Sagas & Seascapes Programme

SAGAS
& SEASCAPES
Exploring Scotland’s Nordic connections with
artwork by Orla Stevens and film by Craig Sinclair
8.30 - 10.00 pm
Venue 30 Scottish Storytelling Centre
15th - 17th August 2022
17th - Relaxed Performance + Audio Description
“wonderfully evocative music”

Welcome to our concert, Sagas and Seascapes.
Back in 2016/17 I spent some time travelling
in Shetland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland and
Greenland. During this period, I founded
Nordic Viola, a flexible ensemble dedicated to
performing music from, and inspired by, the Far
North.
Sagas and Seascapes began life as a digital
production for Orkney International Science
Festival in 2021. Norse stories and landscapes
around the northern sea-routes form the
inspiration for the programme alongside
stunning video by Craig Sinclair of Far Northern
landscapes and specially commissioned artwork
by Orla Stevens, as well as interviews with the
composers.
At the heart of the programme lies “Aud” by
Linda Buckley, which was specially commissioned
for this programme with funding from the
Women Make Music Fund of PRS Foundation.
We also welcome Faroese composer Eli Tausen á
Lava to Edinburgh for the UK live premiere of
Søgnin um Kópakonuna í 10 Myndum.
- Katherine Wren, Nordic Viola
www.nordicviola.wordpress.com

Programme
Carry His Relics by Gemma McGregor
Describes the journey mentioned at the end of the Orkneyinga Saga
when the followers of St Magnus carried his remains from Christkirk,
Birsay along the coast to the capital town of Kirkjuvagr.
The joyful processional melodies make reference to both Magnus’ Viking
culture and his Christian beliefs by using traditional Orcadian and Norwegian
style music and by quoting from 12th century plainchants that
may have been sung by the followers of Magnus.
The fifty-five-mile-long route taken by the pilgrims subsequently became
a devotional walk but fell out of use centuries ago. The St Magnus Way
was cleared and reopened in 2017 to mark the 900th anniversary of the
martyrdom of St Magnus.
www.gemmamcgregor.com
Elsewhen by Lillie Harris
Ancient sites are intriguing: they offer us amazement at the sheer age of
artefacts, many mysteries of why things were that way, and the sense of a
delicate thread connecting us now, to those people then. Our interaction
with these relics helps us build an image of our past, but there is only so
much we can learn from what remains – the rest is lost to time.
In ‘Elsewhen’ I have sought to capture the strangeness, wonder, and melancholy
of objects and sites that exist out of time: they retain traces and
memories of the past, but have outlived those for whom they were built,
and have been left behind.
www.lillieharris.com

Søgnin um Kópakonuna í 10 Myndum by Eli Tausen á Lava
The Legend of the Seal Woman in 10 Pictures is inspired by a set of 10
drawings by Faroese artist Edward Fuglø, which were originally drawn
for the 2007 stamp issue titled Kópakonan (the Seal Woman).
Edward Fuglø’s drawings illustrate the Faroese legend of a female selkie,
a mythological creature capable of transforming from seal to human by
shedding its skin, who is forced to live as a human when a young man
from the village of Mikladalur steals her sealskin.
www.elitausenalava.com
Wogen by Kári Bæk (trans. for viola by Katherine Wren)
Wogen captures the shifting moods of the sea. The piece has a sense of
voyaging, a sense that gains momentum as the piece progresses.
It ends with a hymn-like passage from a stanza of Sinklar’s Visa set to
a tune from the island of Nólsoy, in which the Scottish mercenary is
warned by a mermaid not to engage in battle with the Norwegians.
www.composers.fo/

Aud by Linda Buckley
This marks another chapter in a long and deeply felt connection to those
expansive landscapes of Iceland and the Scottish Isles, perhaps rooted in
my own first breaths of home, born in the Old Head of Kinsale in the
south of Ireland, a headland jutting out into the Atlantic Ocean.
The story of Aud the Deep-Minded has been immensely inspiring to
me, this strong Viking woman who showed great courage throughout her
life, through her travels from Norway to Scotland and north to Iceland.
My own musical interests seep into this work, from the droning of the
hardanger fiddle in Norwegian folk music, to the restless energy of
Scottish and Irish dance tunes, to field recordings of wind and ice made
in rural Iceland.
www.lindabuckley.org
Dromer Trad arr. Danish String Quartet
In the last half of the 18th Century, dances form the British Isles were
in fashion in Denmark. The title is most likely a corruption of “The
Drummer”, a well-known Scottish reel.

Nordic Viola
Janet Larsson - Flute
Robert Digney – Clarinet
Guera Crockett - Violin
Anne Bünemann - Violin
Katherine Wren – Viola
Ruth Rowlands – Cello
www.nordicviola.wordpress.com
Art by Orla Stevens
www.orlastevens.com
Video by Craig Sinclair
www.videobycraigsinclair.com

Funded By
www.madeinscotlandshowcase.com
Raising the Profile of Music by Women

We are also grateful to the small businesses and individuals
who contributed to our Crowdfunder Campaign
Green Clean, Dunblane
Fiona Driver, Miranda Phythian-Adams, Mairi McKellar, Emily
Doolittle, Fran Marquis, Anna, Owen Philipson, Philip Lancaster,
Sam Cox, Margaret Farrow, Arnhildur Valgarðsdóttir, Jillian Leavey,
Ruta Vitkauskaite, George.Stevenson, Giulio Romano, Matilda Brown,
Alex South, Michael Cameron, Peter Wiegold, Anselm Heinrich,
Margaret Robertson, Craig Swindells, Craig Sinclair, Emily Davis,
Matthew Workman, Jeni Reid, Jon Hargreaves, Lucy Hollingworth,
John Allen, Kevin Duggan, Angie Turner, Paul Wren, John Digney,
Kirsty Freeland, Alex Knox, Pete Stollery, Eileen Abbess, Fran
Marquis, Hazel Lesley Harrison, as well as our many anonymous
donors.