North Country Theatre Artistic Director: Nobby Dimon  http://www.northcountrytheatre.com/artdir.html

has directed yet another play which was absolutely oar-some.  The matinée production was staged, once again, at the Hutton Rudby Village Hall on Saturday 5 March 2011 at 2.30 pm.

The last time I reported on a Nobby Dimon play, that was held in the same rural location, can be read here: http://www.writelink.co.uk/community/blogs/entry/Home-on-the-Range, only this time Skallagrimson Keeps His Head was specially commissioned by the Yorvik Viking Festival.

Before the play began Nobby asked the audience who had heard of the main character: Egil Skallagrimson. Perhaps ironically, few hands were raised as opposed to many being raised when asked who had heard of King Eric Bloodaxe.

Whereas Egil Skallagrimson could be viewed as a mythological character, in Iceland he is still very much a folk hero and children there are still taught about him in school.

Egil’s epic 10^th century Icelandic saga centres on the life of Egil Skallagrimson, an Icelandic farmer, Viking and skaldic poet.  Here is an excellent link to learn more of the saga entitled: Egil Skallagrimson and the Viking Ideal by Christina von Nolcken: http://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/1/777777122294/

Nobby went on to claim that skaldic poetry is a bit like today’s performance poetry as the tales passed on can be folksy, accompanied by music (see picture of six stringed liae) and images – the poets may even dress-up etc.  The tales of war were probably passed on by rote for the bards to epically perform from the spoken word.  The big difference is that poetry then was often referred to as Odin’s Meade and for this culture, poetry and war went hand in hand.

He further added that the strength in word-weaving often conjured up an image by linking words together such as: swan-necked-ship; arrows feel like hail they say; bitter-battle-deed; shields were shattered in the fray.

“When the ice-fast fjord

Fractured into floes

I went aboard

my wooden whale-road rider…”

Overall, the play was a fast moving tongue-in-cheek version of Egil’s epic Icelandic saga: a classic that proved to be an educationally informative and entertaining mix of murder, mayhem and mirth in equal measure.