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language: Scots
country: UK
year: 2022
form: novel
genre(s): historical, speculative
dates read: 20.2.25-6.3.25
continuing my foray into contemporary Scots literature with my friend, we read Donald Smith’s Saut an Bluid, subtitled “A Scotsaga”, which reworks material from the Orkneyinga saga and the Prose Edda within a (pseudo)historical frame set around the death of Alexander III of Scotland. it is a pensive, enigmatic (but less enigmatic than we wanted) meditation on historiography, memory, and — obliquely — politics.
the frame narrative is recorded by Donal, an orphaned young man learning to write at a priory in Pittenweem but drawn more strongly to the oral narratives of Skald (aka Skaldie), a local ferryman with an encyclopedic knowledge of both Scoto-Norse history (centered on the jarls of Orkney) and Norse mythology. the structural conceit of the novel is that Skald is regularly called to the priory to add his oral-historical knowledge to their chronicle of Scottish history, and then in the evening Skald and Donal go to the village tavern, where Skald tells mythological stories to entertain the drinkers. most of the chapters contain two stories, one (pseudo)historical and one mythological. chapter six adds a (pseudo)folkloric story and the final chapter adds a biographical account of Skald’s life (more on this later).
of the three books we’ve read thus far, I would put Saut an Bluid solidly behind Deep Wheel Orcadia — which is just a masterpiece — but ahead of But n Ben A-Go-Go. while But n Ben A-Go-Go had a promising presence and engaging prose, it ended up simultaneously rushed and meandering, while the structural conceit (a pair of stories nested within the frame narrative) keeps Saut an Bluid much neater. it is, anything else aside, a much better constructed book.
women are basically completely absent from the narrative, apart from the story of Aud Deip Mindit (Ketilsdóttir). the closest thing to a female protagonist is Bridie, an older woman who we later learn is part of a network of “cailleachs” extending across Scotland, an intriguing concept that remains both underdeveloped and a bit marred by its association with Smith’s evocation of ancient matriarchy.
the flip side of this is that, unfortunately, we get several of the stories about Loki (“thon evil wee bastart”, as the crowd at the tavern calls him) cross-dressing for his evil deeds, which, while certainly present in medieval accounts of Norse mythology, nonetheless raise red flags in a contemporary British context. why these stories, specifically? what are they doing besides relying lazily on the transmisogynist trope of the evil man in a dress?
insofar as the novel bills itself as a “Scotsaga”, the selection of stories also raises questions about the novel’s attitude towards Scotland. what is it about this particular historical moment in ca. 1286 that the novel wants us to attend to? Skald’s historical narratives present the Scandinavian and Scoto-Norse rulers he discusses ambivalently, highlighting the tensions between Christianity — and Christian historiography — and a(n imagined) pagan history. the portrait the histories paint is of Scotland as a divided space, one whose divisions threaten to tear it apart. meanwhile, many of the mythological narratives center on Loki, pointing us to a bad actor (“coincidentally” a transmisogynist caricature) who is creating and exploiting divisions. this is belied, though, by Skald’s rejection of Christianity and Christian historiography: the novel appears to want us to prioritize the “pagan” elements of the historical narratives and the mythological stories. mainly it seems like Smith just didn’t think at all about the ideological implications of the cross-dressing Loki stories.
given that one of the first of the mythological narratives is a creation story, we were both expecting the final one to be Ragnarok — it seemed apt, and like it would complement (albeit in exaggerated form) the ambiguity of the moment in Scottish history that the novel places us in. in fact, though, Smith doesn’t tell the story of Ragnarok at all, though Skald alludes to it in several of the stories (both historical and mythological). on consideration, I think the last mythological narrative — the binding of Loki — actually is a good fit, because it leaves the mythological world caught in suspension just as the frame characters are, uncertain what comes after Alexander’s death, but in the moment of finishing the book I was a bit disappointed.
the real problem is that the novel has spent 145 pages implying to the reader that Skald might be Odin: he is one-eyed, has access to supernatural knowledge (including occasional visions), is attached to the “pagan” past, and has mysterious origins. this was an extremely compelling possibility — and then in the last five pages we’re given Skald’s whole backstory, removing any of the ambiguity and mystery. he’s not a god, just a guy who knows a lot of stories and a bit of magic. in principle I don’t like this: so often books like this would give in to the temptation to be About The Power Of Stories, and making Skald just a guy entirely eliminates that, which could be cool — in a different book. in this book, the result is a rather unsatisfying anticlimax. it should have been About The Power Of Stories, actually — then it would have sustained the ambiguity and mystery.
there’s also a side issue re the book’s handling of Gaelic history, first in that, as I observed above, it accepts ancient matriarchy theories, and second in that I think the timeline it implies for the Anglicization of Fife is a little bit premature (as is the explicit use of “Scots” by characters in the novel to refer to the language it’s written in). it would be nice to find a Scots text that both fully grasps and actually engages with Scotland’s Gaelic history.
all of that said: I enjoyed this book and would tentatively. the copyediting is awful (it was apparently commissioned by Luath, the publisher, and I suspect it was written and published in a hurry), but the stories are engaging, the frame narrative atmosphere is effectively tense and fraught, and I also think it’s an interesting aesthetic-linguistic exercise. Smith is clearly imitating an early modern Scots (with plural -is and past participle -it, e.g.), it also seems from some of his word choices — after consulting the Dictionaries of the Scots Language — that he doesn’t expect his audience to be fully equipped to read a historical novel with fantasy elements in Scots. the word that especially jumped out at me was his use of “dwarf” (rather than dwerch or similar) and especially the use of “dwarves” as the plural, which is not only English but also specifically Tolkien. it would be interesting to see more experiments in this area, especially if they fully embraced fantasy instead of placing themselves within a pseudohistorical frame (not least because it would then be less likely to be Weird About Gaelic).
moods: mysterious, reflective