{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"","title":"Nordic Folktales, Traditions and Beliefs ~ with Professor Terry Gunnell","description":"

Tonight we have a moonlit blether about these things and more ...

  • Guising traditions in Shetland, masks, ceremonies, folklore, the hidden people of Iceland, storytelling around the world and how all is connected to performance - even (or maybe especially) politicians!

  • Walter Traill Dennison - the first person to write in Orkney dialect - and his importance to preserving Orkney's stories, customs and traditions

  • How is an Orcadian different from a Scot?

  • Iceland/Scandanavian connections to Orkney/Shetland?

  • Why the national spirit lives within the working classes and what national tales have to do with creating culture

  • Why the Danes were annoyed with the brothers Grimm, and are Swedish stories really \"better than the Danes\"?

  • Collectors from many lands - searching for identity

  • \"The broken isles of Orkney\" and Viking romancticism

  • The \"varden\" spirit in Orkney and its similarities to the banshee

  • Orkney at the Scandanavian/Celtic crossroads, how the stories are shared and Orkney's own myths

  • Do Orkney stories emphasize the supernatural/witches as evil, vs simply supernatural?

  • Book of the Black Arts stories in Orkney and Iceland

  • The difference between mermaids and finnwives in Orkney

  • Tom and Terry swap and compare Scandanavian/Orkney folktales: Witches, magicians, beach creeps, sea creatures, selkie, hidden folk, mermen and mermaids, trolls, land and sea nature spirits; spirits in the mounds, changelings, hogboy/hogboon, the nucklavee, land trows and sea trows

  • About Terry's project, the Icelandic database of 10,000 Scandanavian legends to be found in writing, with maps tracing the spread of the tales; also a sound archive to listen to on location - bringing stories back to the land.

  • What has the Black Death got to do with communications bewteen the Nordic lands?

  • Are Orkney stories more Nordic or Scottish?

  • Terry tells about Iceland's Wild Ride

  • Wintertime as darkness, earth, knowledge of past present and future, and women

  • Bibles, light, mullaca beans (Mary beans) and salt, and how they were used in protecting vulnerable souls in transitional states; in Iceland, it was silver and steel

  • Icelandic beliefs in ghosts, power points, premonitions, hidden people, protective animal spirits and dreams; haunted families vs haunted houses; and other supernatural beings

  • Three Orkney stories of unbaptized babies

  • Trolls in Orkney, and how they developed from Norwegian trolls

  • Stories as maps of behavior

  • Finding drowned people and the connection with revalatory dreams

  • The liminal, dangerous place between high tide and low

  • Are the finfolk a reference to the Sami?

  • The seen but unseen within the landscape



Links: 

Sagnagrunnur folklore database: https://sagnagrunnur.arnastofnun.is/orkney/

More about Terry Gunnel: https://english.hi.is/staff/terry

Terry Gunnell's lecture on family ghosts: https://isfnr.org/2025/08/the-next-online-lecture-terry-gunnell-17-september-2025/ 

Earlier lecturer on nature of belief: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-3_Gq7iSsg 

Terry Gunnell on Shetland guising traditions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lC4O46oyFQ 


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","author_name":"Tom Muir and Rhonda Muir"}