June. Two other birds left in the middle of June and one at the end of the month. The fifth bird, Lyster, is still making short forays around his English base in the middle of July. Far from there being an internal cuckoo clock that strikes sometime in July to say, ‘Go,’ the male cuckoos seem to please themselves.

I was brought up to believe that birds don’t have intelligence. They have instincts which they follow mindlessly.

As there is no fixed time for the departure of the cuckoo, there is no fixed route. Clement spent up to a month in wooded regions in France before flying quickly through Spain, across the Mediterranean and into Algeria. He is now over the Sahara on the Algerian-Mauritanian border.

The other three migratory birds flew in a general southeasterly direction. Martin, like Clement, flew to France before continuing to Northern Italy. Chris spent at least a week in the Netherlands, then travelled to Italy through the Moselle region of France. He was last seen in the Po Delta World Heritage Site.

Kasper is the bird who, so far, has shown most stamina. He flew from England to Antwerp, crossed the Alps in eastern Switzerland and was detected on the outskirts of Rome. Then he travelled 1,367 miles SSW to Algeria. He, like Clement, is now in the Sahara.

You have to admire the courage and adaptability of these irresponsible globetrotters. They seem to be truly free spirits until you realise how vulnerable they are. They seem unable to escape the fate that decrees they lay their eggs in the nests of a limited number of not impassive host species. Cuckoos don’t appear to have the option of exercising creativity building nests or inventing more complex songs; and they don’t experience the parental satisfactions of pair bonding, egg incubation and watching fledglings learn to fly.

Still, those of us who visit the BTO website will be keeping our fingers crossed that Clement, Kasper and the others will safely cross the Sahara. We are interested in finding out their final destinations, how they will spend our winter, when they will decide to start next year’s flight north and whether they will choose a different route. No doubt more surprises are in store.

The Red Lantern

‘The Last Storytellers’ is a book that puts into print stories from the Moroccan tradition of oral storytelling, which goes back almost a thousand years and is now in danger of extinction. Accompanied by his guide, Ahmed, Richard Hamilton sought out in Marrakech five authentic storytellers, who are no longer young but have no-one waiting to don their djellabas. Typically, they are men who followed what they saw as their fate, in spite of the disapproval of orthodox Islam and opposition from families who regarded storytelling as little better than begging.

These storytellers may be aged, poor and frail, but their stories are rich in detail and full of vitality. The first story in the collection was told by Moulay Mohamed who, with a heart condition, is now too weak to tell stories in public. It tells of a poor, lowly sweet seller who leaves Marrakech, crosses the Atlas Mountains and travels through the desert in the hope of finding success. He stumbles across a great city in a lush valley, whose incredibly wealthy Pasha offers him hospitality. When it is time to leave, the sweet seller hesitantly offers his host the only thing he has in his possession, a lantern made of tin and red glass. Although the Pasha’s treasury is full of gold and jewels, he has never seen a red lantern before, is delighted with the gift and gives the sweet seller twelve loads of gold and jewels in return. Back in Marrakech, where he now lives in a magnificent mansion, the former sweet seller receives a visit from the wealthy brother who showed him no compassion during his unsuccessful years. This man learns the source of his brother’s fortune and sets out on a similar journey ... but I won’t give the ending away.

To me this story is a reminder that outward observances do not bring the desired results if there is something amiss in the heart. Imitation is a jinn we share with at least some of our primate relatives. It’s the jinn that makes us want what everybody else has and do what everybody else does; but our mirror neurons also allow us to exercise empathy and a purer spirit — compassion.

This Sunday morning, when ‘The News of the World’ carries its farewell montage of famous front pages, I was looking at a different photo montage, one constructed by Omran Sahar. It is made up of five photos, four from the drought stricken Horn of Africa. They show underfed children whose eyes plead for food. The fifth photo shows, against a golden background a prosperous-looking Arab man dressed in western clothes.

Ruins of my Past and Present

There were few things our father enjoyed more than discovering relics from the past. At a time when progress was all that mattered, he brought us to see the humble reminders that our physical occupation of a place is limited by time.

What we were brought to see was within walking distance or a very short drive by car from home. There were a couple of abandoned mills which no longer ground corn, but had dams with plant-covered walls up which we loved to scramble. There were mill races and mill wheels which no longer turned. These were from the recent past.

Three churches in ruins stand within a couple of miles’ radius of the town. The nearest had a carving in stone of The Crucifixion thought to date from the tenth century. It was built on the site of an ancient monastery. Another stands atop a hill. The third, Killylagh Old Church, is not far from a small loch, on a narrow road leading to the foot of a mountain called Carntogher.

When we climbed the Carn we followed a stony path and our father told us we were on the road used by stage coaches when they travelled between Belfast and Derry. Our town was half way between the two cities and had an inn where travellers could spend the night and where horses could be stabled and fed.

I have a hunch that the road taken by the stage coach followed a more ancient route. Perhaps it is just a coincidence, but close to it are other places we visited. The strangest of these is the Sweat House where people sat around a fire in a cabin before jumping into a well nearby. More mysterious are the earthen ring fort and the dolmen.

Since our father’s death people have come to me looking for information about the things that interested him; and I have found it hard to convince them that I am a different person with my own interests. Now I find my husband is fascinated by local history and I am being pulled back to my youth and the things I saw and was told.

Remembering and uncovering the past is a powerful animal instinct, an important part of the animal survival kit. Cats learn from previous experience, remember where potential prey is to be found, know that a fox or another cat has been visiting by the scent it left. Adapted by human creativity, the instinct shape shifts into a variety of forms. It would not surprise me if the same local history jinn which possessed my father, was alive and well and haunting my husband’s computer room.