Comet 30Th November 2007
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Volume 2, Issue 3 Comet 30th November 2007 Comet: the Newsletter of the Norman Nicholson Society price £1.50 Cultural Landscapes: synopses of papers presented at the NN Study The Scandinavian Link— an interesting correspondence Day, June 13th 2007 27 years ago a Swedish Scandinavian countries Closing” and particularly Nicholson and teacher of English, Mr. are perhaps not only your description of the Norway—part 1 G ö r a n S t r a n d e l l , historically based as you b l o o d y c r a n e s b i l l , approached Norman indicate with your family Geraneum sanguineum, Another anniversary— Nicholson by letter to name Cornthwaite but the which I myself this week Nicholson’s ‘Windscale’ ask if he could meet environment in which you happened to demonstrate by David Boyd him in Millom during the live and have drawn to my daughters on the ‘A Child of God’— a summer vacation in impulses for your writing islands off the Swedish poem by Wendy Cook order to discuss also resembles our west coast where we are Nicholson’s religious countryside, I think. now enjoying a fortnight’s ‘Black Combe White’— dramas. Two of the Perhaps this type of land- holiday! by David Cooper letters which Mr. scape generously lends Having access to this Strandell sent to itself both to the active Schools’ Poetry letter in the archive Nicholson at that time life and living and calm Competition Winners makes a tremendous can be read in the John meditation thus giving impact on the reader as it The Scandinavian Rylands Library as they rise to activities which is clear that not only did Link— form part of the Norman stimulate us in many Nicholson agree to talk to a correspondence Nicholson Archive. Mr. respects. I am thinking of Mr. Strandell, but that he Strandell remarked in your interest in birds and also offered him generous the second of these let- flowers shown in hospitality— ters: Your links with the “ W e d n e s d a y E a r l y [continues on page 9] CULTURAL LANDSCAPES In 1993 UNESCO introduced the of human activities, both agricultural Ranberg not only emphasizes the category “Cultural Landscapes” for and industrial, in his understanding of historical aspects of such a land- their World Heritage Sites and, as is what a living, organically evolving land- scape, its climate and topography, known to many living in Cumbria and scape, actually is. but also its continuous evolution. beyond, the Lake District National Park is now in the process of putting The concept of a cultural landscape, In this edition of “Comet” there are together an application to be protected by law and supported by detailed synopses of the papers positive political action, such as presented at the Study Day at inscribed as a World Heritage Site. favourable taxation for those who use Crooklands on June 13th, and also According to a report prepared by the landscape in a culturally sensitive a continuation of the Norwegian Chris Blandford Associates (on-line at manner, has long been promoted in theme in the first of a series of http://www.lake-district.gov.uk/ Norway, perhaps partially as a result of articles which will look at index/looking_after/projects/ the eco-philosophical writings of Arne Nicholson’s fascination with his whs.html) “The Lake District land- Næss. An essay by Per Ole Andersen- Nordic heritage. scape reveals an exceptional testi- Ranberg of the Norwegian Farmers’ mony to the continuous history of Union (on-line at www.olavsrosa.no/en/ Other highlights include the results interaction between man and nature redaksjonelt.aspx?id=146722) empha- of the Schools’ Poetry Competition, over 14,000 years.” The Study Day sizes many points with which a an appreciation of “Black Combe on Norman Nicholson’s poetry and Cumbrian farmer would agree, in White” by Dr. David Cooper, and a prose, organized by the University of particular: “A journey through the response to “Windscale” by David Lancaster’s Centre for North-West Norwegian cultural landscape is a Boyd. You will also find initial plans Regional Studies in conjunction with journey through a man-made land- for 2008. In March we will mark the the NN Society, emphasized, among scape, created by farmers. It is through society’s 2nd birthday: please help other themes, how prescient clearing the forest and cultivating the us to make next year as successful Nicholson had been in his vision of a land that the landscape that we see as this one. Ideas for future events Greater Lakeland and in his inclusion today has come about.” Andersen- are warmly welcomed. AF Page 2 Comet A Cultural Landscape Nicholson and Norway (part 1) by Antoinette Fawcett Since olden times the main In an autobiographical fragment ship awarded to him in 1973 to visit source of livelihood in Norway which Nicholson composed after his Norway in the summer of 1974. But this wife Yvonne’s death, he moves from was not Nicholson’s first trip there, nor has been the cultivation of the reflecting on the hills which “remind was it his last. He and Yvonne travelled soil. Small individual us of where we come from” and to Norway three times in total: by ship holdings are typical for remain the “basic stuff of our world” and coastal steamer in 1965 (The in spite of the actions of humans in Coastal Tour), by ship and car in 1974, Norwegian agriculture. Over shaping the landscape to their needs, and by aeroplane, trains and coaches in 9/10 of the existing farms to describing his teenage stay in a 1978. Given that Nicholson made no sanatorium in the New Forest, the obvious attempt to travel to any other consists of less than 25 acres of return to Millom and finally his foreign country— in spite of invitations to arable land and only 37 in the “marriage to a wife who drove a car”, visit the US and Russia, and in spite of whole country have more than enormously extending the range of being able to read Italian (see the what he could know of the world by evidence presented in Stella Halkyard’s 250 acres. Many farms have personal experience. But like the article in Comet II. 2), — it is clear that however in addition to their Orkney writer George Mackay Brown the Norse heritage which Nicholson who rarely travelled away from the refers to time and again as being an arable land also natural and Orkney Islands— and when presented essential part of his own and Cumbrian artificial meadows as well as with the opportunity to extend the nature, must have been the draw. mountain pastures, and a range of his knowledge chose to go to Ireland, arguably a landscape and a Nicholson’s last published collection of great many of the farmers own history with similarities to his own, poems, Sea to the West, contains four forests. In the coastal districts Nicholson too “always seemed to be pieces which relate to his first-hand exploring my own patch of South knowledge of Norway (Fjord, Glacier, farming is also frequently Cumberland. Wester Ross, Midsummer Fires on the Sognefjord and combined with fishing and in Sutherland, Shetland, Norway — all Cornthwaite), but he had announced his interest in this part of his heritage very the interior with lumbering, fur these told me more about my own home, showed me more mountain early on in his writing life in a number of production and handicraft. flowers, more sea-birds and, above different ways. In the 1944 collection all, told me more about the Viking Five Rivers the poem “For the Grieg Practically speaking all Centenary” is full of a hard and sharp Norwegian farmers own their ancestry of the Nicholsons and Cornthwaites that I sprang from imagery that links sound, dialect, farms. They work them well weather, landscape, flora and fauna (NCN4/1/4/4). together and deliberately evokes the and the yields they obtain per In the previous issue of Comet, in a Cumbrian connection to Norway. The acreage unit are among the letter sent to Nicholson’s cousin most evocative lines speak of “the highest in the world. Their Doreen Cornthwaite, we saw how Norsemen” who “foraged down the Nicholson used the Travelling Scholar- dales / Crossing the sea with the methods have kept abreast with the times, rationalization The mast-beater blows, the bow chisels the smooth sea into spray-storms: and mechanization being the watchwords at present. IMAGE REMOVED FOR REASONS OF COPYRIGHT Fertilizers are widely used and the soil is being worked to the SIMILAR IMAGES OF THE BOAT IN WHICH NORMAN AND YVONNE limit. SAILED CAN BE FOUND HERE: Excerpted from Norway in a http://bergen-sporveis-historie.origo.no/-/image/ Nutshell show/2304139_bds-ts-leda?ref=checkpoint by Eivind Erichsen; John Grieg’s Boktrykkeri, Bergen (undated— mid to late 1950s— a relatively short time before Nicholson’s first trip to Norway.) M/S Leda The boat in which Yvonne and Norman Nicholson sailed to Norway, August 1965 Volume 2, Issue 3 Page 3 Good, Wild and Sacred Nicholson and Norway (continued) commonly-used nouns. migrant redwing, / Thieving heifer and The thought that wild might yow and teg, / Leaving their names The same interest in the Nordic culture scotched on the flanks of the hills, / is announced in a wide variety of also be sacred returned to the Leaving also the crackling northern Nicholson’s other writings, in the Occident only with the tongues, / The dialect crisp with the drama, for instance, where Prophesy click of the wind / In the thorns of a to the Wind, although set in a dystopic Romantic Movement.