Gansey Nation

Hi, voice of experience here. I thought I’d start this week with a word of advice. When someone you know is ill—as it might be with a respiratory infection—and has coughed so hard they’ve pulled not one but two muscles in their side and shoulder so that it hurts when they breathe, and are under orders to lie very still; when, as I say, you know someone in this situation, it’s probably not a great idea to send them absurd cat videos from the internet to cheer them up.

Clouds over Stroma

You’d think I’d know better by now, but apparently not. Oh look, a cat video, I’d think, innocently clicking on the link on my iPad. Then there’d come a brief pause while I’d watch with a growing sense of unease, followed by a suppressed snort of laughter, causing my cheeks to bulge like a hamster being inflated with a bicycle pump. The snort, probing for an exit, would find its way into my nose and, after a few seconds of steadily mounting pressure, would explode, taking with it whatever had been blocking my sinuses and distributing it over the sheets like a glistening volcanic ash cloud.

By now I’d be gasping for air, only for this to strain my pulled muscles and cause me to cry out with pain. But I couldn’t stop laughing either, while the now disregarded cat carried on serenely, its video stuck in a loop. So I’d thrash about in the bed like a newly landed halibut, in a loop of my own, making a sort of “Skrrrt—hur—wheeee—arrgghh!—shutsshutsshut” noise, until gradually the fit passed and I was able to close the tab and wait for the world to stop spinning.

Well, I’m delighted to say that the infection is wearing off, and I am almost back to my old self. One sign of this is that I am knitting again, for the first time in several days. It was a bit of a slog at first—it sounds stupid, but I had to recall the mechanics of how to make a stitch, then a purl, and then get back into the pattern. Even then it was as if I was picking up someone else’s knitting. But this passed quickly enough, and I’m almost back in the zone: I’m not so far from finishing the back now.

Also, my brother is out of hospital and convalescing, many thanks for all the expressions of good will last week; and Margaret has gone down to help out for a few weeks, so once again the quality of pictures will drop perforce, for which our apologies.

One good thing about feeling better is that I was finally able to stagger to the bathroom to trim my beard, which was becoming a touch Old Testament prophet-ish round the edges. Or as my old friend Yeats famously put it:

And what rough archivist, his stubble grown long at last,
Slouches towards the bathroom to be shorn?

Hmm. Haven’t coughed for a while. Time for another cat video, I think…

Caithness used to be part of the Viking earldom of Orkney, and I’ve been wading up to my knees in its cheerfully blood-soaked history. Well, I say history—actual records are in short supply, so for most of the time you have to take the sagas on trust; which is a bit like writing the history of postwar Europe using only back copies of the Daily Mail.

The first rule of being a successful Viking was, of course, to cheat. The sagas are full of gentlemen’s agreements between rival lords, promising to settle their differences by meeting at a certain place with a set number of followers—only for one of them to turn up with a small army and slaughter the other. The standard clause was for a certain number of horses and their riders, but obviously some Vikings had better lawyers than others and turned up with several men per horse, breaking the spirit, if not the letter, of the pact. (This happens so often I imagine the average Viking horde arriving in something like the human pyramid favoured by motorcycle display teams, or the sheep in Aardman Animation’s A Close Shave. On the plus side, even if you ended up slain you’d go out in style.)

View from the Castle, Inverness

My favourite candidate for most ironic Viking death is that of Sigurd the Mighty. In 892 he was campaigning in Sutherland, and having defeated a Celtic chieftain he then, as was his custom, attached the severed head of his fallen enemy to his saddle. The dead man had a protruding tooth which cut Sigurd’s thigh—the wound became infected, and, there not being a doctor on hand to prescribe him a course of antibiotics, Sigurd died of it. (I like to think he was serenaded to his grave by Nelson Muntz from The Simpsons going, “Ha, ha!”)

Waves at John o’Groats

Not much to report on the gansey front this week. I am almost to the end of the gussets (slightly longer given the size of the garment), and the pattern is becoming clearer. At some point in the coming week I shall divide for front and back, after which progress should be more noticeable.

Finally, a curiosity for fans of Treebeard the Ent, one of those shepherds of trees from The Lord of the Rings. There once was a Viking earl of Orkney called Einar (nicknamed “Turf” for some obscure reason). The sagas say that he began his rule by defeating a couple of Danish Vikings who’d taken up residence in Orkney—one of whom was named Thorir “Treebeard”. Isn’t that great? The saga includes the line, “Turf-Einar gave Tree-Beard to the trolls“, a poetical way of saying he killed him. Tolkien of course knew the sagas inside out, and, as he often did, must have taken the name and reforged it in the crucible of his own imagination. (Mind you, the other Viking was called Kalf Scurvy—can’t imagine why Tolkien didn’t borrow that one too…)