Mother's Blood, Sister Songs

Mother's Blood, Sister Songs, Episode 2 'Sister Songs'.

Broadcast RTÉ Lyric fm Jan 5th 6-7pm.

In Episode 2 of this music led arts documentary composer Linda Buckley meets women composers and musicians in Iceland, exploring how the genetics of Iceland reveals its Irish motherhood. What is the root of Iceland's extraordinary creativity? 

Linda talks to harpist Katie Buckley, flautist Melkorka Olafsdottir, and hears how Björk creates a collaborative and creative environment drawing on the rich legacy of Iceland's musical tradition.

The music played in this episode includes, in this order:

Linda Buckley - Fall Approaches

Linda Buckley - Numarimur

Björk - Mother Heroic 

Linda Buckley - Siúil A Rún

Sigur Ros - Odins' Raven Magic

Melkorka Olafsdottir playing Telemann Fantasia 6 Dolce

Móðir mín í kví kví - Icelandic folk song

Bara Grimsdottir - Æskustöðvarnar

Medieval Icelandic folk singing - Tvísöngur

Kristín Lárusdóttir (Selló Stína) - Haustið nálgast 

Kristin Larusdottir Sello Stina - Fold  ( vox Steindor Anderson)

Kristín Lárusdóttir (Selló-Stína) - Von

Bara Grimsdottir - Blíðviðri

Sigur Ros - Glósóli

JFDR - White Sun

Björk - The Anchor Song

Lara Bryndis Eggertsdottir - I heard the Sound of their Wings

Vox Feminae - Móðir mín í kví, kví

Anna Thorvaldsdottir (Iceland Symphony Orchestra & Ilan Volkov) - Aeriality

Björk - Utopia

Katie Buckley - Snowy February

Bjork - Violently happy

Vox Feminae - Visur Vatnsenda Rosu

Björk - Tabula Rasa

Björk - Blissing Me

Anna Thorvaldsdottir - Heyr þú oss himnum á

Linda Buckley & Irene Buckley- Song of the Siren (vox Annette Buckley)

Linda Buckley - Fall Approaches

Linda Buckley - Numarimur

Mother's Blood, Sister Songs : Episode 1 'Mother's Blood'
Broadcast on RTE Lyric fm Sunday December 29th 6pm-7pm.
Mother's Blood, Sister Songs is a two part radio and podcast documentary, the story of how the genetics of Iceland reveals its Irish motherhood, presented by Irish composer Linda Buckley and produced by Athena Media for RTE lyric fm.
In Epsiode 1 'Mother's Blood' Linda begins her journey at her parents dairy farm at the Old Head of Kinsale, sharing her own story of sound and music and how Iceland became part it of through music and how when she finally went there in 2014 to write music, she felt strangely at home.
That quest to uncover the connections between Ireland and Iceland starts a journey through time and history, from 9th Century Gaelic ireland during the Vikings to the genetics research of Dr. Kári Stefánsson in Reykjavik. Linda finds out about the female slaves taken by Norwegian Vikings to Iceland and becomes fascinated by one story in the Icelandic Sagas of Melkorka, a supposedly mute Irish slave, said to be the daughter of an Irish King. Is Melkorka real or imagined and where these Gaelic slaves the first mothers of Iceland?

The music heard in this episode includes:
Björk - Vísur Vatnsenda-Rósu ( Icelandic folksong)
Linda Buckley - Fall Approaches * theme
Sigur rós - Ekki Múkk
Linda Buckley - Numarimur (vox Elizabeth Hilliard) * theme
Steindór Andersen - Haustið Na´lgast
Sigur rós - Sæglópur
Linda Buckley Hekla
Linda Buckley Fridur
Linda Buckley - Drowning Pool
Linda Buckley - Siúil A Rúin (traditional air)
Valgeir Sigurðsson - Ghosts (World Premiere 2013 performed by Crash Ensemble)
Daniel Bjarnason - Bow to String
Linda Buckley - Ó Iochtar Mara (vox Iarla Ó Lionaird)
Björk - Mother Heroic
Sigur rós - Kjartan sveinsson-sidasti baerinn
Sigur rós - óðin's raven magic - chapter 3
Muireann Níc Amhlaoibh - Slán le Máigh
Linda Buckley - Torann
Vox Feminae -Vísur Vatnsenda-Rósu
Fields - Anna Thorvaldsdóttir
Heyr þú oss himnum á - Anna Thorvaldsdóttir
Sello Stína - Fold ( vox Steindór Andersen)
Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh & Billy Mag Fhloinn - Port na bPúcaí
Guðrún Jóhanna Ólafsdóttir - Móðir mín í kví, kví I (icelandic folk song - lullaby)

In this final look back on her exploration from Ireland to Iceland, composer Linda Buckley gives an insight into what she discovered and what she feels it tells us about creativity and music making in Iceland. 

The story of Melkorka, the Irish princess slave of the Icelandic Sagas, has haunted the journey. But her life and story has been given more substance by the genetic research showing the majority of women in the settlement period of Iceland were indeed gaelic and presumed, like her, to be slaves. The genetics has given reality to the theory that Irish and Scottish teenage girls and women were the first mothers of Iceland. Our project has been obsessed with not just giving voice to those often silenced lives but to a sense of what their impact and legacy has been, through the stories, the songs and the language they gave their children. How has that influenced and inspired the literary, musical traditions and creativity of Iceland from then to today?

The documentary series Mother's Blood, Sister Songs - a two part, two hour series, goes out on RTE Lyric fm on December 29 and Jan 5th 2020.

Melkorka Ólafsdóttir is a flautist in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and takes her name from the Melkorka of the Icelandic Sagas. She traces her lineage back to that Melkorka, who is said to have been an Irish Princess taken into slave and bought by an Icelandic chieftain and brought to Iceland.

Melkorka is a poet, as well as a flautist, and she has written a poem for her name sake and she shares it with us in Icelandic and English.
In this episode producer Helen Shaw and composer Linda Buckley sit down with Melkorka and talk music, Bjork and motherhood.

Los Angeles based visual artist Joan Perlman came to Iceland through dreams, and has been going back regularly for 20 years. In her most recent project she focusses on The Drowning Pool in Iceland's old open valley parliament, Thingvellir, where, around a open neck of water, women were once executed by drowning for crimes often of sexuality and moral behaviour like incest, adultery and infanticide.

For this project she connected with the Irish composer Linda Buckley who wrote a piece of music to score Joan's visual representation of "Drowning Pool".

In this conversation Linda unpacks Joan's work, finds out what brought her to Iceland, what inspires her, and how they are both, as artists, drawn to Iceland's story of landscape and people for their work.

Vilborg Davíðsdóttir is an acclaimed Icelandic writer who draws on the women of the Icelandic Sagas for inspiration in her work. She has written a trilogy on the story of Auður the Deep Minded, who was married to Olaf the White, the Irish born Viking King of Dublin and a novel Korka drawing on the story of Melkorka the supposedly mute Irish princess slave who has been such a focus of our own series, Mother's Blood, Sister Songs.

In this podcast, composer Linda Buckley and producer Helen Shaw sit down with Vilborg, in her Reykjavik home, and she talks about her self confessed obsession with the Scottish and Irish gaelic connections to the settlement of Iceland and the Icelandic Sagas.

She shares why she made the birth of a red haired child to Auður the breaking point of her marriage to Olaf the White (who thinks the red hair is a sign of infidelity with an Irishman!) and why the slave narrative in the Icelandic Sagas remains a difficult one for Icelandic people who naturally want their origin story to be one of heroes, not slaves.
The music is by Linda Buckley : Numarimur

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is an acclaimed writer in both Irish and English. She often references folklore and folktales in her work of contemporary fiction and she is deeply immersed in both Irish and Icelandic folktales through both her own extensive academic research and also through that of her late husband the Swedish folklorist Bo Almqvist.

Éilís first visited Iceland in the late 1970s, a time when few Irish people had the opportunity to go there, and when Iceland was quite a remote and isolated country. She returns often and has many Icelandic friends and colleagues including Professor Gísli Sigurðsson (who we talked to in an earlier episode). 

Gísli was a student of Bo Almqvist at University College Dublin and it was during his time studying under Almqvist that he wrote his master thesis on the gaelic influences in the Icelandic Sagas. At the time his mentor and friend thought Gísli was overstating the Irish influences in both the settlement of Iceland and its literature but as Gísli himself told us the genetic research from DeCode Genetics, showing that over 65% of the women in the first generation of Iceland were gaelic, has proven his theory. 

In this conversation for Mother's Blood, Sister Songs producer Helen Shaw sat down with Éilís at her home in Dublin to talk about Ireland and Iceland, what connects us and what defines us, and how our folk stories resonate with often dark and malevolent spirits, and where fairies are not tinkerbell but creatures who can steal your child, perhaps showing how closely our ancestors, particularly the women, lived with death and the precarious nature of life and birth itself.

Arnhildur Valgarðsdóttir or 'Adda' (the name she performs under) is an extraordinary women of song and music. Linda Buckley and producer Helen Shaw met up with her at a church in Iceland where she plays organ, piano and leads the choir. 

Jón Páll Björnsson on the Settlement of Iceland

The curator of the Settlement Exhibition Jón Páll Björnsson takes producer Helen Shaw on a tour of the exhibition to find out more about the settlement and what it tells us about the people who first made Iceland their home. 

He explains the way the Viking society was structured and how he thinks women slaves might have supported both the agricultural and sail weaving work of the community.

Katie Buckley is a classical harpist who hails from Atlanta in the United States but who has found a home in Iceland and a life with Iceland Symphony Orchestra. She began studying harp when she was 8 with Susan Bennett Brady, and started with an Irish harp, then classical harp and continued her studies in San Francisco with opera harpist Ann Adams.

Kristín Lárusdóttir ‘Selló Stína’ on music at the heart of Iceland.

Kristín Lárusdóttir is a cellist who crosses into electronica, jazz, tango and folk music and she loves to perform the traditional Icelandic folk rimur songs with her cello, mixing old and new.

Linda Buckley and producer Helen Shaw met up with her at the local church in Iceland where she plays cello at Sunday services to talk about the importance of musice in Iceland and why Iceland draws people home and why music is now such a communal force in the country.

Bára Grímsdóttir and Chris Foster are folk singers and musicians. Bára is a legendary force in Icelandic folk music and song tradition, and she is an accomplished composer herself. 

In this interview with composer Linda Buckley they both shares the story of rima, the rhyming chants of Iceland, and their work in preserving them, as well as their performance together through their folk group FUNI. 

MBSS: Podcast 8. Dr. Gunnþórunn Guðmundsdóttir on The Power of Storytelling in Ireland & Iceland.

Dr. Gunnþórunn Guðmundsdóttir is Professor of Literature at the University of Iceland, Reykjavik. She's has been a visiting scholar at University College Dublin under its Iceland-Ireland project and for this podcast in the Mother's Blood, Sister Songs series composer and presenter Linda Buckley asked her to explore what links Irish and Icelandic storytelling. 

Mother's Blood, Sister Songs : 6. Professor Terry Gunnell.

Mother's Blood, Sister Songs: 5. Professor Gísli Sigurðsson.

Professor Poul Holm is an expert voice on the Viking settlements in Ireland. He is Professor of Environmental History at Trinity College Dublin. He is a Danish native and before moving to Dublin he was Rector of Roskilde University in Denmark. He is the Director of the Trinity Centre for Environmental Humanities, a member of the Royal Irish Academy’s Standing Committee for Archaeology, and Vice-Chair of the Humanities class of Academia Europea.

In this audio conversation with producer Helen Shaw Poul gives an insight into the Norwegian Viking raids, and settlements, in Ireland from 790s and across the 9th and 10th centuries and how the Norse and Gaelic people became intermixed. He gives a sense of the market for people, for slaves, throughout this time and how by the late 9th Century the Norse Vikings took gaelic men and women, mostly slaves, to forge their settlement in Iceland. He draws on the famous story of Melkorka from the Icelandic Sagas, the slave Irish Princess, who mothers a future leader of the new Icelandic world, and a character, and story, who has inspired our 'Mother's Blood, Sister Songs' project.