Geography and Landscapes of Orkney

For much of the Viking Age, the Orkney Archipelago served as a vibrant hub of Norse activity. But these islands were also plagued by violence , not least between the Earls of Orkney themselves, as they vied for control. On this episode of the History Extra Podcast, Judith Yesh speaks to James Osborne about her new translation of the saga of the Earls of Orkney, tracing centuries of conflict, and shares her insights into what this text tells us about the Norse peoples who lived there. To be here talking to you today because we are discussing Orkney Saga or the Saga of the Earls of Orkney, which is an old Norse text that you have done a new translation of to start with. Can you tell me when the original Old Norse text was written, who by and perhaps why? The short answer to that question is no . But I can tell you some things which g give us a sense of of where it all came from . The oldest surviving manuscript text of the saga is from about 1300 or maybe a little bit earlier. We think, however, that it probably was first compiled around 120 0. The saga, as well as being a long prose narrative, also contains a lot of poetry, which would have been composed at the time of the events described in the saga, so some of them going back to the tenth century, but those weren't written down and probably until they were put in the sag a. So all this was put together around twelve hundred probably in Iceland by an Icelander , but uh an Icelander who either knew Northern Scotland quite well or at least had information from people who'd been there and and knew the place quite well. And do we know why this text would have been composed and written down? Because when I'm reading it, I'm struggling to tell whether or not this was written down purely for the purposes of recording history or I think probably all three of those. It's fair to say that the Icelanders were considered and probably considered themselves the kind of historians of the Northern world , and they wrote a lot of sagas not only about events in Iceland, but also about the kings of Norway, for example. And Orkney was subject to the kings of Norway, it's probab a part of the Norwegian realm, so therefore they would have considered that probably as a part of that project writing about the history of Norway. And I'm sure it's written with historical intent, even if not every single thing that is mentioned in the Saka actually happened . But they wrote history in an entertaining way. I think that's very much part of their project as well. At the time around 1200 when it was compiled, we have to think of a kind of triangle of Iceland. So while we're talking about that , can you explain Orkney's significance within that triangle you mentioned? Why is Orkney so important in the context of the Viking Age? Well we tend to think of Orkney and Shetland as today as part of Scotland, but let's say in the late Viking Age in the ninth, tenth century, Scotland was only just developing as a as a nation, and the Vikings had arrived. Another interesting question of when don't really know for sure, but let's say not later than nine hundred, possibly earlier. They'd come from Norway, a lot of them settled throughout northern Scotland. Some of them went on to settle Iceland . And so the world of northern Scotland was a part of this northern world ruled by Norway at the time. And a lot of people think of it as quite remote, because we travel very much either by land or by air, but they traveled by boat. And if and if you travel by a swift Viking ship, it's really only a couple of days from Norway to northern Scotland and So I guess if we think about it in the context of it being really important in its relation to Norway and Iceland. It then also the location of Orkney provides really easy access to the British Isles as well, doesn't it? Down the west coast you have access from Orkney to the Hebrides, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the coast of Wales, and then down the east coast, you also have access to all those areas. So like Grimsby is mentioned in the text, isn't it, for example? So it seems like a really o pportune place where Vikings might want to position themselves so they might raid from as well? Yes, and that's the traditional explanation that northern Scotland in general was a a good stopping off point for raiding further so But then you know, the raiding is perhaps the beginning of it all, but then those contacts continue even after raiding it becomes less of a thing. And it it works both ways. There's a church on Egilsey which is dedicated to Saint Magnus, which has a round tower, and for a long time people thought it was a round tower like the round towers you get in Ireland. But then along came an architectural historian called Eric Fernie and and he actually showed that the structure of this round tower is much more like some round towers that you find in southeast England and on the European continent. So the movement is going in both directions, things are coming up from the south to Orkney as well as kind of Vikings heading south from there. So I guess that shows how connected Orkney was to this entire kind of North Sea zone. It was really connected to Ireland, England, Scotland, Iceland , Norway. Like it's really this central node within that system. A hub. Great. I think that's better than a node. Before we get into the meat of the saga, I would also like to touch on your approach to translation. There have been translations in the past. I'm familiar with a previous version and myself. How did you approach a new translation? I'm interested in whether or not you were consciously considering the other translations or whether or not you were taking a blank slate approach. And I'm also interested in whether or not you felt there were certain parts of the text on which you had to compromise in the act of translation. Aaron Ross Powell When I was preparing the translation I avoided looking at the other four other translations into English, uh let alone other languages. But the most recent one is nearly fifty years old now. And I was a bit worried people say, oh well we've got four translations, why why do we need another one? But then I read somewhere that apparently Homer is translated into English every ten years. So I thought, well, it's not quite Homer, but fifty years. And of the other four translations, the one that you're familiar with, which is the most recent one, a penguin classic that everyone's read, is is the the one that I was most familiar with. The others are a little bit obscure and one doesn't read really them for pleasure . So that was one of my motivations for m doing this translation. But I also just felt when I read that translation from nineteen seventy nine or whenever it is. I can remember nineteen seventy nine very well, but it is a long time ago and it it reads like something from nineteen seventy nine. I thought okay we're in a new century now let's uh let's do something that it's a bit that's a bit more modern. In terms of the process and the decisions you make and compromises you have to make. The interesting ones for me were the style of the Icelandic sagas is very distinctive . And there's several aspects of that style. First of all, they don't mind repeating words. So certainly when I was taught to write English at school I was taught to vary my vocabulary and not keep using the same word. They don't no problem with that. If you know if the word has to appear five times in a sent ence and it's the same word, it's still the same word. Aaron Powell They're not constantly looking for synonyms then. Aaron Powell No, exactly. They don't need a Roger's thesaurus, yes. That's one thing. The other thing is there's this curious switching between past and present tense even though they're talking about events that are in the past. And again that's something you wouldn't do in good English, which is what all the previous translations are. And the sentences have a tendency to be kind of coordinating rather than subordinating. So it's always and this and that and that and not so much causal relationships between events. There's just a sequence of events. And those three things are very typical of almost all sagas. And I didn't realize until I'd kind of reached the end of doing the draft translation that what I was trying to do was actually give a sense of the old Norse text in English. And so that was a very enjoyable realiz ation. I thought, yes, this actually works. And I've also found, and again this was a surprise to me, because I did a few workshops and things with people where I tried out the translation and read it out loud to people and on one occasion a gentleman came up to me and he 'cause I'd given them a handout of the bit I was reading out and he said, Oh doesn't look like much on the page. Well it's really good when you read it out. I think it you know the sagas they're written but they're meant to be read out loud. They weren't meant to be read quietly in in your study, you know. If you find it heavygoing, just read it just pick a short bit and read it out loud. I'm so glad you said that because when I am, for example, sitting in bed in the evening and trying to read through some of these sagas, sometimes it can be quite heavy-going, even though I'm, you know, really interested in the subject matter. I'm interested in this form of literature. And you know, sometimes I can I can feel like there's almost this kind of droning sense of it. Yeah. And naturally I have found myself reading out loud. Oh, love you. How good? And I guess that just reflects that this whole entire saga tradition does have oral origins, doesn't it? And I think so. That's an important component to it, isn't it? Yeah. Great. So we now we understand why Orkney was this important place. We understand the general sense of when it was written and perhaps why. What does the saga actually tell us? Broadly, where does it start and where does it end? Well it starts in the dim and distant past in the far north of Norway, strangely enough. And the the first four chapters really set up a kind of Norwegian origin for the Earls of Orkney, because you eventually end up with characters who are ancestors of of the Earls of Orkney. And I know a lot of people, including the headmaster of the grammar school in Kirkwall, always told his students, and they've told me that he said, oh, don't read the first four chapters, just jump in in chapter five or whatever, or even seven or eight. But actually there's some good stories in in the first few chapters as well, and it kind of sets the scene. You sort of you start wondering why is it so important that these things happened, you know, I mean literally in the mythical past, you know, there's no timeline or anything, we don't know. It's just a very, very long time ago. Long ago and far away. But then we moved to Orkney and there's just really very little about the question that most historians and archaeologists want the answer to is when did the Vikings arrive and and how did they do it and why did the but there's very little about that and some of that is a bit kind of mythical as well. So there's a a motif throughout Icelandic literature that a lot of people left Nor way in the time of King Harald Feinher because he was a bit of a tyrant. And a similar explanation is given here. But once the earldom is established and there is a link between Norway and Orkney in in in these earls, then it's really just a chronological account of each of the Earls of Orkney up until just after the year 1200. So starting in the 10th century and going up to about 1200. And their feuds mainly with each other, but sometimes with other people, both in the Scandinavian world, but also gradually towards the end you can just sense they're moving closer to becoming a part of Scotland because their connections and their fights are are with people in Scotland rather than than Norway anymore. My sense reading it is that the earlier parts of the story, they're very brief, they're very vague. And then the later parts of the story, they are very detailed and they're very specific. And so it seems like the further away the story is from when it was written, the more fantastical it is. And then the closer the story is to when it was written, it seems like it's much more a kind of rigorous historical document. And that might seem obvious, but I feel like it's important to say that it doesn't get equal weighting, does it? So like you have a hundred years of history in a few pages, and then you have towards the end of the story, you know, single years of history in many more pages. That's an interesting component of it, I think. Yeah, and and I uh th I think there's a good reason for that. And the reason for it I mean if it was first compiled around twelve hundred and it as you say, it is most detailed for the twelfth century and, particular ly from about the second, third, and fourth quarters of the of the twelfth century. And that's because there were people alive who remembered those things or had a grandfather who remembered it or you know, you you're really very close to the time of composition. So I think I think that's that's the reason for that. They they just had more information. They used whatever information they had. I think, you know, when I say they wrote with histor ical intent. I think it's be you know they wanted to put down what happened in the past and whatever came to hand , they put it down. Well, what I've done, Judith, is I've chosen three specific episodes or stories from within the saga that I think reflect something interesting about the saga, whether thematically or in terms of the literature itself or just its ideas. So I want to go through those three stories and I'd love to have you explain those stories and then we can talk about the interesting things that stem out from them. So the first one that really struck me was the story of Earl Sigurd the Stout, who might have been very skinny nicknames are a bit funny in the saga. Sigurd the Stout is heading for a battle in Scotland, and he goes to seek his mother's advice. So first of all, then women give advice about how to approach the battle. And she says she's taking advice from me? If I th you know, are you she assumes that he's worried about dying in this battle, and she basically says, Well, if I thought you would be worried about dying, I would have brought you up in my wool basket. We're also told she had magical powers, and she gives him a banner, which she has imbued with her magical powers. But there's a catch. She says this banner will help you win the battle, but whoever carries the banner will die. So he he loses three standard bearers in this battle. You'd think the guys would have heard that it was a bad idea to carry this banner in into battle . And he does eventually win the battle. So, you know, his mother made it happen for him. So, yes, all of these things are very interesting. I find it really interesting that when he goes to seek her advice and when she thinks that he's scared of dying, she effectively mocks him. Yes. It's very goading her response. It's not nice. And then the resulting banner that she makes, this ra ven embossed banner. It is both blessed in a way, because he wins the battle and he doesn't die, but it's also cursed. Yes. Because it's killing the people who carry it. There's just so much like thematic complexity tied up in that. And this is only in about three paragraphs, isn't it? It's told in about three paragraphs. I wonder if we can use it as an opportunity to talk about the role of women in the saga. Aaron Powell You're spot on about the the goading, because this is a motif we find a lot in Icelandic sagas, which especially those set in Iceland, they're very much about feuds. And feuds involve kin groups and loyalty groups and people who who will support each other. And it's it's often thought of as a very kind of masculine world. You know, it's the men going out and killing each other, basically. But as the sagas make clear, women also play this because they're part of the family group, they also play a part in in this process. And the way they do it is by urging, encouraging the men folk out. So you'd almost get a sense from the sagas that if it was to just up the men, oh no, they they couldn't be bothered, but it's it's the women that make sure that they go out and re you know, redeem their honor by killing the guy who's killed their father or or whatever. So I would say in this case it's it's the combination of women giving advice, women with magical powers and women goading men to go out and kill people are all kind of three literary motifs that get uh entwined in this particular episode so we spoke about this in another podcast episode with Jackson Crawford and he and I were speaking about in the Sarga tradition, women being this recurring source of violence. They're the ones who are like starting the conflicts by saying that they wouldn't be manly enough or honorable enough if they didn't do it. And it's just such a interesting facet about about this style of literature. Trevor Burrus Well many years ago when I wrote a book about women in the Viking Age, I think I said something along the lines of, well, you know, typical of the saga authors who are almost certainly male to blame women for violence. It's always about, you know, blame somebody else when you're doing something that you know you shouldn't be doing. The thing about this saga is that there are several women who are seen to cause violence and killing, but there are others who aren't. So it it's nicely complicated in that way. It is, and it wouldn't be half as fun if it wasn't complicated. The next story I wanted to touch on is a bigger story. So, you know, I said that that one about Sick of the Stout is about three paragraphs. The story of Thorfinn and Roggenwald makes up a decent chunk of the saga. And this is so interesting to me. I think this kind of sequence of events where you have Earl Thorfinn versus Earl Roganvald, this could be its own saga, I think, this o its own narrative. So my understanding is that these are two are they cousins? No, they're uncle and nephew. And they are co earls. Yes. So they are both the Earls of Orkney. At the start of their co earlship, they get on quite well but it quickly devolves and turns into this tit-for-tat battle between them. Can you add any detail into that for me? Aaron Powell Well the first of all there's a prehistory. So the inheritance system is it's not terribly clear, but it seems that any son of a previous earl has a right to be an earl, and and the way they get round that, you know, there's no concept of primogen iture. So the way they get round that is by the earls ruling together, and the way they seem to get round that is because the earldom includes Caithness, Orkney, and Shetland , is often dividing it into either two or three. Now before Thorfinn and his nephew Regenwald become just two co earls, Thorfinn's the youngest of four brothers, and the previous three, one of them is is very unpopular and he gets they get rid of him. The next one dies in his sick bed . And and then there's a third one who's the father of Dragenwaldner who's who's actually explicitly said to be very popular and everything went really well when he was in charge and everybody was happy. And then he dies as well. And then Thorfinn comes along. And then there's a bit of toing and froing because previously there' beend three earls and the earldom was divided into three, but now there are only two earls, so two into three don't go. And both of them go and appeal to the King of Norway, who's their their overlord for support. And the king uh says an interesting thing. He says, you know, when he's making agreements with both of them separately, he says, Well, I know Durgenwalder will only agree to something that he he go will go along with, whereas Thorfinn will agree to anything and then not do it. So it's kind of complicated in that way. So it remains divided into three, and the way the king gets around it is to say that the third part belongs to him , but then he tells the Regenwaldr that he'll appoint the Regenwald to be in charge of that second of the three parts of the earldom. And Thorfinn goes along with it for a while. And it's notable in the saga, it happens over and over again when two joint earls are getting along. It's expressed in the fact that they go raiding together. They kind of happily go off and raid. And then it's a motif you find in Beowulf and and everywhere a anywhere else that when they fall out it's blamed on their advisers. And the other thing you have to imagine Thorfinn is the youngest of four brothers and he had a different mother than the other three. They're probably quite close in age, actually, though, even though they're uncle and nephew. But it it Thorfinn, I think, is just pretty ambitious. He's a very violent, aggressive, and unpredictable figure , I think. Yeah. And yet he ends up with the epithet the mighty. Yeah. And I believe he ends up being called the most powerful and bestest of all the earls which is an interesting idea. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah. Not only that, but having, you know, fought his way to the top, at the end he turns into a good ruler, supposedly. You know, he goes on pilgrimage to Rome, he builds churches and and he becomes a good ruler. And I don't know how true that is. But but that's a pattern you see again and again that these guys feel the need to fight their way to the top, but then they very often become popular, perhaps because he's the only one he didn't have any anyone else fighting against him once he'd killed off all his his relatives. There's this amazing scene where th Roggenvald tries to kill Thorfinn by burning his wh hallile Thorfin is still inside. And Thorfin smashes out of the wooden burning uh walls uh with his with his wife in his arms, I think. And he runs out in the smoke and no one knows that he has survived. And then he comes to take his revenge on Roggenvald and Roggenvald is eventually killed. But that one scene is so vivid. It's so evocative. It's quite unlike a lot of the other stories in the saga where it is very detailed in its kind of description of the action. Yeah. Thorfinn is very violent and aggressive, but actually going to kind of burn a house down with people in it is what Roganwalder is doing, even though he said in the saga he so he's in he's a really nice guy and he's handsome and tall and you know he's he's a paragon and yet he's d i just as viol Aaron Powell It's quite a common tactic though, isn't it the burning down of holes of people inside it? So maybe it was more acceptable at the time than we're viewing it as now. Aaron Powell Well it's it's yeah, I suppose so. It's an easy way of you know, you kind of besiege people, they're all stuck in the house. But they almost always let the women and children and old folk out. But i if you think back, you know, the most famous Icelandic saga Nyao saga where there's a there's a burning. The wife of Nyowl who's being burnt to death. I mean she's allowed she's allowed out, but she says no, no, she's gonna stay in. So it makes you wonder if Thorfinn's wife why you know why was she still in there when all the other women had come out already? She's kind of sticking with him. Aaron Ross Powell One of the other amazing elements within the conflict of Thorfinn and Rogenwald is the poetry that it generates. There are some fantastic examples of skaldic verse that are found within this story. Both of them have a poet called Arnor, this one man, who is kind of in the service of both of these two men, a different points. And he writes some amazing poems that are recorded in the saga which you've translated. Can you tell me about Skaldic Verse and its influence in Orkney and the saga Well at this point in the saga, the Skaldic verse is is the kind of poetry that's very typical of the late tenth and eleventh centuries. So powerful men, mainly kings, but also earls , employed poets to record their achievements, because there still weren't writing things down. So one way of ensuring your fame over the future is to get a poet to compose a poem about you which people will then remember forever, and that was their job really. They followed the ruler around and were often present at important events. And that's very clear in Arnor's poetry that he was present at a lot of these battles. It's slightly weird. He gives details like, oh, that battle was on a Friday, for example. So you can sense that he's he's trying to provide a record for the future of what actually happened. As you say, he worked for both of them. We don't know exactly what his relationship was, but there is a poem surviving elsewhere that suggests he may have married into the family w one of their families, we're not sure who. And he makes quite clear in in a couple of the stanzas that he's he's conflicted because his two guys are fighting each other and he doesn't quite know what to do. So it's all very interesting from that point of view. Aaron Powell Someone could write an amazing story from his perspective. Yes. Experiencing the conflict. Yeah. Plus he he was an Icelander, he's coming from the outside. And he is a very well known poet who composed about several kings of Norway as well. So he's well versed in court etiquette and uh just the politics of of the time. Judith, I wonder if you could give an example of the scaldic verse. I think it'd be useful for listeners to hear it, hear your translation of it. I'll explain it before I read it. I think that might help . First of all, Ardnor is an Icelander, and I think he's using imagery based on his experience of Iceland as a volcanic island in describing the impossible and he doesn't use very many kennings, but there is one that you need to know. There's a kenning called Oostri's burden. Ostri was one of the four dwar ves that held up the world, north, south, east and west, O three is east, and so when it refers to Ostri's burden it means the whole the earth, the world. And this is otherwise I hope it's self explanatory . The bright sun will become black, the ground will sink into the dark ocean, Ostri's burden will break, all the sea will resound on the mountains, before a more splendid magnate than Thorfinn will be born for the islands. God help that keeper of a whole troop. It's amazing. It's so powerful. It is it is practically my favorite in the whole saga, yeah. It's so rich in its imagery. It's an amazing piece of poetry that fits within this broader, amazing story, which is within itself an amazingly interesting saga. I'd like to move on to the final of the little vignettes that I thought be inter Magnus is the son of Erlender. Erlender had a brother, Paul, and Paul had a son called Haukon. So Magnus and Haukon are cousins, and after the deaths of their respective fathers they're co earls again , and again they get on fine for a while and go raiding together, and the saga even says there was there's some poetry about their youthful raids together, which doesn't survive, unfortunately. But again, one of them seems more ambitious than the other, and that's Haukon Paulson. And again we're told that you know bad advisers stirred up trouble between them. But they also go to the King of Norway for support and the king tries to sort things out and ev everyone tries to kind of make this work because it seems from the saga they don't they haven't kind of worked uh out a way of people ruling together without falling out with each other. But they haven't thought of j uh just having one ruler, or it hasn't been possible for whatever reason. So there is a peace agreement is made. So they agree to meet on the island of Vegas at Easter. We don't know the exact year, but it would have been eleven sixteen or seventeen or thereabouts. And on the way there, Magnus's ship is hit by a a wave that comes out of nowhere and that then he starts thinking, hmm, I wonder what that wave means. Bad omen. Bad omen, absolutely. And it turns out that Haukon has been deceitful and he has brought twice as many ships and therefore twice as many men as they agreed for this ostensible peace meeting. And so Magnus goes in hiding , but they track him down, and and then there's some discussion, and Magnus realizes he's he's in in a vulnerable position, so he makes three offers. First of all, he says, well, you know, he'll he'll go away to Rome and not trouble them anymore, or put me in prison and I won't trouble you anymore, or indeed mutilate me, you know, cut my arms off and poke my eyes out, but you know, he wants to live. And the third time round, Haukon is tempted. I think it's the prison version, is the third offer that Magnus makes. Haukon is tempted. But then Haukon's men say, hmm, we don't want a situation where both of you are still alive . He has to be killed. And then Haukon doesn't want to do the deed himself. That's another pattern throughout the saga that when I mean he's killing his first cousin. When they do that, they never do it themselves, they get some henchmen to do it for them, which is cowardice, if you ask me. Nobody will do it. And then he the only person that he can bully into killing Magnus is his cook. So you can imagine a cook is good at butchering people, and the cook doesn't want to do it, but Magnus says, Don't worry, you'll be fine, God will forgive you, etc., etc. There's an interesting bit. He says, Well, I don't want to be hit with an axe, you know, I'm a chieftain, I want to be killed with a sword and he is killed . And as a result, again, Haukon, a bit like Thorfinn before him, has elimin ated his rival, he becomes sole earl. He also has to go on on pilgrimage, but then he comes back and becomes a very popular ruler, strangely enough, even though he's not a nice person up until that point in the saga. So the story of Magnus's death and the betrayal that leads to his death, I think again, it's another amazing story. The reason why I pick that one out as the final third one is because I think in all of those three stories you do you do have this element of betrayal. So with Sigurd the Stout and his Raven banner, Sigurd's mother I think, in a way, betrays him by giving him this banner that is yes, blessed, but also cursed. With Thorfinn and Ragenvald, you have kind of mutual betrayal. They're both deceitful with each other, they're both underhanded with each other. And then in the death of Magnus, this is perhaps the most obvious instance where someone is simply betrayed. And I wonder if the saga is trying intentionally to make a point, a moral point, about ambition and betrayal. What do you think? Aaron Ross Powell I think there's something in that. The way I would see it is that there are these patterns, and the patterns are always about one Earl betraying the other Earl who's always a close relative. But if you if you read the saga very carefully, I'm not sure the baddies aren't totally bad and the goodies aren't totally good . And I think the saga sees it as a structural problem that it's almost inevitable when you have two people with supposedly equal power that one of them is going to want to assert more power than the other . Each story is slightly different, but then it it's interesting which of the two is the one that th is is going to assert himself. And Magnus of all of them, he he's the one that is obviously going to be betrayed because it there is some something about him that it just doesn't have that ambition that the other gu ys have. But even he and Magnus and Haukon went raiding together in their youth. That's just kind of slipped in. It's a little detail, but m a much the much broader picture of Magnus is that he's this very saint ly guy. But that's obviously with hindsight, because then about twenty years after he's killed, he he becomes a saint. So I I think it's more not so much moral as political. That's how I So Judith, my final question is about the landscapes and the geography of the saga. They play such a prominent role , especially in the kind of latter half of the saga, almost everything takes place in a certain place, in a certain location, it gives the name of these places and it speaks about the landscape and the geography. I recorded another podcast recently with Emily Lethbridge, and we were talking about Od ur, the deep-minded, in Iceland. And she was telling me that she really enjoyed being in Iceland and visiting the spots that are mentioned in the saga, these specific landmarks, specific landscapes, specific geographical markers . I wondered if you've ever been to Orkney with the saga of the Isles of Orkney in your hand and done the same. Yes, and it's even better than Iceland at at the risk of everyone in Iceland hating me. I mean Iceland is wonderful because the geography is still there, the place names are still there. But that's all you've got is the is the landscape and the place names. And the place names are very important and they appear in the sagas and they tell a lot about the history of Iceland. But if you go to Orkney and Shetland and Caithness , then you say you have the same thing. You have the the landscape is still there and and a lot of the names are label the landscape. You have the place names uh the vast majority of the place names in northern Scotland are from Old Norse, when the Vikings settled there. So you you can just drive around with the saga and visit the places. But in addition to that, you have rel ics, ruins, buildings still standing that are mentioned in the saga, as well as ones that archaeologists have dug up. So you have most famous of all St. Magnus Cathedral and Kirk wall, which is this building of which is mentioned in the saga . You have the round church at Orphir, you have all kinds of ruins on the Isle of Bercy, where Thorfinn was based. You can go to Shetland and but not only buildings built in the Norse period, but older buildings. So you have in Shetland the Brock of Musa, which is an Iron Age uh Brocklet. it It pla playsys a part in the saga. There's a any loping couple go there. And you have very famously May's Howe, uh Neolithic burial chamber, which also features in the saga, people go in there in a snowstorm to get out of the snowstorm, and some of them go mad. And my theory on that is the inside of May's house quite small, and according to the saga, a hundred of them went in there. So I think he probably would go mad . So you can literally live the saga in a in uh interesting ways, even more so than in Iceland. But yes, the landscape and the place names and there's something like eighty place names , which in the saga then the saga's the earliest record of these place names that that still are still in use today. Aaron Powell Well I would certainly encourage anyone who's remotely interested in this to have your translation in hand and go to Orkney and Caithness in these rotated areas and see it for themselves. I think they'd probably have a lot of fun . That was Judith Yesh speaking to James Osborne. Judith is a scholar of old Norse culture and the Viking Age.