Tolkien and Lewis

JRR Tolkein (1891-1973) and CS Lewis (1898-1963) were colleagues and friends before and during their careers as writers. Both men wrote fantasy – the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia, respectively – and were both serious Christians. They differed, however, in the role their faith played in their works, one of many points of friction which shaped the ups and downs of a twenty-year friendship.

Tolkien and Lewis were members of the ‘Lost’ generation born in the late 1800s. Both fought at the Battle of the Somme and studied at Oxford. Lewis, though raised a Northern Irish protestant, was an atheist, while Tolkien was a devout Roman Catholic.

On meeting Tolkein in 1926, Lewis described him as a ‘a smooth, pale, fluent little chap,’ adding ‘no harm in him: only needs a smack or two’. Nonetheless, they shared a fondness for Norse mythology, loose tweed trousers and beer. By 1927 they were close friends. Tolkien modelled the character Treebeard’s speech patterns off Lewis. For years, Lewis was the only person Tolkien shared his works, and he offered steady encouragement.

Tolkien helped convert Lewis to Christianity. They enjoyed rigorous intellectual discussions, and religion was a common subject. After a talk lasting until 3 am in 1931 with Tolkien and professor Hugo Dyson, Lewis converted; though, to Tolkein’s dismay, not to Catholicism but the Church of England.

In the 30s and 40s, Tolkien and Lewis were members of the ‘Inklings’, a writing group who met weekly at the Eagle and Child pub. Lewis, at the time, wrote mainly science fiction and Christian works. Once Tolkien was sharing the Lord of the Rings (LOTR), their friendship had begun to cool.

Tolkien ignored most of Lewis’s suggestions – that he remove LOTR’s frequent songs and poems, for example. Furthermore, by the time Tolkien finally published it in 1954, Lewis had already written a popular fantasy series of his own.

Tolkien biographer Humphrey Carpenter:

‘Undoubtedly he felt that Lewis had in some ways drawn on Tolkien’s ideas and stories in the books; and just as he resented Lewis’s progress from convert to popular theologian he was perhaps irritated by the fact that the friend and critic who had listened to the tales of Middle-earth had as it were got up from his armchair, gone to the desk, picked up a pen, and ‘had a go’ himself. Moreover, the sheer number of Lewis’s books for children and the almost indecent haste which they were produced undoubtedly annoyed him.’

Tolkien never liked the Chronicles of Narnia. To him, they cherry-picked aspects of different mythologies and folk traditions without building a ground-up coherence. Narnia’s worldbuilding was too shallow. While both LOTR and Narnia were deeply Christian works, Tolkien disliked the latter’s use of allegory which he felt was too on the nose.

While the two had drifted apart by the time Fellowship of the Ring was published in 1954, CS Lewis did write a glowing review describing it as ‘like lightning from a clear sky’.

When CS Lewis died in 1963, Tolkien wrote to his daughter Priscilla:

 ‘So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man of my age-like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots’.

Sources: Humphrey Carpenter – JRR Tolkien: A Biography (1976)

Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) was the greatest military commander in history. He led France through 15 years of war and almost conquered Europe. Napoleon’s nemesis, the Duke of Wellington, said his presence on the battlefield was worth 40,000 men; historian Martin van Creveld calls him ‘the most competent human being who ever lived’.

Napoleon’s army were mainly conscripts fighting with muskets and bayonets, but were highly motivated. They called their general the ‘Little Corporal’ as a term of endearment. He was 5’6 – average height at the time, but shorter than many aristocrats and generals. His British enemies called him ‘the Corsican Ogre’.

As a commander, Napoleon was calculating and bold. He eschewed gentlemanly conduct and used ambush and deception wherever possible. Napoleon invented the modern corps system, which divides armies into autonomous mixed units instead of specialised blocks. His most famous victories include Rivoli (1792), Austerlitz (1805) and Jena-Auerstedt (1807), all against superior numbers. Of 56 battles, he lost only ten. 

Napoleon was born to a large and impoverished family in Corsica, the year France took over. He maintained an accent throughout his life and never learnt to spell in French. It was not until 1789 that Napoleon embraced a French identity.

That year, revolutionary mobs seized control of France and ended the monarchy. European powers, fearing the revolution would spread, declared war. For 20 years, France fought its neighbours – chiefly Austria, Prussia, Russia and Britain. They formed seven ‘coalitions’ – at first to end the revolution and then to unseat Napoleon.

As an artillery officer in the Revolutionary Wars, Napoleon proved exceptional. By 24, he was a general. He plundered art from Egypt and Italy, including the Mona Lisa, which remains in the Louvre today. By 30, Napoleon seized power in a coup d’etat. In 1808, he crowned himself Emperor. 

For his victories and the stability he brought at home, the French public adored Napoleon. He introduced the Napoleonic Code, which ended religious discrimination and hereditary privilege while denying rights to women, standardised laws, and introduced a state education system. The Code still in use today. To fund his wars, Napoleon sold the French possessions in North America to the USA for 30c an acre and tried to restore Haitian slavery.

At the peak of his power, Napoleon ruled France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the Low Countries, and Poland through a network of client states. He ended the Holy Roman Empire in 1805.

While triumphing on land, Napoleon could never defeat the British at sea. Instead, he tried to strangle its trade. He forced mainland Europe into the ‘Continental System’, which placed Britain under embargo. When Russia refused, Napoleon invaded.

The Russian campaign was a disaster. After seizing Moscow in 1812, winter forced Napoleon’s Grand Armée to retreat. With only their horses to eat, his soldiers died from disease, starvation, and cold. Of the 500,000 who set off, only 120,000 returned.

In 1814, the ‘Sixth Coalition’ defeated what remained of Napoleon’s army. They exiled him to Elba, an island in the Mediterranean, restored Europe’s borders and reinstated the French monarchy.

In 1815, Napoleon escaped Elba and returned to France where a regiment apprehended him. Approaching the soldiers, he said ‘Here I am, kill your emperor if you wish.’ The soldiers cheered ‘Viva L’Empereur’ and marched with him to Paris. Alarmed by his return, the nations of Europe – led by Britain and Prussia – formed the final, Seventh Coalition. In 1815, the Duke of Wellington – who had studied Napoleon’s military record intentally – clashed with him at Waterloo. It was the emperor’s final defeat. 

Napoleon Bonaparte spent his last six years in a rotting cabin in St Helena in the South Atlantic. His body was returned to France for a state funeral twenty years later.

Norse Mythology

Norse Mythology is the body of pre-Christian stories from Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland. After the Classical tradition, Norse mythology is the best preserved in Europe. Reaching their heyday in the Viking age, tales of the Norse gods still influence film and literature today.

Norse mythology comes from the northern branch of the paganism once followed in Germany, Scandinavia and England, and is by far the most extensive and best preserved. 

Snorri Sturlusson, an Icelandic priest and politician, recorded the old oral tales in the Prose Edda in the 13th century. Unlike the monks who recorded the Slavic and Celtic myths around the same time, Sturlusson did not overtly Christianise this subject matter but told the Norse stories as is. We therefore know far more about them today.

The Poetic Edda, recorded in the same time, is a compilation of 31 poems by unknown authors and a key source.

Norse mythology preserves many old Indo-European motifs, including:

• a world tree
• a hound at the gates of the underworld
• dragon slaying heroes
• the wild hunt
• a prominant thunder god

Yggdrasil is the tree at the centre of the universe. A dragon called the Niddhog gnaws at its roots and from it forms nine worlds:

• Asgard – home of the Aesir
• Vanaheim – home of the Vanir
• Alfheim – home of the light elves
• Dokkalfheim – home of the dark elves
• Midgard – our world
• Jotunheim – home of the giants
• Svartalfheim – home of the dwarves
• Muspelheim – the world of fire
• Niflheim – the world of ice

The universe started in a collision of the primordial worlds of ice and fire. A giant called Ymir emerged from the ice, whom Odin – father of the gods – slew. His body formed the earth, and his blood the sea. 

Jötnar (singular jötun), came from Ymir’s armpits. Commonly translated as ‘giants’, they have similar powers to the gods and represent antagonistic forces. While sometimes mentors, helpers or lovers to the Aesir, they are most often foes. As Odin, Loki and Tyr are half-Jötunn, the jötnar may have been a rival family of gods rather than different beings altogether. 

Norsemen worshipped the Aesir. These include taciturn Odin, who sacrifices his right eye for knowledge, and hot-blooded Thor, who wields a hammer and protects humankind. The Aesir’s power surpasses humanity, but they are not immortal. They rely on golden apples to retain their youth and know when and how they will die.  

Main Gods:

• Odin – god of wisdom, poetry and war. 
• Thor – his son, god of thunder.
• Loki – god of mischief and deceit
• Freyja – goddess of magic, fertility and beauty.
• Freyr – her brother, god of fertility
• Njord – their father, god of the sea
• Heimdall – god of vigilance, watches the bridge between Asgard and the other worlds.
• Hel – Loki’s daughter, goddess of the underworld
• Frigg – Odin’s wife, goddess of motherhood and clairvoyance
• Baldr – their son, god of beauty.

Freyja, Frey and Njord were originally Vanir, a rival group of gods. After an inconclusive war, they went to live with the Aesir in Asgard.

In Icelandic, nouns have an ‘r’ at the end when they are the subject. So, for example, names like Odin and Njord are sometimes rendered Odinr and Njordr.

The Norse believed if they died in battle, female warriors called Valkyries would fly them to Valhalla, where they would feast all night and fight all day, only to be born again and again. Odin was raising an army for Ragnarok. Those who died of natural causes go to the dreary realm of Hel. 

Loki, the trickster, is the enemy within. His scheming starts as simple mischief but grows more and more destructive. His shenanigans breed monstrous children who end up causing Armageddon.

Ragnarok is the end of the world. Norse mythology is unique in that it has an ending. In the final battle, the Aesir and their foes destroy each other and Asgard crumbles. Once the dust settles, however, the few survivors rebuild a new and better world.

See Also:

• Myths and Legends
  • Inuit Mythology
  • Māori Mythology
• Orcadian Folklore
• Greenland Norse

Tonya the Machine Gun Girl

Antonina Makarova, known as ‘Tonya the Machine Gun Girl’, was a Soviet war criminal and Nazi collaborator. In her early twenties, she executed over 2,000 people with a Maxim machine gun; she then escaped capture for the next thirty years over a case of mistaken identity. Makarova was one of three women hung in the USSR.

Antonina Parfenova was born in Soviet Russia in 1920 in a village near Smolensk. She was the first in her family to attend school. When asked by her teacher on the first day, she could not remember her surname. Knowing her father was called Makar, the teacher noted her name as ‘Antonina Makarova’. 

When Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, Makarova joined the Red Army as a nurse. By January, the 21-year-old Makarova stranded behind enemy lines. Starving and distraught, she travelled from house to house looking for shelter. A month or two later, Nazi collaborators offered her a job. They needed an executioner, and Makarova accepted.

Bronislav Kaminski was a Russian engineer and anti-communist who offered his services to the Nazis when they took over his region. With Nazi support, Kaminski formed a brigade of anti-Soviet Russians under the SS around the town of Lokot. They assisted the Nazi occupiers by fighting the Soviet partisans operating in the woods.

Every day, the Kaminski Brigade captured partisans and their families and crowded them into a jailhouse which could fit 27 people. The following day, the collaborators led them to a ditch where Antonina Makarova mowed them down with a machine gun. She was allowed to chose clothes from the dead and spent her evenings with SS officers and local prostitutes. As Makarova killed up to 27 people a day, by 1942, her victims numbered over 15,000. Partisans called her ‘Tonya the Machine Gun Girl’.

Makarova later said:

I did not know who I killed. They did not know me. So I was not ashamed before them. Sometimes, you shoot, you come closer, and some people still move. Then I shot again in the head…. All those sentenced to death were the same for me. Only their number changed. Usually I was ordered to kill a group of 27 people–so many partisans fit into the room for execution…. At the command of the authorities, I knelt and shot at people until they fell to the ground.

By 1942, Makarova and the local prostitutes had contracted a sexually transmitted disease and were relocated to a hospital further behind the lines. When the Red Army reclaimed Lokot two years later, they could not find the notorious executioner. 

When the war ended, Makarova slipped back into civilian life. The KGB, who were responsible for tracking down war criminals, were looking for an Antonina Makarova, unaware her real name was Parfenova. 

Makarova married Victor Ginsburg, whose family had perished in the Holocaust. She lived the respectable life of a veteran for the next thirty years, built a good reputation in her village and had two daughters. The KGB assumed Makarova had died.

In 1977, a Soviet diplomat named Parfenov applied for a passport. As part of the process, he listed all his immediate family members. One name stood out to the officials processing his application – Antonina Ginsberg’s maiden name was not Parfenova like her siblings, but Makarova. Unwilling to try an innocent, the KGB spied on Makarova for the next year until eyewitnesses confirmed she was Tonya the Machine Gun Girl.

The KGB arrested Makarova in 1978 and tried her for murdering over 150 prisoners of war. She had killed more, but only 150 of the victims could be identified. Now 56, Makarova freely admitted to everything she had done but was surprised when the KGB sentenced her to death. She was executed by firing squad.

Sources: Pravda, War History Online

The Once and Future King

The Once and Future King (1958) is a historical fantasy epic by TH White. The titular king is Arthur. A collection of five books, it traces Arthur’s childhood as the orphan Wart to his old age and death. Beginning as a whimsical children’s fantasy, Once and Future King gets progressively darker and more dramatic while maintaining steady humour and anachronisms. 

The Once and Future King includes five books individually published between 1938 and 1941:

1. The Sword in the Stone (made into a 1963 Disney film)
2. The Witch in the Wood
3. The Ill-made Knight
4. The Candle in the Wind
5. The Book of Merlyn

The last book reads more like a philosophical treatise where, through Merlyn, White explores the morality of violence and war. Publishers originally rejected this book which is why parts of it are in the Sword in the Stone. The Book of Merlyn did not reach shelves until 1977, 13 years after White’s death. 

White’s primary source was Le Morte D’Arthur (1485) by Thomas Malory. Once and Future King follows the same plot – the Round Table, Guinevere’s adultery and the final battle with Mordred – but gives greater insight into the minds and motivations of its principal characters. The Grail Quest is brushed over.

Arthur is a well-meaning and thoughtful but naive figure. He knows his wife is sleeping with his best friend but turns a blind eye because publically knowing would compel him to execute them both. He intends on bringing lasting peace to Britain by stifling the violent instincts of its lords and believes in following his own laws.

Merlyn is Arthur’s tutor. In this version of the Arthur story, Merlyn is an absent-minded, quirky magician who lives backwards. Merlyn knows the future – and references it often – but cannot understand where people come from. He tutors Arthur by transforming him into a series of animals to impart valuable lessons. His familiar is a talking owl called Archimedes. 

Guinevere is Arthur’s queen. She does not love Arthur but yearns for his knight Lancelot with whom she shares a tempestuous relationship. Guinevere has a touchy pride and is formidable when crossed. 

Lancelot, in this version of the story, is brilliant but ugly. He battles his insecurities and self-loathing by becoming the greatest knight alive. He loves both Arthur and Guinevere, but cannot stop himself from betraying his king. The strongest character in the book, Lancelot, is delightfully self-destructive. 

White places the Arthurian Myth in the 13th century. Arthur is a Norman King – his father Uther being analogous to William the Conqueror. The real historical kings of England are referred to in this world as legends and myths.

TH White was a troubled soul who lived alone. He was a closet homosexual and a self-admitted sadist who repressed violent urges his whole life. Rather than fight, he spent WW2 in a cabin in Ireland, where he wrote this book. White channels himself into the tortured figure of Lancelot and his futile attempts at doing the right thing.

To this day, critics hail Once and Future King as the greatest adaptation of the Arthur myth. Contrary to fantasies of the time, character supersedes worldbuilding, making it read more like a drama than an adventure novel. 

The blurb of my version reads:

This is the tale of King Arthur and his shining Camelot; of Merlyn and Owl and Guinevere; of beasts who talk and men who fly; of knights, wizardry and war.

It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad; the masterpiece of fantasy by which all others are judged.

Volodymyr Zelensky

Volodymyr Zelensky (1978-) is the current president of Ukraine. In a past life, he was an actor and comedian. Now he leads his country against a Russian invasion.

Zelensky was born in the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine to a Jewish family. Family members perished in the Holocaust and his grandfather fought in the Red Army in WW2. At age 20, Zelensky won a comedy competition and began a career in stand-up. He transitioned to acting and, by the 2000s, was a household name, starring in the Russian rom-com ‘Love in the Big City’ (2005) winning Dancing with the Stars and voicing Paddington Bear.

In 2015, Zelensky produced and starred in the political satire series ‘Servant of the People’. His role was a high school teacher who posts a video criticising his country’s corruption and the ineptitude of its politicians. The video goes so viral it gets him elected president.

Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. In 2018, the television network ‘Kvartal 95’ formed its own political party named after the show with Zelensky as its head. Servant of the People won the next election with 70%. Zelensky styled himself much like his character – an everyman outside of the establishment challenging the oligarch class. Some say he is just playing another role.

Since 2014, Ukraine has fought separatists in its Russian speaking eastern territories. Russia is concerned about Ukraine’s increasing closeness with the West and fears it will join NATO, an American led alliance. Zelensky sought dialogue with Russia and unity between his country’s Ukrainian and Russian speaking populations while pushing for closer ties with the west. His tenure was middling in its effectiveness to combat poverty and corruption and, like any politician, he had critics aplenty.

On February the 24th 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. Harnessing his charisma and stage appeal, Zelensky emerged an unlikely hero, as he urged his people to come together and fight a near-impossible foe. Tens of thousands of everyday Ukrainians have taken up arms, and make Molotov cocktails in the streets.

When the USA offered to airlift Zelensky to safety, he refused, saying he would stay and fight. While critics may claim his move as foolish and impractical, one should not underestimate its effect on morale. These days, many world leaders hide in bunkers, when threatened by protest or riot. The historical memory of the Holodomor, Nazi invasion and communism are still strong in Ukraine. Its citizens do not take independence for granted. In this regard, Zelensky is no different from the millions who would rather give their lives than flee.

Sources: BBC, CBS, Chatham House, New York Times, Politico

The Greenland Norse

The Greenland Norse were the Norwegian settlers who lived in Greenland from the 980s to c.1450. They scratched out a living on the island’s southern end, traded with Inuit and sold walrus ivory to Europe. By the 15th century, their society had collapsed – what became of it may never be known.

Greenland is the world’s second-largest ice sheet and largest island. It is an Arctic climate with only a few trees growing along its southern coast. Temperatures never surpass 10ºC, even in summer. 70% of Greenland is pack ice and its main inhabitants are seals, caribou, walrus and polar bears.

The name ‘Greenland’ comes from Erik the Red, a Viking explorer who wanted to attract settlers. To con them into thinking Greenland was anything but an Arctic waste, he gave it the ‘favourable name’ of Greenland. His native Iceland was, and is, far greener than Greenland has ever been.

The Norse built two colonies – the Western and Eastern Settlements. The Greenland colonies peaked at 2,000 people around the year 1250. They brought cows from Iceland to farm and grew barley in scarce ice-free soil along the coast. The journey from Iceland was perilous – of Eric the Red’s 24 ships, only 14 survived.

The Greenland colony was never self-sufficient. It relied on regular shipments of iron and other goods from Norway. The Norse killed walrus for their ivory. As the good was in high demand in Europe, the colonies could sustain themselves through trade with the Norwegian boats that visited every year. The royal crown of Austria, allegedly of unicorn horn, is actually narwhal.

Erik the Red’s father, Thorvald, left Norway for Iceland when he murdered his neighbour. Similar circumstances forced Eric to flee west, where he found Greenland. Erik’s son Leif sailed further west and landed in Newfoundland, Canada. He, not Colombus, was the first European to set foot in the Americas. The Norse clashed with the indigenous tribes, who drove them back to the sea. 

Inuit (Thule) whom Norse called Skraelings, settled Greenland in the 13th century from the north. They were better adapted for Arctic life – Inuit hunted instead of farmed, wore sealskins and burned blubber instead of wood. Norse and Inuit accounts record violence between the two peoples. The Norse also traded with their neighbours but never adapted to their way of life.

In the 1360s, the smaller ‘western settlement’ stopped sending tribute to Norway. When Ivar Bardsson investigated, he found abandoned houses and animals running free but no human bodies. Its people’s fate remains a mystery.

By 1400, the eastern settlement too, was in decline. The reasons are many:

• The Medieval Warm Period ended in 1200, and the Little Ice Age (c.1350 – 1800) lowered world temperatures. Farming in Greenland was no longer sustainable. The Norse suffered while the Inuit prevailed. 
• The Black Death wiped out 60% of Norway’s population. It did not spare Bergen – the port where merchants sailed for Greenland, and German pirates sacked it in 1393. Trade thus ended with Greenland.
• As the Portuguese opened trade with Africa and India in the 1500s, demand for walrus ivory – and therefore the Greenland economy – plummeted.

The collapse of the Greenland Norse was not immediate. Younger people left, while the older remained and starved. When Norwegian missionary Hans Egede arrived in 1721, he met only Inuit hunters. Of the Norse, there were only ruins.

Sources: Fall of Civilizations Podcast, Pulitzer Centre, World History Encyclopedia

See Also:

• Inuit
• Inuit Mythology

The Irish Rebellion of 1798

The United Irish Rebellion of 1798 was Ireland’s first attempt at forming an independent republic. Both Protestants and Catholics took up arms against the British Crown. Though crushed, their struggle forever changed the nature of Irish nationalism.

Ireland was Britain’s first colony– the blueprint for its empire. The English conquered the island in 1171 and again in the 1680s. They dispossessed the natives and gave their land to settlers. By the 17th century, there were three populations:

• Irish Catholics – native majority population, Irish and English speaking, Catholic.
• Ulster-Scots – Scottish settlers and their descendants, concentrated in Northern Ireland, English speaking, Presbyterian.
• Anglo-Irish – English settlers and their descendants based in Dublin, English speaking, Anglican.

Ireland had a parliament – but only landed Protestants could stand or vote, meaning the Anglo-Irish minority had control. Catholics could not purchase or inherit land.

The Irish had supported the exiled King James II, a Catholic, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1691. By the 1780s, a new ideology was afoot – republicanism. It would be the dominant expression of Irish nationalism until the present day. Inspired by the American and French revolutions, activists promoted an Irish republic – independent, democratic and without a king.

The Society of United Irishmen was a republican movement founded in 1791. At first, they demanded greater autonomy for the Irish parliament and political rights for Presbyterians and Catholics but by 1794, they sought independence from Britain. Most of its leadership were Protestant, its rank and file Catholic.

Wolfe Tone (above) allied Presbyterians and the Catholic majority against their common enemy. He was exiled and spent the 1790s lobbying support from France and the USA. Across the country, rebels formed cells and armed themselves with pikes.

In 1798, the ‘United Irishmen’ rose. Word had slipped to the British, however who arrested or murdered the uprising’s leaders, leaving it uncoordinated. The rebels’ only success was in Wexford and Ulster, where they captured a few towns, only to be defeated by the better-armed British forces. There were massacres on both sides. Wolfe Tone landed in County Mayo with 1,000 French troops, met defeat and cut his own throat before his hanging. After only a few months, British troops and Protestant militias had crushed the rebellion.

10,000 – 70,000 died – mainly rebels, while thousands more were exiled to Australian penal colonies. The Irish parliament dissolved itself, and until 1922, Ireland was ruled directly from London. Sectarian differences hardened: Ulster Presbyterians aligned with the British while republicanism became an increasingly Catholic movement. The seeds of later tensions were sown.

Most of the rebels were poorly equipped. They fought with pikes and carried pocket sacks full of barley seeds to eat. After the battles, the British piled the dead into mass graves across the country, nicknamed ‘croppy holes’. At springtime, chutes of barley grew, fertilised by the rebel dead. When cut down, they resurfaced the following spring. To the Irish, the barley symbolised the tenacity of their struggle – though beaten and cut down – they would rise again and again.

Sources: 1916 Walking Tours, Irish History, National Army Museum UK

Asturian Folklore

Asturian Folklore covers the superstitions, tales and legends of the Celtic part of Spain. Pagan beliefs lingered longer here than any other part of the country.

Asturias is a region of northern Spain between the Cantabrian Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean. Like the Basque Country, its isolation bred a distinct cultural identity. Under the Romans and Visigoths, Asturias clung to its Celtic roots. It was also the only part of Iberia to withstand the Moorish invasions and a partisan stronghold for twenty years after Franco won the Civil War. Today Asturias is one of the ‘Six Celtic Nations’, sharing much of its lore with Ireland and Wales. It is a land of green pastures, craggy shores and rugged mountain slopes. Today most Asturians speak Spanish though the native language still has 642,000 speakers.

Until recently, the Cantabrians were impassable in winter. Asturias was a backwater; Christianity, literacy and the Industrial Revolution were slow to spread. Asturian shepherds and fishermen clung to nature and old beliefs. As it was easier to travel by sea, Asturias kept closer ties with Brittany and Ireland than the rest of Spain.

Early Asturians were animists. Every tree, river and cave had a guardian spirit to be respected and feared. Rather than assimilate, the Catholic church denounced Asturian spirits as demons. Their priests, however, failed to extinguish the beliefs of shepherds who spent most of the year in mountain pastures. Belief in supernatural beings survived into the 20th century.

In Asturian folklore, Xanas were benevolent water spirits resembling Naiads of Greek mythology: beautiful women who guarded treasures at the bottom of lakes.

The culebre is a cave-dwelling dragon. It evolved from a nature god placated with animal sacrifice in pagan times to a bloodthirsty monster requiring human sacrifice in the Christian era. 

The bogosu, half-man, half-goat is the Asturian satyr. The early bogusu was a guardian of the forests. Christians painted him as a demon to be feared and shunned, and through this lens, stories survive of the ‘devil’ helping Asturian peasants by building bridges and granting technologies.

The Nuberu is a bearded old man in a wide-brimmed hat who lives in the clouds. He controls the rain and lightning and likely derives from the Celtic weather god, Taranis. There are stories of Nuberu falling from the sky and blessing peasants who aid his return.

The trasgu is a mischievous house spirit who wears a red hat and has a hole in one hand. They like to steal household items and inconvenience families. If one moves house, the trasgu will follow. Today the Trasgu is the region’s unofficial mascot. Many businesses bear its name.

Asturian folk beliefs died out with the modern age. As cities spread and machines transformed the landscape the xanas and culebres were silent.

Sources: David Wacks – Some thoughts on Asturian mythology

See Also:

• Folklore of the Orkney Islands
• The Caliphate of Cordoba

Folklore of the Orkney Islands

Orcadian Folklore covers the folk traditions, superstitions and myths of the Orkney Islands. This archipelago, in the northern tip of Scotland, shares traditions with the Shetlands and Faroe Islands that reflect its Norse-Gaelic heritage. It includes eerie accounts of sea serpents, trows and shapeshifting seals.

The Orkneys have a population of 22,000 and a landscape of treeless hills and towering crags. Strong winds are common and temperatures rarely exceed 12 degrees celcius. 

In the Stone Age, indigenous Orcadians built villages and megaliths out of stone slabs. The Picts inhabited the islands in Roman times. In the 9th century, Vikings took over and ruled the Orkneys until Scotland annexed the region in 1472. Today both the Orkney dialect and gene pool is three-quarters Scottish and one-quarter Scandinavian. 

Two factors give Orkney folklore its unique flavour:

• Geography. The North Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean in the Orkneys, making for notoriously stormy waters. Seals, sharks and sea birds are a common sight, drowning a common death. 
• Ruins. Megaliths, barrow mounds and ancient stone villages dominate the Orkneys. Built around 3,000 BC, they awed later inhabitants and earned a hallowed reputation. Ancient sites inspired myths of fairies and ‘hidden people’ who called them home.

Trows are the foremost of these ‘hidden people’. Squat goblin-like creatures, they inhabit hinterlands and barrows of Orkney. Their name derives from the Scandinavian ‘troll’. Like trolls, they are ugly and malicious, like fairies small and mischievous. Trows kidnap human babies and replace them with their own. The ‘hogboon’ was a more benevolent house-spirit.

Sea Serpents are common. The Stoorworm was a sea dragon with a monstrous appetite. According to legend, Assipattle the farmer’s son, slew it by sneaking into the Stoorworm’s belly and lighting a peat fire in its liver. In 1804 fishermen found the Stronsay Beast, an unidentified carcass washed up at sea – 4 feet wide and 10 feet long. Scientists concluded it was a decomposed basking shark. 

Selkies are shapeshifters who take the form of humans on land and seals at sea. While their human forms are beguiling, they can only revert through their sealskin. Stories abound of selkies who take human lovers and the complications that subsequently arise. Selkie myths spread from the Orkneys to Iceland, the Faroes, Shetlands, western Scotland and parts of Ireland.

Finnfolk are malicious sea spirits who abduct humans. Their summer home is the vanishing isle of Hildaland, their winter home is Finnfolkaheem, deep beneath the sea. Finnmen prey on fishermen who sail too far out to sea. Their daughters are mermaids. If one fails to find a human husband, she must marry a finnman and will rapidly wither into a haggish ‘finnwife’ thereafter. They then take to land and funnel silver back to their husbands. Orcadians blamed finnfolk for death at sea. 

Selkies and Finnfolk may be of common origin. There are three possible explanations:

1. Sami. The Norwegians used to view their reindeer herding neighbours as magic-workers to be feared and avoided. They called them ‘Finnar’. The finnfolk could have come from misremembered accounts brought by Norwegian colonists.
2. Inuit. Orcadian fishermen occasionally saw Greenland Inuit at sea. Dressed in sealskin robes and rowing canoes, they looked alien to the fisherman, who kept their distance and reported the sightings to their families.
3. Medical conditions. Syndallacty is when children have conjoined fingers and/or toes resembling a seal’s flipper. It is hereditary and used to be common in the Orkneys; people claimed it came from selkie ancestry.

Sources: Orkneyjar, Owlcation.

See Also:

• How Syuna the Rockfish got his Flat Head (Yahghan Legend)
• Asturian Folklore
• Inuit