The Pink Castle of Uppsala

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I had, during a conference banquet last year, found myself eating in Hammarskjöld's tennis court.

"Until fairly recently," the maitre-d' and toastmaster said, "this banqueting hall was in something of a sorry state. It had been allowed to become a store room. The Governor of the Uppsala district resided in the Castle, and had cleared a space amid all the Stately junk for his son to play tennis.

"His son was Dag Hammarskjöld, who would go on to become the second UN Secretary-General."

After our lecture, and a formal welcome from a withered, quiet Mayor of Uppsala (who didn't live in the Castle), we were introduced to a section of one of the university male choirs - perhaps elements of the famous Orphei Dränger, I shall have to find out. Perhaps not. But they wore nineteenth-century uniforms, and bounced while they sang, rather as the Swedish language bounces while it is being spoken.

(The end of conference entertainment couldn't have been any more different from that of the opening ceremony, when we got traditional Swedish cow-herding songs. Traditional in this case meant a high-pitched scream (to attract the cows), and although the singer had generously warned us that she would scream during the song, all three hundred participants in the conference nevertheless jumped visibly.)

Back in the banqueting hall, the highlight of the choir's performance came when the singers broke up and serenaded one lucky girl at each of the long benches. Sitting next to me was a Norwegian friend who attracted the notice of one of the singers, and so I was made to witness the serenade intimately from behind his pony tail, which bounced from beneath his student cap in rhythm with his delicate love song. The song was, by now, being delivered at various corners of the hall, and all but the most obvious harmonies were lost. But I could see that my Norwegian friend didn't care.

Re-reading

This is the cover of my edition of Markings, the 1964 translation of Hammarskjöld's Vägmärken.

I got the book nearly twenty years ago, in Christmas 1991 (yes, written on the first page), at the end of my first year of university and thirty years after Hammarskjöld's death in a plane crash in 1961. I have been searching my mind for the precise details of how I came across the book, but I think it has something to do with Molly Jónsson, a friend of my mother's who had been involved as a cleric in the British investigation into the 1961 plane crash. I suspect she introduced me to both Hammarskjöld and the terrible circumstances of his death.

By the time I released a music CD a year later, the book had become so important to me that I (rather earnestly) had my photo taken with it for the inside sleeve of the CD cover. Part of my rediscovery of the book all this time later is the pleasant mystery of why I was so drawn to it in the first place.

We learn a lot about ourselves by looking over our past reading. It is a kind of time travel, where the destination is not so much the reconstruction of a past existence, but of a past sensibility. How did I approach this book? What did I know as I read it? What did it teach me? What I would like most, is to recapture the moment when I am bowled over by this text, and feel it like a new song, and not as a revisit accompanied by a more knowing distance.

Meeting your heroes

A few years ago, I was walking through a bright, cool morning in Albert Street in Brisbane on my way to class at QUT, where I was teaching in communication studies. In among the first commuters were late walkers and joggers. One, a middle-aged man dressed in black shorts and a black T-shirt, had stopped to read posters that hung in the tall, black windows of a property development showroom. It was Clive James.

And, if I allow myself to be guided by the strange logic of coincidence, there was every reason for me to bump into him just when I did.

1) I had been reading as much of James' work (well, non-fiction) as I could lay my hands on. I had come to James fairly late, and it seems was all the more smitten, in a literary sense, for it.

2) I was also, at the time, helping my friend and supervisor Martin Duwell build some wooden steps down from the road to his house. Over a few months of Saturday mornings, we had talked a lot about James' writing - Martin knew whole sections more or less off by heart. He had also, by chance, recently been in touch with James about a poem, "Occupation: Housewife", that was to go into the The Best Australian Poetry collection for the year.

Now comes the time I fly to sit with her
Where she lies waiting, to what end we know.
We trade our stories of the way things were,
The home brew and the perm like rabbit fur.
How sad, she says, the heart is last to go.

The heart, the heart. I still can hear it break.
She asked for nothing except his return.
To pay so great a debt, what does it take?
My books, degree, the money that I make?
Proud of a son who never seems to learn,

3) I had appeared with James in an issue of the Australian Book Review. (His contribution was his "Lucretius the Diver", mine a "Letter from Iceland".)

Bumping into Clive James in Albert Street seemed like the most natural thing in the world. And the coincidences had a textual dimension, too.

4) James himself had once had a similar experience, when, on the London-Cambridge line, he had spotted W H Auden, who, like me, James loved. He had gone up to him and spoken some nonsense, and Auden had apparently taken it well. Here is James on meeting Auden on another occassion.

Auden shuffled through in a suit encrusted with the dirt of years – it was a geological deposit, an archaeological pile-up like the seven cities of Troy. I don’t think anybody of my generation knew what to say to him. I know I didn’t…I can still remember those unlucky hands; one of them holding a cigarette, the other holding a brimming glass, and both trembling. The mind boggles at some of the things they had been up to. But one of them had refurbished the language. A few months later he was beyond passion, having gone to the reward which Dante says that poets who have done their duty might well enjoy – talking shop as they walk beneath the moon.

The part, "The mind boggles at some of the things they had been up to. But one of them had refurbished the language", was one of the Jamesisms that Martin knew by heart.

5) As it happens, Auden talking shop beneath the moon might well have taken place in Iceland, his spiritual home. In fact, it was in his life as a traveller to Iceland that I had first encountered him.

In my childhood dreams Iceland was holy ground; when, at the age of twenty-nine, I saw it for the first time, the reality verified my dream; at fifty-seven it was holy ground still, with the most magical light of anywhere on earth. Furthermore, modernity does not seem to have changed the character of its inhabitants. They are still the only really classless society I have ever encountered, and they have not – not yet – become vulgar.

(from his Letters from Iceland)

As Umberto Eco says, stories speak to each other, and so, I think, do coincidences.

6) I now remembered that Markings by Dag Hammarskjold, which in a way had got me through my late teens, was translated into English by W H Auden. It could almost be said that Clive James, W H Auden, and Dag Hammarskjold were literary cousins, and not merely joined by my admiration for them.

The final coincidence came much later - early this year.

7) During a meeting, Martin mentioned a review of James' latest book. Apparently (as I haven't got to the book yet), James talks about a time when he snubbed someone who came up to him in the street. I really must read the passage to see if it's anything like this one that I wrote after I went up to him in Albert Street and mumbled some nonsense.

It could all just be a coincidence. But meeting your heroes is always more than that.

Strangers in a Strange Place

A few years ago, I wrote an essay on the topic of Icelanders abroad - specifically, Hjalti Skeggjason, who in the early years of the eleventh century travelled between Norway and Sweden in an attemt to resolve a territorial dispute between the two King Olafs. There is nothing in the source material, Snorri Surluson's Heimskringla, to suggest they were also fighting over the sole use of the name Olaf.

More recently, I became interested in the representation of Sweden in the family sagas, and found a recurring narrative pattern: episodes with Swedes normally also involve a threat to a household, and the vanquishing of the Swedish threat (by a person in search of a challenge) usually leads to the prize of marriage to the householder's daughter. In the family sagas, at least, being Swedish means being unhinged, a berserk, or a monster. Certainly, there is nothing in their medieval representation to foreshadow their reputation today for mild, sane, and democratic living.

Thus, the most famous Swede in the sagas in also the most monstrous, the ghastly Glámr in Grettis saga. He is a disgruntled shepherd working in the north of Iceland who becomes possessed by a vile spirit and then begins a killing spree. Grettir, who desires constant challenges, takes on the monster and wins, but is left with a terrible curse: before death, the monster prophecies that Grettir will live his life in exile, and be forever accompanied by a vision of the dead monster's eyes.

Exile makes Grettir an outsider (on this, see Janice Hawes' 2008 essay in Scandinavian Studies) but also a traveller: he is forced to seek refuge with allies and in the remoter parts of Iceland. For the outlaw, the highlands and the offshore islands offer some safety. We see the same thing happening in Gísla saga. And, in both sagas, the stature of the central character is enhanced by a long exile, as the reader's sympathy for the character are tied to the outlaw's journeys through Iceland.

What of other foreigners in medieval Iceland? Sverrir Jakobsson's 2007 essay on the topic ("Strangers in Icelandic Society 1100-1400") suggests that, at least until the fourteenth century, Iceland was a reasonably open community that allowed foreigners to settle and, if things went their way, to prosper. And, as Chris Callow points out, "In almost every Saga of Icelanders there is a reference to someone called austmaðr" ("Narrative, Contact, Conflict, Coexistence", p. 325), or "east man", then the standard Icelandic term for a Norwegian trader. They, in particular, seemed to enjoy real hospitality, perhaps aided by the fact that Norway was Iceland's "mother country" and that until the late Middle Ages the languages were extremely close, if not identical.

But is the saga author's lack of attention to cultural differences or possible difficulties faced by foreigners really an indication of acceptance by the local community? One might argue that locals often stuggle to notice the difficulties of migration and settling in, and so why not saga authors, too? And, if a foreigner isn't going to be the main focus of a story, but rather a narrative device (as is often the case in the sagas), would an author invest all that much time in developing their cultural characteristics, or for that matter other aspects of their character? The last thing an author needs during a tense fight scene is for the enemies to misunderstand each other. "Sorry, Leif, but did you say my word or my sword?"

Naturally, historians are keen to use the family sagas as evidence of medieval Icelandic attitudes to foreigners. But is there a way of doing so that not only acknowledges the literary nature of our sources, but factors that into our search for attitudes? Surely there must be some content embedded in the form of these representations? If foreigners appear as rather flat characters, can they still be read as being welcomed into the community?


Scholarly articles:
Callow, Chris. "Narrative, Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence: Norwegians in Thirteenth-Century Iceland." Scandinavia and Europe 800-1350: Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence. Ed. and Intro. Jonathan Adams & Katherine Holman. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2004. 323-31.
Hawes, Janice. Scandinavian Studies 80.1 (Spring 2008): 19-50.
Sverrir Jakobsson. "Strangers in Icelandic Society 1100-1400." Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 3 (2007): 141-57.

Looking for Dag Hammarskjöld

With my marking for the semester all done, I have a chance to get underway on my next major project, on the life of Dag Hammarskjöld, a hero to me and many others. I will be travelling through his upbringing in Uppsala, his career as a diplomat and the second UN Secretary General (from 1953-61), and his thoughts as we find them in essays, speeches, and the deeply personal reflections of Markings, a book of aphorisms published after his death, and later translated into English by Leif Sjoberg and W H Auden.

Hammarskjöld died, aged 56, in a plane crash in northern Rhodesia on 17th September 1961. This project will eventually take me to the site of the crash in Zambia, and to the Congo Republic, where he was heavily involved in the months leading to his death. There is a memorial marking the site of the crash - it lies 10km from Ndola in the Ndola West Forest Reserve, and has UNESCO World Heritage listing.

Other important compass points in his life include New York, which he saw as a second home; Geneva, the second home of the UN; Korea and China, which were at the centre of his early successes in the UN; Egypt and Israel, which clashed during the 1956 Suez Crisis; and Lebanon, which sought UN assistance in 1958. I will begin, though, in July with his birthplace and final resting place, Uppsala.

For the life of the project, I will be posting about Hammarskjöld, his career, and his writing. For anyone interested in following my progress, there is now a Dag Hammarskjöld label in the right-hand navigation bar of this blog.

For an opening quote, here some remarks he made 55 years ago, in June 1955, on the tenth anniversary of the UN:

Politics and diplomacy are no play of will and skill where results are independent of the character of those engaging in the game. Results are determined not by superficial ability but by the consistency of the actors in their efforts and by the validity of their ideals. Contrary to what seems to be popular belief there is no intellectual activity which more ruthlessly tests the solidity of a man than politics. Apparently easy successes with the public are possible for a juggler, but lasting results are achieved only by the patient builder……Those who are called to be teachers or leaders may profit from intelligence but can only justify their position by integrity.

(Source of the quote can be reached here.)

If the shoe fits

Given the title of this blog, I find it impossible not to mention the news story (given here in Icelandic, but no doubt available elsewhere) of the world's oldest shoe, just found in Armenia. It is five and a half thousand years old, and still very much in fashion - it seems it is similar in style to "pampooties", which were favoured until the 1950s and are now making a come-back (I read).

Morgunbladid observes that the shoes are remarkable well-preserved given their age. The secret to their preservation, apparently, is a thick layer of sheep poo, which has kept them dry. There is nothing in the article about whether the wearer of the shoe had stepped in the poo.

But it is size 37, unisex.

Dalrymple goes electric

My review of William Dalrymple's Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (Bloomsbury, 2009) has been published in M/C Reviews.

The review is available for free here, and you can make comments concerning the review on M/C Reviews' Facebook page.

Just the costs

My least favourite kind of traveller's tale is the one that goes on endlessly about the cost of things: how you won't believe how cheap a place is, or how dear. But, of course, like everyone I like to travel cheaply, and so I find myself close reading the The Guardian's list of holiday destinations as organised by perceived cost, actual cost, and cost including flights. (The list is compiled from a UK point of view.)

Some notes:

• Sweden is perceived to be the dearest country.
• France is actually the dearest country. (Sweden is 13th, and the Nordic countries are all cheaper than people expect.)
• Australia is 11th on the perceived list, 16th on the actual, and 6th when you include flights.
• Iceland comes in 9th on the actual list, seven places dearer than Australia. (Is it worth it? Includes volcano, seals.)
• Some countries that you think might be okay, are actually in the top ten dearest (and this, not including flights): Brazil (4th), Russia (5th), Italy and Spain (7th and 8th), and Mexico (10th).
• Countries that you might think are expensive, are in fact not too bad: Norway (18th), USA (17th), Germany (14th - I can vouch for this from my trip just gone), Dubai (12th).

The moderately priced Tübingen. I got a kebad for 2 euro!

Places take you places

In a month's time, I fly to England, Sweden, and Iceland. In each, lie quite different pleasures: the International Medieval Congress in Leeds; the unexpected continuation of a twenty-year search for Dag Hammarskjöld in Uppsala; and my eldest sister Frída's wedding in Reykjavík. Quite different pleasures, yes, but I can't help thinking that these destinations circle each other.

In Leeds, I am presenting a paper on foreigners in medieval Iceland that extends on a paper I gave in Uppsala last year. During my last visit to Iceland, in February just gone, I wanted to know how Reykjavík, my birthplace, was coping with the economic crisis brought about the collapse in the finance sector. This time, I am visiting a volcano under the glacier Eyjafjallajökull, an area I love and have often visited in the past. In Uppsala last year, I discovered that my hero Hammarskjöld had grown up in the large pink castle there, and as a boy played tennis in the same banquet hall in which my conference gathered for its last night's dinner and dance. Now, I find I want to go back to discover how life in Uppsala felt for him.

It's hard to predict how destinations relate, but in each there lies something relatable to the next. And not just me, either. Of course, we search for common points, but is it also the case that the common points find us?

Poetry criticism

I don't often get to recommend an interview by two friends, but this one with Jeffrey Poacher and Martin Duwell, published in the latest issue of Jacket magazine, makes wonderful reading. Here is some of what Martin had to say about writing poetry reviews:

Friends often ask why my reviews aren’t more evaluative. They see the central question that a critic faces as being: Is this any good? Or, where does this fit on some scale of quality? I’ve never thought this was a major question when it came to reading poetry, though I know that, in a practical sense, it can be an important question for readers of reviews. You know the kind of thing: I only have so many dollars to spend or so many precious hours free, please tell me what to spend them on. I’m guilty of this myself in fields where I’m an outsider. As part of an attempt to be more au fait with the music of the last century, I read a lot of critical material but the most useful was a collection of reviews by the late Alan Rich which contained as an appendix (accompanied, I seem to remember, by exactly the kind of moaning that I’m producing now) his list of the hundred best works of the twentieth century. At a practical level that was terrific because you could say: here are a hundred works to build my listening around.

Martin Duwell, pictured here during a trip to Haukadalur in Iceland that he and I took in 2001.

Anyway, for reasons that I don’t fully understand but which may involve the fact that I come from an academic background or that I am one of the few reviewers of poetry who is not a poet himself, I resist the idea that reviews should be evaluative. This irritates friends who are poets because they would like to see what they are inclined to call undergrowth being torched by the flamethrower of critical truth (it’s amazing how consistent their metaphors are). But of course their real reason for wanting the “undergrowth” cleared away is so that they themselves can be seen to better advantage and the precious book-buyers’ dollars will be more likely to be spent on them. They also often quote Yeats’s famous comment at the Rhymers’ Club, “The one thing certain is that we are too many”. All I can say is that, in my view of creativity, there can never be too many genuine poets.

Over the heath

The English politician Edward Heath had commercial success in the 1970s with the travel books Sailing, Music, and Travels, but the critical reception was far from warm. Paul Theroux's response, "Round the World in 80 Clichés," is included in Nicholas Parsons' Dipped in Vitriol, a 1981 survey of "hatchet reviews of the arts through the epochs." The Theroux review not only tells us what's wrong with Heath's approach, but also with lazy travel writing in general. Here is part of it:

Ever since he left office, Mr Heath has subjected his public to a kind of relentless reminiscence about his pastimes. Bachelors are such singleminded hobbyists. After Sailing and Music we have Travels, and before long no doubt we will be privileged to witness Mr Heath signing even more titles about other chaste recreations.


[...]

This [book] is almost entirely a record of happy days abroad, for however exotic or distant the place, what Mr Heath requires is a good meal, a hot bath, a night's sleep, solid comfort -- no crowds, no awkward temperatures (he always reports whether a place was hot or cold). His time in Venice is typical: he spends his time 'exploring different churches' -- the churches are not named; he eats 'meals' -- no dishes are listed; he stays at a 'hotel' -- he does not say which one. And, 'I was captivated by Venice.' I was not captivated by Mr Heath's Venice.

But travel writing is a funny thing. The worst trips, in retrospect, make the best reading, which is why Graham Greene's The Lawless Roads and Kinglake's Eothen are so superb; and the most comfortable travel ('There was invariably split-second timing and exact positioning as they drew up at the steps leading to the red carpet and the welcoming party') becomes in the telling little more than chatting or, in Mr Heath's Travels, smug boasting.


[...]

Mr Heath has been promoted as a man of wide interests. You name it, and he has sung it, or sailed in it or been there. He is a statesmanly combination of Toscanini and Joshua Slocum, and now he is an indefatigable traveller. He laments that as an official visitor he has been unable to see much of the 'day-to-day life of the people'. And yet here he is in Kenya at the time of the Mau Mau troubles. He praises the chintzes at Nairobi's Norfolk Hotel, and the carved doorways in the old Arab Quarter in Mombasa ('The only attractive part of town') and the coconut trees. In a twinkling he has had enough of the day-to-day life of the people and he is up the coast: 'I enjoyed excellent bathing.'


[...]

But is this travel at all? The Arab Quarter is attractive because it has carved doorways, and worthy of mention because it is attractive. If you can have a swim and a good snooze, yes, Mr Heath says, that's travel. And here is Aden: 'Aden was quite different. The colony existed largely to meet the maritime need for oil, as it had originally done for bunkering coal. I can remember little attractive about it.'

Central Station, Sofia (2005)

Nicholas Parsons, Dipped in Vitriol. Pan Books, 1981. pp. 65-67.