December 2008: If you've been good...

My beard is becoming the focal point of more attention than usual, especially from aff-their-face neds. If I get one more ‘Haw Santa’ I may crack and cannot promise to remain in the waiting room while delicate NHS surgery is performed to remove the Buckie bottle. If anyone can come up with a suitable crushing put-down, please do. I have already tried the ‘you’re a bit old to be believing in Santa, son’ but it is, I confess, weak, while ‘F***k off you Burberry dick’ lacks a certain panache and style.

So, yes, it's Christmas. And if, like me, you're thinking about presents, perhaps I can help.

Not long ago, I joined some other writers – Alan Bisset, Alex Gray and Zoe Strachan - for a Reader’s Day of books and discussion arranged by North Ayrshire libraries, more power to their elbow. Part of the brief was not only to chair a discussion on my own work, but one on a personal choice, a favourite author.

This focused me considerably, since I realised that my reading these days is for research and I could hardly inflict Völuspá in Twentieth-century Scholarship in English on the poor souls. Not if I wanted to escape alive, since the audience – all women, as it turned out – would have to actually read my choice.

It isn’t the first time I have been asked the question, but it was the one time I couldn’t hope to brush it off with a casual and challenging: ‘The Bible, since 1976. Leviticus and cruising … best historical fiction around.’

So, here’s a Top Ten list of the books that gave me astounding pleasure and still do, which you may want to seek out and give to discerning readers. For my present-giving relations – this is the list to avoid; I have them all. Get me Maw Broon’s But ‘n’ Ben Cookbook.

THE SIEGE Izmail Kadare – The one I chose for the Reader’s Day. I first read this is in the 1970s, when it was an English translation of the French translation of the original, censored, Albanian. This new version is a straight English translation of the uncensored original Albanian. On the surface, it is a historical fiction tour de force about the 16th century Turkish siege of an Albanian Christian fortress and, in itself, that would give you great insights into the modern Balkan situation, since Kosovo is the name of a battle with all the resonance for Christians and Muslims as Bannockburn has here for Scots and English. Not only that, Kadare wrote during the repressive Hoxha regime, so you can find little dissident threads running through it.

THE PERSIAN BOY Mary Renault – Not sure how easy it is to get a copy of this these days, since Ms Renault has fallen completely out of style. In her day – my young day – her historical novels, such as The Bull From The Sea and this one, published in 1972, were simply breathtaking. On the surface, The Persian Boy is about the homosexual Alexander and Bagoas, the Persian catamite – but that’s like saying Oliver Twist is the story of a band of pickpockets. Intrigue, love, loyalty and betrayal – it’s all here, meticulously researched. It was not until much, much later that I learned that Mary Renault was lesbian, which explained a great deal and did not matter at all.

LORD GEOFFREY’S FANCY Alfred Duggan – Set in 13th century Greece, where Crusaders headed for the Jerusalem decided to turned aside and conquer land from the Byzantines, installing a Western emperor in Constantinople and introducing a medieval feudal system to its lands. At times, this reads like a fantasy world, since the conquerors call Greece ‘Romanie’ and have renamed Athens, Sparta and the like with similarly Romance names. Even the Greeks are called ‘Grifons’. The narrator is a household knight following Sir Geoffrey de Bruyere, a brave lord, a paladin of chivalry – yet someone who manages to make things worse for his people. Just about anything by Duggan is good – thankfully, he is enjoying a revival, so his books are once more available.

THE EARTHWORMS Prudence Andrew – Even older (1963) and almost impossible to get, but persevere and plough through all the ‘Gardening With Earthworms’ crap that comes up when you search Amazon and the like. Somewhere, a specialist book seller will have a battered copy of this for next to nothing and you will be entranced. Set in 1381, it is about the Peasants Revolt, seen from the dirt-grubbing earthworms of the piece, the peasants themselves. Brilliantly evocative.

EAGLE IN THE SNOW Wallace Breem – Another from the Seventies and a classic – this is the book to which every writer about Ancient Rome on the frontier owes a debt. Set in the Britannia and Germania of the late 4th, early 5th centuries, it deals with the triumph of the barbarians, as Maximus (sound familiar?) first defends Hadrian’s Wall, then is called to keep the German hordes out of Roman Gaul. Breem also had the coolest job description on any author CV - Librarian and Keeper of Manuscripts of the Inner Temple Law Library. The follow-up, The Legate’s Daughter is not bad either.

BY-LINE Ernest Hemingway – Had to be one in here, given my reasons, revealed elsewhere, for wanting to become a writer in the first place. Not, however, one of his novels, this is a collection of articles, despatches and reportage from the 1920s to 1956 revealing not only his journalist eye and his prose talent, but a lot of what later went into the novels. Last published, as far as I am aware, in 1968.

STARKADDER Bernard King – From 1985, I suppose this is the book which set me on the path of Viking historical fiction. I think Bernard King is still alive – if anyone knows, drop me a BB mail – but I haven’t seen anything published by him since 1998. Starkadder is the man gifted by Odin to live three lifespans and cursed by Thor to betray someone in each and this book owes as much to Michael Moorcock as the Sagas. Two more books followed on the same theme.

THE BATTLE Patrick Rimbaud – You can’t fault the man for cojones – this is, he claims, the book Balzac always wanted to write and he begins it with the only part of it Balzac wrote – the intro, which says, simply “On Tuesday, 16th May, 1809 …” A new publication from the original French, it concerns the battle of Aspern-Essling, when Napoleon met the Austrians of Archduke Charles, forty thousand men died in 48 hours and Napoleon could, at best, claim a draw. Followed up by The Retreat, which is the disastrous 1812 campaign; both books are object lessons in how to write about campaigns.
GATES OF FIRE Steven Pressfield The strange, bastard son of Mary Renault and Patrick Rimbaud, this manages to bring elements of both to make sense of the Spartan sacrifice at Thermopylae. Much as I like 300 (war rhino and all) I curse the day it was made, since I figure that was the reason Gates Of Fire never made it to the screen. Still time.

AZINCOURT Bernard Cornwell – I liked Sharpe and the Arthurian series, was less gripped by Starbuck and am still reading the Uhtred ones (don’t like to read them when I am writing something so similar myself). This, though, is where he was going with The Grail Quest series and he is now getting altogether nastier and grittier.

WAR AND PEACE Leo Tolstoy – Yes, I know it is a Top 10 and, yes, I KNOW this is a daunting read for a great many people, but not for me. I loved this and have read it at least four times already, discovering something new in the epic every time. This is the Dedushka of all Historical Fiction and you have to give it a try, at least once.

I am sure you can think of others to stick on this list. I could happily keep on to the Top 100 – but Yule is coming.

Happy reading.

Merry Christmas …

November 2008: Starkey struck

Just when you are sinking into the slough, when the final hand is grasping feverishly out of life’s quicksand for something – anything – to alleviate the end-of-season slump, the Norns produce the Starkeys, Rick and Dave.

I mean, they could be separated at birth, even though one looks like a dodgy accountant and the other is the late Yasser Arafat’s body double. Both, however, have the unmistakable linking DNA of being able to stick all their feet firmly in their mouth.

Richard Starkey, alias Ringo Starr, was once the drummer of the Beatles. John Lennon was allegedly asked if he was the best drummer in the world and allegedly replied that Ringo was not even the best drummer in the Beatles. Not that I care, of course, since I was a Stones fan. And Led Zep and Dr Feelgood and Nazareth; the Beatles, as far as I was concerned, were pantywaists and the one with extra gusset was Ringo Starr. I still think the best thing about him is son Zak, who keeps The Who rocking long after they should have died (before they got old) and also manages to do the same for Oasis.

Ringo, on the other hand, went on YouTube (and there is as apt a soubriquet for the lad as any one you will get) to tell his fans (with peace and love) not to to send him any more memorabilia to be signed after October 20 or ‘it will be tossed’ (with peace and love).

Prat. This is the man who pissed off his home town of Liverpool by saying that there wasn’t much he missed about it other than his family who were left in it.

Neither statements are what annoy me. In fact, I can see his point – what the flying f…. did Liverpool ever do for the Beatles except drive 'em to Hamburg and glory? And why would anyone at 60-plus want to spend three-quarters of their day scribbling crap on crap so that rotten little toerags can then flog it expensively on eBay?

I am with him all the way on both counts (peace and love). I think he is a big girl’s blouse for reneging on both statements, back-pedalling faster than Chris Hoy goes forwards and wringing his hands in humiliation in case he has done a Ratner.

Twat.

Twat Two is David Starkey, as pompous as an overstuffed library armchair when he presents his histories on TV. He's one of that breed of plummy academic who are favoured by the BBC to bring history to the masses. Dave has had a pop at Scots - putting us in good company with the Queen, Tony Blair and the Olympic Committee, who have all had the benefit of his ascerbic wisdom. For a man born into a Quaker household, he seems strangely lacking in their supposed tolerance.

What crime has he perpetrated on Alba, then? He has (pause for sharp intake of horrified breath) called Mary, Queen of Scots, "a whore and a trollop and a murderess", accused the Scots of "adoring failure", and branded the SNP "utterly contemptible".

No argument so far, Dave. With you all the way, though the SNP jibe is a bit harsh and the point of it was lost on me until I realised you were responding to a question about the Nats’ idea of returning Mary's remains to Scotland.

Said Dave: "It's exactly the kind of Scottish sentiment that makes the Scottish Nats’ shortbread, tartanned, biscuit-tinned view of Scotland totally and utterly contemptible."

Soooo – Mary is a whore AND a trollop; and bringing her back to a Scotland she, according to Dave, would not be seen dead in, is simply one more manifestation of the Scottish capacity for embracing failure.

Again, no argument from me - and actually, he is spot on so far. Where he falls flat on his smug face is failing to note that the alternative to Mary was Queen Elizabeth I – professional prick-teaser, paranoid anti-Catholic and murderess. She, of course, was the daughter of Henry VIII... a venal, cruel, misogynistic, selfish, and famously fat man, who was only dissuaded from annexing Scotland by dogged resistance and the fact of his own capricious nature.

Starkey, British by birth and English by the grace of God, loves the Tudors; it’s his specialist subject, topped only by ranting. What he fails to understand is that Mary, French-speaking whore, trollop and murderess that she was, was OUR French-speaking whore, trollop and murderess.

Just back from a book festival in Guildford, where I had to dress up to show the importance of actually wearing the gear in writing about the people of the time. I teamed up with author Christie Dickason, who writes intricate novels about the lesser-known political machinations of the 17th century and is both a joy to read and work with. I learned a great deal, too – a farthingale, for example, would have helped 10th century women enormously, since it is far too complex for any snortingly aroused Viking to tackle.

Be sure to watch the landmark new TV series A History of Scotland when it launches on Sunday November 9th on BBC One Scotland. Closely. Blink and you will probably miss some of the many background appearances of Yours Truly and His Friends.

September 2008: Dying for the cause

THIS has been a bit of a biblical time, between weather and the sheer volume of life. Largs is, like most other places, swimming; you no longer need to go doon the watter, the watter has come up.

It did, mind you, manage to take a break during the crucial nine days of the Largs Viking Festival this year, which was one of the better ones in recent times, mainly because of the unstinting efforts of the Vikings both in Scotland and elsewhere … full marks to those who sailed all the way from Vinland to be with us (that’s America to those currently a bit confused).

On the other hand, the enjoyment could have been because we had just taken the event back from a year off and the novelty value was high. It wore off fairly quickly, mind you – nine days is a long time to be on a damp, wind-blasted beach on the west-coast of Scotland, living in makeshift huts and tents, cooking on open fires etc etc.

Nine days is also a big chunk out of folk’s holiday entitlement and the chance to do other Viking events, which is probably why we won’t be spending nine days at Largs again. There will still be a festival and we will still support it – just not for the whole nine days.

At least four of my colleagues and I were knackered before we even started, because we had been in cast of the BBC’s new 12-part documentary series A History Of Scotland. We were involved in shooting the first six parts in mid-August in the BBC’s Glasgow studios and on location. This first section takes Scotland up to 1603 and the next six, to be shot next year, will move up to modern times. Both lots will be seen on BBC Scotland and later nationally on BBC2.

It was an interesting experience – I have so far assassinated a king, guarded the Lord of the Isles, died at the Battle of Brunanburh and again at Stirling Bridge, fought with Calgacus the Pict against the Romans and witnessed the miracles of Columba. No’ bad for a wee boy from Hamilton!

The picture is of me dying in the Wars of Independence, having been pursued by the vengeful Scots – yes, I was English for that one – and my main worry was not blood loss but wasps. That blood they use is a combination of glycerine and raspberry juice and it brought every sooking insect for miles. It's very hard to be deid with beasties crawling in your earhole.

And I suppose no history of Scotland would be complete without a mention of the arch-enemy of foreign visitors to our shores: the Midge. The real enemy.

August 2008: Prepare to be whelmed

IT came about that the Vikings landed at several beaches not so long ago, a band of sung heroes travelling cognito. Despite a long day’s fighting in the heat they were gruntled and consolate, had considerable domitable spirit and soon began the usual peccable behaviour.

It began choate enough, a group of kempt and shevelled people, displaying toward and heard-of behaviour. But this did not last. People started demonstrating a swerving loyalty to the maculate, becoming flappable and plussed. It was skin off my nose to witness it and, convinced I was the only ept one, plainly ebriate where others were not, I attempted to get the proceedings moving in a gainly fashion – and made an evitable error.

I pointed out the missing word ‘chalant’ in the English language. If you can be nonchalant, I reasoned, there must have been a time when folk were also chalant. What had happened to it? Had it been conciled with our language, never to be seen again?

One or two of the most wieldy Vikings, descript individuals, demanded everyone look for it at once; and most did, though others made bones about it and some claimed they could see hide or hair of it (but it turned out, beknownst to me, to be a ringpull).

A told number of them made promptu pronunciations on other missing words and, considerably nerved, I gathered this ruly lot together with terminable speed and mitigated gall. I had givings that they were not as capacitated as I thought, but I was considered and petuous.

In the end, their passion for the subject was bridled and they declared it something to be sneezed at. I went from mayed to chalant swiftly, and attempted to inform them that, since I was a storyteller, words were important and should not be missing or left lying about. Otherwise, communication ceased to be effable.

They were committal on the subject. Though they admitted I was a savoury character and that ‘storyteller’ was a nomer for me, they made called-for remarks that I was someone you could hold a candle to.

Though I was whelmed at first by the number of missing words, I quickly grew ultant. It seemed clear that words from English were now in the care of the black duergar, held with the sound of a cat’s paw, the breath of fishes, the roots of a mountain – all the things vanished from the world of men. I had to ternalise these! It was my quest!

Though the hour was still godly, I was defatigable. I rose and barked from that place as swiftly as I had bouched.

This is what happens when you get late-night conversations involving drink, from Trixie’s marvellous vermouth Martinis to Guinness-alcopops cocktails.
 It began as a discussion on odds and ends (if you have nine on a table and eight fall off, what is left – an odd, or an end?) and how crumbs can feed the world (since each time you split one you get twice as much as last time - two crumbs, not two half-crumbs). Man, however, cannot live on semantics alone as was pointed out to me. Nor Guiness cocktails. Apropos of which - Guinness with blue WKD, the stuff that looks like Portaloo cleaning fluid, is called a Glasgow Hammering, because it is coloured black and blue. It is also disgusting. Smirnoff Ice and Guinness, on the other hand, is called an Eskimo’s Arse (frozen white on the bottom, geddit?) and is not bad at all.

It has been a long season …

August 2008: My first video blogs

Here's the first batch of video blogs, which were shot on a blustery July day in Amble, Northumberland. In these three clips I introduce some of a Viking's basic kit, and explain some of the details. We shot a lot more and it'll appear on the site over time. Let me know what you think!

(You can find these videos on YouTube by searching for "Robert Low Viking".)

July 2008: Rant at the wrongs

Tabloid hacks only have two ways of looking at things – since I was one for more than 30 years, I feel easy in my soul admitting this.

The first way is 20-20 hindsight – read any memoir and you will discover how the boss, the paper, the government, the country or the world would have been better off had they paid attention to the writer when he told them so at the time.

The second way is preconception. Tabloids do not send journos out to do stories on the state of the NHS – they send them out to do stories on overcrowded hospitals. No red-top editor wants his health section drooping with discursive paragraphs on how hard it is to give up smoking; he wants desperate stories on how some folk can't stop, even with one lung left, a leg already gone and cancer eating the other. There's no point in any writer coming back with a balanced story because that’s not what was asked for. All you get is editor abuse, sometimes from so close that you can dry your hair with the bad breath.

Re-enactment, of course, is ripe for the preconception approach. ‘Obsessed’ and ‘sad’ are the adjectives you'd get in the brief And it's particularly important for freelances to stick to the brief – or they don’t get paid.

Here’s a case in point. The Vikings were recently approached by the History Channel in Canada looking to do a programme with us. We do this sort of thing a lot and we love the History Channels – when they deal in history, that is. The freelance researcher, though, had a particular type of re-eneactor in mind, someone who was obsessed enough to give up everything and it became increasingly clear that she did not want to know much else. That one we headed off at the pass.

The newspaper journo who turns up at an event is harder to bodyswerve, and the Mail on Sunday gave us Tanya Gold.

Tanya recently wrote a piece about Max Mosley and his alleged Nazi spanking (her and everyone else recently). Her take on it, though, seemed to be a diatribe against BMW and Mercedes for what they did in the war; and her justification for this was that she is Jewish.

She has views on a great many matters, from speed-dating, surgery, kicking smoking and drink to men, sex and more. She is a tabloid journalist, with all that that implies – prose as slick as lip gloss but with all the integrity of a Happy Meal. Veneer all the way through.

Tanya turned up at a multi-period event with a hired costume and a snapper. Her article is here and, sadly, is exactly what you might expect it to be: a bit of a piss-take. Overgrown schoolies running around in a field playing soldiers. Getting snaps taken of folk in armour using mobile phones (we hate that more than anything, since most of the reason we do this is to authentically recreate the period. The Vikings have rules and regs on getting caught swigging from a Coke can or puffing on a fag and, believe me, blood-eagling is less painful a punishment).

Most of this is fair enough – re-enactors are prime targets for having the urine extracted and we are used to it. But this time Tanya seems to have been breathlessly blithe about the subject, with all the sensitivity of a paper cup when she wrote the following:

So why am I here? Faintheart, a British film about a man whose obsession with pretending to be a Viking destroys his life, is opening this autumn and even before its release, the film is starting to gain a cult following. And a re-enactment enthusiast died at a joust in this very field last year, when a splinter entered his eye. Suddenly, it seems anyone and everyone is slipping into doublet and hose and engaging in this most obscure of weekend leisure pursuits.

Eh? Reasons for taking up this exciting pastime – you might get killed. Or end up in a movie. Same thing, seemingly, as far as Tanya is concerned.

At the end of this enthralling piece, for which she slipped into her £100 rented costume (from Angels, the famous London costumier), Tanya was not one whit wiser about the why of it all, and nor were her readers. But she had met Big Chick from Clan Ranald (him who gave Russell Crowe a hard time at the start of Gladiator before the star unleashed hell) and was convinced that a lot of re-enactors only have one leg.

The Mail on Sunday then offered us all the following exciting challenge at our forthcoming even in Lanark:

If you're feeling brave, gather a group of friends and register as re-enactors through www.tournee.org.

Coupled with ‘come and die jousting’ earlier, this seems to suggest that anyone can turn up and charge about waving a sword, or climb on a horse, take a lance and see if he can get a splinter in the eye. Any ned with a knife fetish can join in, we don’t give a flying feck. Bring out your nutters…

Is nobody sub-editing this stuff? This is piss-poor newspaper work all round.

The reality, in case anyone from the same shallow end of the gene pool as Tanya is reading this, is that no-one is allowed on a re-enactment field to fight until they have been trained, assessed, trained again, re-assessed and re-trained. Health and safety is paramount with us and the tragic death of my friend, Paul Allen, when his jousting lance fractured, was a freak accident while filming a historical documentary.

A month after the last Lanark event in 2007, as it happens, which makes the Mail on Sunday's coverage all the more galling.

None of this is Tanya's fault, though – you get what you pay for and if you pay for someone to go to a re-enactment event looking like a crinoline lady toilet-roll cover, then you are expecting a certain sort of journalism out of it. It is the fault of the Mail on Sunday.

Dressing someone up and sending them out to be provocative was, I thought, the province of the real red tops, the ones who hear a throwaway comment such as ‘a one-legged chicken could get elected to this seat’ and then send some luckless newbie hopping out to the hustings in a chicken costume.

I thought the Mail on Sunday had higher standards than this.

June 2008: Sun lotion saga

I should be in Norway. Instead, I went to dance at the wedding of my niece, Becky and, despite comments by gloaters currently half-way up a fjord, I can’t say I got the worst of the deal. The fragrant Rebecca – whose first book, The Art Of Losing, is to be published by HarperCollins – looked ravishing, the weather was excellent, the drink was being paid for by my brother-in-law and I got to dress up (in a kilt this time) which is never a hardship.

Besides – I had already had an ace time in Lindisfarne, at our first show of the season during the last weekend of May. The weather was blindingly good and we had hundreds of visitors to the performances and to our impressive camp. One of the major perks of working with English Heritage is they allowed us to set up 49 authentic tents and one smallish longship right in the ruins of the old Priory on the island, not to mention finding discreet space for those with plastic tents to stay in for the duration. And this on an island which categorically bans camping at any other time.

They got their money’s worth, mind you – several hundred warriors putting on displays almost constantly during the day, for adults and kids, in searing heat. Wearing mail and wool and all the weapons is no joke in that sort of weather – and once again, practical archaelogy (of a sort) let me into a few secrets.

The main one is more modern than Dark Age – never wear sun lotion on your thinning scalp then go into a full-on battle. Half-way through I had to stagger out, half-blind because the melted sun-lotion had run inside my helmet and was stinging my eyes so badly that everything was a blur. I supposed the Dark Age equivalent must be lard or sheep fat - but I bet it doesn’t render you as painfully blind as I was for half an hour. Now I know how test bunnies must feel.

The picture that accompanies this is, for once, not all about me (though I will have some when the camera comes back from Norway). It was taken by an unknown visitor, an amateur photographer of some skill – if you let me know who you are, I will credit you suitably. The subject is called Paddy the Axe and he sums up the weekend perfectly, as well as showing off the standard of warrior we can put in the field. Next time I hope to have some pics of Bunny the Berserker in full bearskin and bad attitude- well worth waiting for.

We're equally fearsome out of the field too... I would like to apologise to the no-neck Scottish tourist drunks who were forced into an abject scuttle from the pub on the island. I hope someone who can read informs these bottom-feeders of my apology, which is this: we did not mean to laugh as you were huckled from The Ship, even if you brought it on yourselves.

It must have come as a great shock to the pair of them, all the same, to discover that EVERYONE else in the pub was a Viking and, when the owner eventually grew tired enough to ban the drunks, all the Vikings stood up as one, having been asked by the owner for his help beforehand. The shaken duo had to walk the gauntlet of growling Paddy The Axe lookalikes all the way out of the door.
Then we laughed, which was unforgivable.

Back home, I am pleased to announce that, after The White Raven, there will be two more books for HarperCollins – but only one will be directly concerned with Orm and the Oathsworn, though both are still all about my first love, the Vikings. More details will follow in due course...

May 2008: Tell it to the Amazons!

I'd like to thank all those of you who've emailed me to say how much you enjoyed The Wolf Sea. It's always nice to receive feedback, especially since writing is such a solitary occupation. What would be even nicer would be if you could go and post your kind words on the Amazon websites, here and in the US. Now that would make my day!

I've had a US copy of The Wolf Sea sent to me – exactly the same cover, but American hardbacks are so much smaller than British ones. Perhaps someone will eventually give me a decent reason why – apart from the savings on cost and trees. I also had a Large Print version of The Whale Road through, with a splendid cover which is different again from the hardback and paperbacks.

It's a funny time of year – nothing much seems to be happening. It's as if everything is taking a deep breath before sticking its head up another frantic season of re-enactment. The end of May sees me off to Lindisfarne – where the Viking era officially started, according to those dates beloved of historians - so look out for some happy snaps from that.

I also hope to have news of more of my books for 2010 onwards next month – but it's other people who are making the writing news right now.

My niece has landed a book deal of her own. (You know I love her because I'm giving up the annual trip to Norway to go to her Kent wedding, dress up like a dish of Highland haddies and dance like a loon.) And it's with HarperCollins, no less. Look out for Rebecca Connell and The Art Of Losing – it'll be published by HC's posh imprint, Fourth Estate. Rececca has declared her book 'chick-lit'... which means the family now tick all the boxes and the Brontes can eat their hearts out.

And old colleague of mine, Doug Jackson of the Scotsman newspaper, has also managed to get a book published. It's called Caligula (there's is a sub-titlewhich I think it has changed from The Tyranny Of Rome) and I hope it is the first of many for him.

March 2008: Snow in Pictavia

High time they regularised Easter, says me – one look at the picture will tell you why. Yes, the first Viking epic of the 2008 season was an Easter Weekend extravaganza at Pictavia, the Pictish themed educational centre at Brechin, and it was neatly timed to coincide with the worst of the weather, since Easter was two weeks too early as far as I am concerned.

We lost two tents to the howling gale and woke to find the water in our wooden buckets frozen to a half-inch thickness of ice. In the event, telling saga-tales in the comfort of the warm centre suddenly became a better idea than staggering around in a blizzard trying to work out who you could hit and who was on your side. From a practical archaeology point of view it revealed several interesting things – such as how wool cloaks are brilliant and that, evidence to the contrary, the early Norse must have had the sense (and numb ears) to create hoods of some description.

I now have first-hand experience of how you can actually be comfortable and warm (ish) round an open fire in the falling snow provided you have decent footwear, a warm cloak and a windbreak. On the other hand, fighting in a blizzard may turn up in a future book, since I also now have first-hand experience of how bloody confusing it can be telling one bulky figure from another.

Back in the real world, my publisher tells me The Wolf Sea is breaking sales records and is No29 in the charts – so thanks to everyone who bought it for that. If you haven’t bought it – why not? Even if you have, let me know. Let Amazon know. Odin’s balls, let everyone know – the money will be handy, since there are tents needing repaired here.

February 2008 : Remembering the Battle of Largs... at Fairlie?

THERE I am, rubbing shoulders with the local worthies – councillors, an MSP, the new patron of the Largs Viking Festival, the local newspaper reporter – eating wee sausage rolls and discussing what great things we are going to have at this year’s annual Party at the Pencil (left).

This is where The Vikings UK recreate the Battle of Largs of 1263AD, when the Scots under Alexander III chased off the last of the Norse under King Haakon and sent him home to think again. Well, sent him to his bed in Kirkwall in Orkney, where the poor auld soul died, allegedly of shame - and the Norse gave up being a force in Scottish politics.

It is all very grand this year. There is a Big Navy Boat which, I'm informed, will be persuaded to scoosh members of the Vikings ashore in their fast RM Rigid Raiders, a fancy rubber boat doing a sort of modern slant on the Viking raid. Aye, right – chain mail, deep water? Bugger off, or else we'll be re-enacting the opening scene from Saving Private Ryan.

It is so big, says the PR/event organiser man, that we might have to move it. That curve of beautiful unspoiled beach round by the Battle monument – popularly known as The Pencil – is getting crowded with all the people and hamburger vans and firework watchers who flock to the display.

Not for much longer, perhaps - it seems the festival may have to move. It may even have to move out of Largs, to another coastal town like Fairlie.

How so, you ask? Well, I come out of that meeting to discover the local yacht marina have published plans - in a dark cellar at midnight presumably, since no-one knew of them - to build a new Armorflex launch ramp on that same curve of unspoiled beach. All the waders and gulls and terns can sod off and, because it will be a hazard to the launching of their big gin palace boats, even the offshore rocks will vanish, meaning the seals can all go clubbing rather than hang about them basking.

If the longboat which usually brings us Vikings into that bay is actually allowed to approach, it will be forced to negotiate the parked plastic bathtubs, jet-skis and windsurfers.

The public footpath is cunningly kept so that no-one can object about right of way. It's just to be moved up 'safely' next to the railway line. The nice view will be gone, the picnic benches will be gone and, in place of the tumble of rocks and wildlife, we'll have a sodding great slipway, a series of ancillary buildings and no access except on official marina business.

Today, if you stand at the Pencil monument, you can still enjoy a terrific unspoiled sense of wilderness and place. You'll also realise the sailors have a way of getting their boats in the water already, using the launch facilities that are currently there, not ruining everything else for everyone else.

But it seems that, crowded out by yachtmen who don’t care for history, the Viking Festival will be forced to move. Which could be good luck for Fairlie - but bad luck for the seals, Vikings and the memory of the Battle of Largs.

MEANWHILE – back in the more sensible land of straightforward raid and pillage, Orm and the Oathsworn are about to set sail on The Wolf Sea, to be launched (not from an Armorflex ramp) on March 3.

January 2008 : Home truths

I am now officially a refusenik, part of the quiet revolution shaking up the world of publishing.

My agent, the brilliant Jim Gill, has quit PFD and gone over to the new kids on the block, United Agents. Of course, I have gone with him, since part of what caused all the upset in the first place is that PFD can’t understand the relationship between authors and their agents. Well, they do now. If you are interested in all the tales of blood on the boardroom walls, read it here: link

Suffice to say I am in good company - Ruth Rendell, Joanna Trollope, Robert Harris and others – but, at the same time, it is a bit of an eye-opener to find flaws in your heroes. Like John Mortimer, for instance, who says of PFD: ‘I don’t think it matters who is running it. They don’t tell you what to write – they just name the money.’

Silly arse – yet I found the same sort of thing as part of the National Union of Journalists, especially at my paper, the Scottish Daily Record, during battles against Robert Maxwell. The notorious Captain Bob was a rabid bully and it never ceased to surprise me how many sensible, erudite journos with immaculate Socialist credentials caved in like old bread and broke faith over ‘the money’.

Two things assured me – not that I needed it – that I was right to follow the agent who first had faith in me. First, the boss of PFD's new owners, performed a foot-stamp of frustration worthy of red card on any football field. One Buchler by name, he's as Maxwellian in character as the original. He heads CSS, a sports promotion conglomerate (which says it all), and on the day United Agents opened their company, Buchler set up a name-only corporation called United Agents Group. Four year-olds are ashamed of him and it's quite likely that he will trip over his considerably petted lip and do himself no small damage.

Second, I received a letter from Caroline Michel, the fragrant leading light parachuted in by CSS to save the PFD day, when I made my decision to leave. It carried references to ‘their legal rights’ and pointed out that if contracts created by PFD are changed or extended, they want their money. There were threats veiled in the flimsiest samite - no ‘so long and thanks for all the fish’, just a flat ‘you’ll get your money when it is due.' No doubt she is now weary of writing such letters and has long reached the conclusion that this is a remake of A Bridge Too Far for her, for the shark-smile is trembling a little at the corners.

It seems clear La Michel and Buchler and the rest STILL don’t get it. We need schmoozing. It is a lonely business, writing, and my agent knows this. That’s why he represents me and not the shareholders of some global corporation, which is the vision of La Michel and Buchler.

I am not a can of sodding beans.

Rant over – new year, new start. But it pisses me off that there are two books I hope will be HUGE successes for HarperCollins that will also continue to make money for PFD and none for Jim Gill.

On a happier note, I raise my horn to all those involved in making the voyage of the Sea Stallion such a delightful success. For those who don’t know of it, go here http://www.havhingsten.dk/index.php?id=277&L=1
and find out more – and shame on you for missing the BBC documentary!

For various reasons – mainly that the crew have already been picked – I can’t get on the return leg, via the Channel and back to the Baltic, but I was pleased to see that one of the more stable, uncomplaining and stronger members of the crew was Eirik, aged 61. More power to your grey elbow!

From a research point of view, the voyage – thankfully – confirmed everything I wrote in The Whale Road about Vikings on ships. The dynamic between 60-odd crew in cramped, miserable conditions is the sort of practical archaeology that makes my job of writing fiction on the subject easier.

Surprises? One or two – the continual tendency of the steerboard to fail was one. I would love to think that this was because the rebuild had got it wrong somewhere, but I can’t see any other way to make the steering oar work any better and so it seems that this was more of a problem than was originally known. Makes for interesting plot devices, if nothing else!

Another was one of those practical archaeology moments – sleeping bags were banned and everyone slept in wool blankets only, which must have been a horror on a wet deck. The reason was safety, for if the ship capsized in the night on a long run, you are trapped in a sleeping bag and almost certain to drown. Since the Norse invented the things (made out of sealskin) I now have to restrict the use of them to peaceful anchorage and sleeping ashore. Even allowing for modern obsession with health and safety, the rule seems as applicable to the 10th century as the 21st.

Read Robert's 2007 entries