Nicola Griffith's Blog, page 17

Queer Medieval links: books mentioned, maps, more

Last week’s big old Medieval Pride event I did at Town Hall Seattle for Humanities WA went brilliantly. We sold 500+ tickets; I’m not sure how many attended online and how many in person, but there were a lot of people in the audience. (I have some good photos of the event but I’m waiting for permission to post them.) Afterwards I signed for well over an hour—thank you all for waiting so patiently! And thank you to Charlie and Colleen of Charlie’s Queer Books for running the line so beautifully. For those who didn’t have the time or energy to wait, there are some signed books at Charlie’s Queer Books, or—as always—you can get them from Phinney Books, my neighbourhood store.

I’ve never done an event at Town Hall before but it was really smooth. Finding parking was easy—there are several pay lots nearby—and everything is very accessible. Also their Green Room had a mini-fridge stocked with beer and I had a plate of delicious nibbles to chomp as we sorted out logistics, got fitted with my mic and so on. So I can recommend it—whether as performer or audience.

The livestream was recorded. The Medieval Women’s Choir begins at 08:29, and then there’s a lot of blank space, so I’ve set it to begin at the start of the main event at 1:01:26. Enjoy!

[EDIT TO ADD: It looks like this was a time-limited posting, so it’s no longer available. Sorry. I’ll see if I can figure out how to get a couple of clips up, but it may take a while.]

Women’s Medieval Choir begins 08:29. Main event at 1:01:26.

During the talk I promised to add some notes here about books I mentioned, and ones I knew I was forgetting. During the book signing I also promised a few readers links to other things.

LinksMy research blog, Gemæcce, with two posts of particular interest:“Playful Mating With Another Woman““The Beautiful Sin“Maps:3 maps for Hild and Menewood1 map for SpearMy PhD thesis, Norming the Other: Narrative Empathy Via Focalised Heterotopia All about Hild and Menewood All about Spear Bede on Hild (translated by Roy Liuzza; this is my favourite of others’ translations—my own is deliberately literal and not really useful for other people)BooksNonfiction:African Europeans: An Untold History, Olivette OteleAnd in case you’re still not convinced that Britain has always had residents of every skin colour, here’s a blog post on the subject, ranging from the Bronze Age to today The Emergence of the English , Susan Oosthuizen Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England , Penelope Walton Rogers Britain after Rome , Robin Fleming Double Agents: Women in Clerical Culture in Anglo-Saxon England , Clare Lees and Gillian OveringHistorical Fiction that had an impact on me or think is done particularly well:Rosemary Sutcliff: Sword at Sunset and others (not queer, sigh)Mary Stewart: The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and others (so very not queer)Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven (this is about Alexander the Great, and super queer)Patrick O’Brian, the Aubrey/Maturin series beginning with Master and Commander (Napoleonic war fiction: Jane Austen on a ship of war…)Sarah Waters, Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith, and others (Victorian-era lesbian picaresque)Manda Scott, Into the Fire (fabulous split timeline novel about Joan of Arc)Poetry:Maria Dahvana Headley, Beowulf, a New Translation (If you want a translation of the Most Famous OE epic poem that really captures that jock bro energy of heroic age warrior society, this is for you)Y Gododdin Nothing like it. Late sixth/early seventh century Welsh heroic elegyOld English poetry such as The Ruin or The Wanderer Epic Old English wistfulness and melancholy. Wonderful stuff.Books by specialists in the Late Antique/Early Medieval debating the era and Arthur’s historicity:Guy Halsall, Worlds of ArthurNick Higham, King ArthurChristopher Gidlow, The Reign of Arthur

If I promised you something but you don’t see it here it means I forgot—it was a busy night, and I wasn’t taking notes—so just drop a comment and I’ll add it.

Hopefully I’ll be able to post those photos in a day or two. So stay tuned.

Frankenstein’s Poodle

George, leg shaved like a poodle’s, and stitched

George: wounded warrior. This was taken a week ago. I wanted to take another to show how brilliantly he’s healed—it was a deep wound, into the muscle—but, well, he’s healed so brilliantly he’s dashing about too much to get a picture.

Two weeks ago he tangled with something big. We took him to the kitty ER and they shaved his leg from dewclaw to shoulder, put him under, cleaned out the wound and stitched him up—so one leg looked like it belonged to Dr Frankenstein’s poodle. I don’t know how many stitches he started with: the minute we opened the cat carrier at home he bolted, tore off his cone of shame, got under the bed and started picking them out; as you can see, most didn’t last long .

But as I say, he’s fine now. Except being embarrassed about looking, from certain angles, like a poodle . We’re just thankful he’s okay. We suspect his adversary was either an eyebrow-raisingly large domestic cat or—more likely, as we didn’t hear the characteristic yowl, growl, screech and hiss of a catfight—a raccoon. It’s at times like this that I long for All The Monies so we could build an acre of catio for Charlie and George to play in safely.

Until then, perhaps the poodle-leg shame will make him a little more cautious.

The Queer Medieval: Town Hall Seattle, 11 June

“Initial A: Saints Maurice and Theofredus” about 1460 – 1480, tempera and gold leaf on parchment, by Frate Nebridio (Italian, died before 1503, active second half of the 15th century). Leaf: 11.5 × 11.5 cm (4 1/2 × 4 1/2 in.), Ms. 91 (2005.21), recto. Cut from an antiphonal. Courtesy of the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. The Details

Tuesday, June 11, 2024 — Seattle, and livestream — Town Hall (Great Hall)

Doors at 6:00 pm PTA whole slew of amazing, thrilling, nifty and all around awesome extra delightsa performance by the Medieval Women’s Choirlots of Old English riddles and associated activitiesa meet-and-greet with me and María and others—with delicious mead from Mr B’s Meaderybooks for sale from Charlie’s Queer Booksdisplays of medieval arts and crafts and weaponsmedieval-inflected gaming, and more!Main event: 7:30 pm PTKeynote Lecture: Nicola Griffith on “The Queer Medieval: Queer History and Historical Fiction,” followed by a conversation with Professor María Bullón-Fernández, followed by audience Q&A.This is a marquee event for Pride, sponsored by Humanities WashingtonTickets $5 – $10. Free if you’re under 22. DetailsWhat I’ll talk about

The event itself, the music, the displays, the games, the mead, will span the whole medieval period—early to high to late, which is about a thousand years. Given my work—specifically Hild, Spear, and Menewood—my keynote will be focused on queer representation in Early Medieval Britain, historical fiction, and how putting queer folks back in history helps us re-see the past and re-envision our future. Then I’ll chat with Professor María Bullón-Fernández, Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities at Seattle University, about a wide-ranging set of topics, everything from the love poetry of nuns to the eye-rolling assumptions people make about queer folk in history and the fierce joy of queer heroes. Come drink mead with us, listen to gorgeous music, and try your hand at a few Old English riddles…

About the image

The image is of Christian martyr-saints, Maurice and Theofredus, third-century CE soldiers of the Sacred Band of Thebes in North Africa. They were both Egyptian, but of course that fact got white-washed over time. QSpirit has more information, including some images of Maurice depicted as a Black African in High Medieval armour. Still wrong but, hey, at least not lily white.

Charlie and George are 5

That’s it, really. They are five, and fighting fit, and fine. Emphasis on the fighting.

Three or four months ago George acquired an elegant scar—very thin, very tasteful, drawn delicately along his nose; his duelling scar. We have some new cats in the neighbourhood so there are now occasional territory squabbles in the cul-de-sac. We have our two Yakima Crew; just up the street three lovely gingers brothers called Chris, Kurt, and Dave—the Nirvana Boys; and a mystery tabby—the Tabby Pimpernel—whose size is somewhere between George and Charlie. What this means is that every now and again there’ll be a terrible yowling outside and I’ll shoot outside to find either Charlie or George (usually George) sitting fluffed to twice his usual size on the fence or standing sideways on the deck, with that “Yeah, you better run!” look to them but no sign of an antagonist and no evidence of blood or chunks of fur.

George, left and Charlie, right. Definitely brothers. February 2024.

ID: Two different tabby cats photographed in the same pose on the same cat tree and looking remarkably similar.

Every now and again we won’t hear a thing until one or both of them come suddenly blamming through the cat door with tails like bottle brushes. And that’s when I think there’s a raccoon close by.

We are currently in that unfortunate phase of summer when George doesn’t like to come home at night when called. Charlie always comes bouncing and chirruping when he hears his name. George just tunes us out. He always does come home, but sometimes not until two in the morning, and I’m getting very tired of the whole thing. This is a two-week phase he goes through every summer during which I age about a year imagining the coyotes and raccoons and barred owls… The problem is, it’s not quite summer yet, so I dread how the next few months are going to go.

Both he and Charlie have each spent one entire night outside—Charlie about three years ago, George a month ago. We never, ever want that to happen again. (I lie awake all night imagining my social media rage as I tear a new one for the fool who says primly that the death of one or other of our beloved beasts is my own fault for letting them outdoor in the first place.) But I have a bad feeling it might. We’ll just have to trust they know what they’re doing. So far, the’ve come home unscathed: Charlie had a bite above his dew claw a couple of years ago, but judging by the size I think it was a prey animal—a feisty vole or rat—rather than a predator; George came home just last week with a sprained knee, which may or may not have resulted from fleeing a predator but could just as easily be the result of a misjudgement. Who can say? They’re five now; parts of their lives are hidden to us. We’re just glad they choose to share as much of their lives with us as they do: Charlie is almost always close to one or both of us on and off during the day, and asleep on the deck chair the rest of the time; and George always sleeps with us at night. Sometimes (rarely) George will sleep nearby me on the sofa in the afternoon and sometimes Charlie will sleep on the bed all night—though more often he sleeps in one of my wheelchairs just outside the bedroom, guarding it, and will only come in and settle on the bed with the rest of us after dawn.

They are mysterious creatures, but they are part of what make our house feel like a home. And we want them woven into our lives for another twenty years.

Charlie, left and George, right. Smelling the daisies. February 2024.

ID: On the left a tabby cat by a vase of tulips. On the right, a different tabby cat on the same table this time by a vase of gerbera daisies.

If you would like to read about Charlie and George’s adventures (and, trust me, there have been adventures) over the past five years, take at look at the 20+ Kitten Reports.

Wednesday—in-conversation with Katrina Carrasco at Elliott Bay Books

Wednesday May 8th, 2024 @ 7:00PM – 8:00PMElliott Bay Book Company, SeattleDetails

On Wednesday I’ll be in-conversation with Katrina Carrasco about Rough Trade, her stylish sex, drugs, and smuggling queer brawl of a Western set in the the non-gilded parts of Gilded Age Tacoma. Come listen to us marvel about sex and gender and genre and the body—putting the queer body back into a history we’ve long been denied but where we’ve always belonged.

You might have enjoyed the memorable evening we had at EBBC a few years ago when we were talking about Katrina’s debut novel, The Best Bad Things. If you did, then, yay, I promise you another fabulous event. If you did not, then, hey, there’s still time!

Here’s what I said about the book:

In ROUGH TRADE Carrasco brilliantly evokes both the visceral delight of the queer body at home in queer community and the thrill of deception—moving through the seams of a new society holding secrets…

And if that doesn’t convince you, how about the New Yorker:

At once richly atmospheric and finely paced the novel is a potent and morally complex portrait of queer life and history.

Come and listen to us talk about queer history, maps, research, and the joys of using one’s body hard in all the best ways.

My Viking relatives

During the pandemic one of Kelley’s relatives subscribed to Ancestry.com—and got a surprising result. So then Kelley, curious, subscribed to a different service—and got a shock. My curiosity was piqued.

After a bit of research I decided on 23andMe, and it’s been interesting both from a medical and ancestry perspective. Today I want to talk about ancestry.

My assumptions going into this were that I’d be 100% mongrel white people from NW Europe—a bit of Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Scottish, Irish, Welsh, English, French, German and so on. After all, my father was from London but family lore has his relatives being from all over Scotland, and then there’s that Welsh last name. My mother’s family—supposedly—were half right-off-the-boat from Ireland and half old, old West Yorkshire Catholics. Given that West Yorkshire is basically Elmet, my hope was that I’d have a large streak of that unique-to-Elmet DNA that I talked about a while ago on my research blog.

I was mostly right about being a European mongrel—98.8% is British/Irish. The surprise—the delightful surprise!—is that most of the rest, 1.1 %, is broadly Northern West Asian: half Cypriot and the rest from somewhere in the region between Anatolia and Iran. The final 0.1% is unassigned.

The biggest surprise to me, though, is that my strongest regional British match is to Central and Southern Ireland—Scotland, Wales, any part of the Midlands were not detected at all, nor—most disappointing!—West Yorkshire. It’s all Ireland, Ireland, Ireland and a bit of generic Yorkshire & Humberside.

As a side note, I apparently belong to a relatively uncommon (among 23andMe customers, anyway) maternal haplogroup—H2a1a. And 2% of my DNA is inherited from Neanderthal relatives—which includes a variant associated with having a worse sense of direction. Which, sadly, is very true.

And that’s where things stood until yesterday when 23andMe informed me I had 19 matches to a database of ancient DNA (aDNA).1 These people are not necessarily my ancestors; it just means some segments of my DNA matches some segments of theirs—that we shared some ancestor a long, long time ago. And these results were much more in line with my expectations: Sweden, Iceland, Norway, the Faroe Islands, Denmark, Estonia, Czech Republic, Ireland, Russia, Kazakhstan. Still no Germany or France, though. But the two top matches—both with more than double the percentage match of the others—were both Viking-age men (700 CE to 900 CE).

The top match was this warrior, buried on his back by a stream in Tromsø, Norway, with sword, axe, knife, arrows, hone and tools of professionally-fighty folk. Archaeologists think he lived in the eighth century. Basically a Viking.

Not far behind was this one buried, also supine, on SW-NE orientation in the sand dunes of County Galway, Ireland, in a grave filled with Scandinavian-style weaponry—spear, shield(boss), and a sword that most probably dates to the ninth century. Basically, another Viking.

The next-most related individual was a child from the Faroe Islands—which of course were settled by Vikings. So I might not be genetically Elmetian but I can claim kinship, no matter how slight, with Vikings, and Neanderthals, and possibly Mediterranean pirates. That’s more like it!

This aDNA database is something I’ve been meaning to blog about ever since a bombshell paper in Nature a couple of years ago thre a massive spanner in the works regarding the Migration Period and the ancestral makeup of England. I think I might have to get to that soon… ︎

Video talking about writing the Early Medieval

Last month I had a conversation with Kate Macdonald of Handheld Press for London’s Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea, Libraries’ In Conversation series. The talk was billed as “Writing the Anglo-Saxons” but as I explain in the conversation, I prefer to use ‘Early Medieval’ or, if we’re referring specifically to a particular group of NW European migrants to Britain, ‘Anglisc.’ The term Anglo-Saxon is not only inappropriate (my polite term for ‘co-opted and now irremediably tainted by racist white nationalists’) but inaccurate. And of course I explain why. But most of the time I just wax lyrical about how utterly *cool* it is to write this books—how much I love building the seventh century and the people in it, and why.

And while we’re on the subject of both Kate Macdonald and early Britain, if you have enjoyed Hild or Menewood or Spear, you might enjoy Kate’s five-part blog series on the work of Rosemary Sutcliff—whose books were a massive influence on me as a young reader. And if you enjoy that, then I can recommend Blue Remembered Hills, Sutcliff’s memoir, recently republished by Handheld Press.

Meanwhile, enjoy the conversation.

How I remember International Women’s Day

Janes Plane live at the Ace, Brixton, 1982. Pictured, l to r, Nicola Griffith, Carol Holmes, Jane Lawrence.

Once upon a time—42 years ago, on March 8, 1982 to be exact, International Women’s Day—I and four other women debuted our band, Janes Plane. (I’ve written about that many times so won’t rehash it here but do feel free to go down the search rabbit hole). It was early March, too, eleven years later, when Ammonite, my first novel, debuted in the UK. And of course it was just ten days after that that I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. For me, IWD is a complicated anniversary.

But today, just because it pleases me to do so, I’ll focus on the music. Here are two Janes Plane songs. The first, “Vondel Park,” is about the summer I was 19 and me and Carol, my lover (that’s what we said back then, lover, not partner or girlfriend) went to Amsterdam, got stranded with no money, starved in a campground for about a week, then finally got some cash and spent it immediately on, first, a Big Mac and fries, and, second, a chunk of red lebanese hash, which we smoked in Vondel Park in the sunshine while hippies played their guitars. I spent four lovely hours hallucinating herds of wild horses running with a 50′-tall Bertie Bassett (a figure made of Liquorice Allsorts—a liquorice sweet/candy). Here’s the song, accompanied by a video created from various TV clips of the band edited together by Lou, our bassist.

And here’s “Bare Hands.” I don’t know what the song meant to the rest of the band, but my lyrics are about Hull, a grimy, desperate city in East Yorkshire (so bad you could address a letter to ‘Crap Town’ and it would get there)1, where I moved after I left Leeds in early summer, 1979 (right before we went to Amsterdam). I lived there with Carol for ten years and always knew it could be a better place, if only people would believe enough to try. I left long before that happened—but it did. So, to me, this is a song about hope.

I think IWD, too, is all about hope. So turn up the sound and drift and dream…

Hull, apparently, is an inspiration for how to rebuild Mariupol https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/03/hull-is-inspirational-mariupol-academics-look-to-yorkshire-as-they-plan-for-rebuilding-of-city ︎

Corn

A field of corn under a blue sky in Vampula, Finland. Photo by kallerna.

Per the Oxford English Dictionary, Corn = ‘The seed of the cereal or farinaceous plants as a produce of agriculture; grain.’ Practically speaking it is used to denote the chief cereal crop of a district. Corn can be wheat, barley, maize, rye, oats, rice or more depending on the era and/or geographic region of use.

I’ve just had what feels like the hundred billionth reader inform me that, with all due respect, Hild is quite wrong to talk about corn in 7th-century Britain. And for the hundred billionth time I’ve politely responded that, actually, no, there’s no mistake. To Hild, corn is wheat, not maize.

The next edition of Hild will contain a note to that effect. Once that’s done I’ll stop responding to this topic.

Beneath the Skin of the Earth

I keep meaning to post about this but then something happens—more parental emergencies, or contractors cutting the electricity, or a hand injury (more on that another time)—and I forget.

A couple of weeks ago I sat down with the crew of Breaking the Glass Slipper, an intersectional feminist podcast that celebrates the contribution of women to speculative fiction. We talked back and forth for 38 minutes about everything from landscape as magic, to embodiment, to putting women, queer folk, crips, and people of colour back into history where we belong—just as much as we do in the present. Most of it is about Hild and Menewood, but for Patreon subscribers there’s a few extra minutes all about Spear. The episode is “Beneath the Skin of the Earth”. Enjoy!

If you prefer, you can listen right here: