My Nifty Online Resume

So in lieu of the standard boring list of jobs and such, I've decided to make some sort of blog page out of my work history. Hopefully this will entertain as well as get me hired to a position of wealth and power.

Or not.

Here goes.

The Long Saga of Sam's Employment and Education:

I started working pretty early in life, my first job being that of an all-purpose laborer at a ranch just outside of my puny little home town of South Prairie, WA which I landed at the ripe old age of 12. I worked there throughout my academic career at White River High School (where I graduated with honors) and Pierce College (where I maintained a 4.0 grade average, out of a possible 4.0),most often in the summer. I picked up a lot of useful skills, mostly carpentry and machine operation, although I must say that being taught how to use dynamite and bulldozers by an intoxicated retired military engineer should be illegal. Come to think of it, it probably is.

Be that as it may, I emerged from the Hidden Valley Ranch (no, honestly, that was the name of the place) at least physically unscathed, with enough money to pay for my 1994-1995 AFS exchange trip to Iceland. Where I attended Kvennaskólinn í Reykjavik. Where I didn't work and didn't really show up to classes to any real degree. Best year of my life.

My next job, the summer I turned 19, was likewise in the idyllic confines of South Prairie. After my return from my exchange trip, I wound up working 16 hours a day, 6 days a week for the fire-trap/limb-removal service known as Hilstrom's Cabinets Inc. This lasted just long enough for my wrist to be broken by a wood-chipper with most of its safety devices removed to improve efficiency, at which point I was "let go" to save them the money of paying for my medical bills.

The next job was a particular low-point in my employment history. I got a job at a Burger King. ' 'Nuff said.

Things started to look up when I began to attend Green River Community College (3.8 GPA, graduated with Highest Honors) where I got a job tutoring in the Student Help Center (English, English as a Foreign Language, French, Spanish, Biology, Geology, and Philosophy) as well as teaching informal classes in International English as a Foreign Language for the International Program, and helping out with some remedial classes. This is to date one of my favorite jobs of all time, as the work was challenging, varied, down right fun, and utterly free of high-explosives, dangerous machinery, and the nigh-mandatory consumption of trans-fatty acids. I also spent a great deal of time hunched over a tired old Mac writing stories and editorials for the Green River Current, in between editing and arguing with the professor about lay-out and too many feel-good articles.

After I graduated Green River with credits far in excess of the necessary 90, I returned to Iceland to study Icelandic at Haskóli Íslands. Sadly, my previous slackage as an AFSer seemed to stick, and I didn't finish my first year of studies. I did, however, work as a security-guard/handy-man for The Reykjavík Botanical Garden, one of the easiest gigs I've ever had, as well as teaching the occasional class at Enskuskólinn.

I then returned to the States in order to discover that I absolutely loathed attending The Evergreen State College, which did not last long at all. I wound up doing a lot of security work, both for The Puyallup Fair and for an outfit called Star Management Services where the fact that I lack the oh-my-god-you're-famous gene landed me work as backstage security and I got to meet interesting people like Johnny Rotten and Isaac Hays. A bit later I started working for Tully's, an espresso chain that fought a brave, but ultimately doomed battle against the Evil Empire of Starbucks, as a barrista and taster, as well as writing some of their ad copy.

Eventually, I got bored with the US and returned to Iceland in 1999, in order to work for the family of a good friend, providing home-care and support for the family during a very trying time. This wound up sequewaying into a full-time position at Reykjavik Social Services, where I worked both in "home help" and as a social counselor. The pay might have left something to be desired, but in the two plus years I worked there, I learned far more Icelandic than I ever picked up as an AFSer or in HÍ, so that made up for a lot.

After another overlong stay in the States, I worked briefly for Kaffitár, before landing a teaching gig in January of 2003 at Mimir-simenntun, where I continued to teach until 2006. I also began working with Vinnuskóli Reykjavíkur during the summers, as I had by this point reentered HÍ in order to finish my long-postponed BA in English Lit. My college years saw me working a variety of other jobs as well, including editing/translating the now-defunct design magazine aVs (an job that paid off, if only in experience), private tutoring gigs, assistant managing for the deservedly defunct Mama's Tacos, and finally working for one of my current three employers, ÍTR, or the Reykjavík Department of Youth and Recreation.

After graduating HÍ, with a GPA of 8,8 (Damn that last class and its annoying group work! It should have been a 9!) I continued working for ÍTR at Vogasel where I was recently promoted to "Frístundaráðgjafi" as well as working as a substitute English teacher/tutor and assistant librarian at Vogaskóli, and continuing to see one client for the Social Services. The plan was, and still is, to return to HÍ and finish an M.Ped, granting me the right to teach at Icelandic secondary schools/junior colleges.

But that's just the plan.

Volunteerism and Such:

Over the years I've done my share of volunteer and non-paid work. I've "volunteered" for the Town of South Prairie, including writing and editing memos and other Town publications, helping to design the town logo, and installing equipment in and maintaining the two town parks.

If you're wondering why "volunteered" is in quotes, it's because my mother is the mayor.

I've also volunteered for Second Harvest, an organization that gleams fresh produce from harvested fields for local food banks, as well as The Foothills Rails to Trails Project, which converts abandoned rail lines into pedestrian and biking paths. In my teens I volunteered as a camp counselor for my school district's outdoor education program, where I got to teach sixth graders archery and canoeing and other fun stuff, as well as volunteer English tutoring/mentoring for exchange students in my old school district. I'd love to volunteer at The Intercultural Center, or get involved in local politics, but who has the time?

Hobbies and Other Creative Wastes of Time:
I used to have a lot more of these. Seriously. Once upon a time I made jewelry and musical instruments for pocket money and fun, played music with a revolving collection of friends, held informal fencing sessions, worked out a lot, hiked, biked, and home-brewed.
These days its been whittled down to blogging, remodeling my apartment, reading, and watching geeky movies with my friends.
I've got to change that.

The Job I Want:

While I am relatively happily employed at the moment, I really don't see my current jobs as adding up to a long-term career. Ideally, I'd like to work as a professional blogger, writer, editor, English instructor (junior college or higher), fashion maven, rock star, or Salma Hayak's pool boy.

Hire me?

Apples and Oranges

Comic Apples and Tragic Oranges:

Comparing, but mostly contrasting, the writings of David Arnarson and Kristjana Gunnars.

“...As far as I can understand it, tragedy, and the ability to understand tragedy, is essentially a narrow, elitist sensibility of the upper classes that allows them to feel superior to the people in the pit. I’ll cast my lot with the people in the pit.”

(David Arnarson, “Story Forming.”)

Introduction: Dead Authors and Liberated Students

One of the most difficult essays I have ever been forced to read was Roland Barthes’ “Death of the Author”. I spent the better part of a week puzzling through a badly-photocopied collection of obtuse and seemingly purposely incomprehensible text, only to find a single diamond in all the dust. “There is nothing outside the Text”, writes Barthes, and therefore to attempt to discover what the “author-god” really means is an exercise in futility. The entire liberal-humanist approach to literature is annihilated in that essay. The reader is liberated to interpret writings as he or she sees fit, without regard to the desires or aims of the author or any other authority.

Sadly, this good news has yet to reach the hallowed halls of academia. In approaching this essay, I was confronted with the dubious task of amassing the necessary secondary sources to somehow legitimize my reading of David Anarson’s The Happiest Man in the World and Kristjana Gunnars Any Day but This. I found very little useful, aside from an interview with Arnason. Add to that the difficulty of writing a short paper on two collections of short-stories, which has the effect of multiplying the number of characters and possible themes to the point at which one would need to write a book as long as the collection to adequately examine them in detail and you get one daunting prospect.

So I’m taking a leap. I’m hoping my own writing will make up for the lack of regurgitated academic sources. Hope I don’t break something when I land.

Upper-class, educated, Canadian, middle-aged, and different altogether

In both these collections, there is an overwhelming majority of well-educated, professional, and upper-class (or at least previously upper-class) Canadian characters in their middle-age, with a smattering of children, teens and twenty-something’s, and elderly characters rounding out the mix. The voice of the stories, especially in the case of Gunnars, is almost entirely in this mode, with the other voices slipping in as dialogue. Given this, and the similar backgrounds of both authors, one would think that the voices would sound similar, would pontificate on similar troubles or move through similar situations, and to an extent this is true. Both collections contain a wide variety of similar people dealing with the post-modern angst of middle age and retirement, but here the two authors divide quite sharply. While Gunnars’ characters wallow in a seemingly unending series of tragedies, large and small, and grapple with their angst and long for escape, Arnarson’s clownish protagonists serve as entertaining parables on modern life, alternately bemused and reveling in a world they can’t understand, and have given up trying to.

Escaping Any Day but This

An overriding theme in Any Day But This is a longing for escape, the urge to cast off the hubbub world of professions and modernity, and escape to someplace somewhere where one can lead a content, slow existence. The “Sunshine Coast” of British Columbia, a warm, tranquil spot without extremes of weather, serves as a convenient symbol of this longing for escape. Other places serve this function as well, such as Svelvik, Norway, and a village in southern Sweden “where there is magic...Where life is magical”. Gunnars’ characters seem always on the verge of leaving something, be it a marriage, a home, a career, or life itself. The majority of these voices are far from content with their lot, touched by tragedies large and small, ridden with anxiety about relationships, the past, the future, or even the dark.

Yet even when they leave, they do not truly escape. The female protagonist in Code Pink and Denim plans her escape, going so far as to quit her job and pack up her apartment, but we never see her go. Arne Ibsen, in Directions in Which We Travel, escapes to Canada only to find his new home a prison of his own making. Nancy Hedgecroft seeks solace and a way out in the form of her pastor, only to be subject to his unwelcome advances in Dancing in the Market Place. The list goes on and on.

This lends a distinctly nihilistic feeling to some of the stories. Gunnars’ characters inhabit a world without meta-narratives, without God, without “Progress”, without permanence. Without a source of over-arching meaning in their lives, they wander about in a kind of existential fog looking for whatever lantern they can find, be it a grandchild (The Secret Source of Tears), the security of an older lover (Pleasures Liberty Cannot Know), or the illusionary comfort of controlling one’s small domestic sphere (The Road Between Wind and Water). And yet the author chooses to leave it to the reader whether or not these lanterns in the foggy Sunshine Coast of her creation are really lighting the way, or just illusions in and of themselves.

There in a certain pretension to these stories which troubles the reader. There is no humor as such and precious little joy. The focus is so purely on the tragic that one gets the sense the author is trying too hard to be taken seriously. Add to that such “literary” devices as quotes and references to authors and works, most of which obscure, that serve to weed out those not intellectually prepared. The author’s attempt at creating a feeling of coherency by having characters from previous stories appear briefly in later ones feels forced and fails at its aim. Finally, the purposeful elimination of “endings” in the traditional short-story style results in the tales simply stopping, without achieving any catharsis at all, and leaving the reader in an uncomfortable limbo.

My closest friend and I have this ongoing joke. Whenever we’re faced with a work of fiction that “tries too hard”, or is exclusionary, or pretentious, we sentence the author to imaginary torments for “committing Literature”. After reading Any Day But This, I felt forced to decide that the author is “committing Literature” in the first degree. My sentence is more humane than usual. I think she should read some David Arnarson.

Laughing at the po-mo condition

The gulf in tone, style, and content between Arnarson’s work and that of Gunnars’ is like a canyon. This is interesting. Both authors come from similar backgrounds. They are of Icelandic descent, both are academics, both live or lived in Canada, and both have chosen to write mainly short stories. But while Gunnars peoples her work with figures of tragedy, Arnarson peoples his The Happiest Man in the World with another sort of character altogether. While still educated, upper-class, Canadian, and middle-aged, Arnarson’s mid-life-crisis ineffectual male protagonists are very much a foil to Gunnar’s angst-ridden menagerie of voices. Also interesting is that Arnason includes a great deal of “Icelandic” material in his works, be it references to folk tales, names, or simply the location of the story. Gunnars, on the other hand, would appear to be Norwegian if one were to only read Any Day But This.

Arnarson’s characters, even when not taking part in an obvious comedy, are none-the-less laughable. They are victims of their own pretense, as in The Boys and The Naiads, or more-or-less ordinary folk presented with extraordinary circumstances (The Sunfish, The Washing Machine, The Marriage Inspector) who respond with varying degrees of comic effectiveness. Unlike Any Day But This, The Happiest Man in the World is not encumbered by the weight of tragedy. Rather, Arnarson transforms potential tragedies (the twice abandoned husband in Over and Over, or the widowed father in The Event) into moments of rueful comedy or transcendental wonder. His stories seem to say to the reader, “It’s not so bad, nothing can kill you that you can laugh at.” Arnarson’s stories are enhanced by a magical realism, which the author admits to reading a lot of, completely lacking in Gunnars’ work. The laws of space, time, and probability, along with the long established patterns of plot and literary voice are null and void in his stories. The utterly irrational can take place, a man can appear on your doorstep and announce that he is a marriage inspector; a rather effete middle-aged scholar can sail into an erotically charged nude camping myth, bed three beauties, and survive a shipwreck. A trip to a marriage counselor ends with smiles all around as all three involved part ways, bound for the life they truly want to live. Yet the reader believes, not because of the realism, or symbolism, or emotional weight, but because they are good stories.

The short story form is particularly punishing to writers unwilling to give the reader what they want, which in the case of the short story is, as Arnason himself states “the good parts”, with “the dull parts” left out. “The reader has to be entertained and there are ways of doing that. The thing about reading is, as soon as they close the book, that’s it. You’re not there and they don’t have to be polite. They’re sitting in their own living rooms and when you bore them, they close the book.” (Arnason,” Story Forming”)

In order to keep his readers entertained, Arnarson resorts to an interesting method. He rejects any ending he comes up with before he has finished the story. This would seem an odd choice for a short-story writer, as most short stories, especially the gothic ones, almost always have a twist ending. Poe, for example, is said to have written the endings for several of his tales before the body of the tale itself. (Cite)

By refusing to do this, Arnarson creates endings that do not necessarily “twist”, but none-the-less surprise. No story ends entirely happily, no story ends in pure tragedy, but all the stories have an ending at once satisfying and intriguing. A Girls Story, in which Arnarson as author keeps breaking into his own parody of a Harlequin Romance, ends with the young lovers just about to kiss, frozen in that moment by the author-god. This leaves the reader to wonder just how much the two characters would care for that situation, which, like much of Arnarson’s work, seems to contain heavenly bliss and tormenting disappointment in equal measure. At the end of Fathers and Sons, Sons and Fathers, the rather effete father/narrator is surprised to find that in the process of retelling the story of his tragi-comic hunting trip with this own father and young son, that he has become the center of the story, not the father he always felt over-shadowed by, and the reader is almost as surprised as he.

With his emphasis on humor and humanity, and his interest in hooking the reader in, Arnason’s prose stands in stark contrast to Gunnars’. There is next to no reference to literary works, with the possible exception on A Field Guide to Birds East of The Rockies, or obscure poets. Rather, Arnarson includes his references within the body of the story itself, calling on almost archtypal and widely know stories, which he then presents in his own comic way. Hence, Little Red Riding Hood becomes a coy seductress and the wolf her prey in Girl and Wolf. The Marriage Inspector has a recognizably Bradberrian flavor, with its topsy-turvy inversions of gender roles and public versus private issues, which makes for laughter and shivers in equal measure.

All in all, despite their myriad similarities in background and field, the dense, tragic, and rather exclusionary writing of Kristjana Gunnars has precious little in common with the lightly meaningful comedic writing of David Arnason. It’s a case of apples from Gimli and oranges from the Sunshine Cost. Frankly, I’ll take the apples.

Arnason, David. “Story Forming.” Interview by Robert Enright. Trace: Prairie Writers on Writing. Birk Sproxton, ed. Winnipeg Turnstone, 1986. 101-09

Arnason, David. The Happiest Man in the World. Talonbooks, Vancouver, 1989

Gunnars, Kristjana. Any Day But This. Red Deer Press, Calgary, 2004

Dream of the Rood

Ruminating on The Rood:

Anglo-Saxon Culture and the “Warrior” Christ.

Samuel Levesque Háskólí Íslands Haust 2005

Medieval Literature in Translation

Málstofuverkefni

Introduction: How I became an atheist and why there are so few Japanese Christians.

Religion has always held a certain fascination for me, which ironically led to my becoming an atheist. After studying most of the major world religions, I realized that none of them really fit my view of the world. Christianity was too passive, Judaism and Islam too dogmatic, Hinduism too complex, and Buddhism too simplistic. So I rejected them. Which is unusual I think. Most people tend to stretch and alter their religion to fit their world-view. Not only people, but whole cultures as well.

In the Americas, there are a multitude of different “Catholicisms” many that bear only superficial resemblance to the Church of Rome. In these cultural offshoots, saints stand in for pre-Christian pagan gods and goddess, offerings are made to altars, and traditions long pre-dating the Catholic Church are given a Christian veneer. Yet the people who pray to these altars and make offerings to these saints see themselves as good Catholics, despite the fact that the religion they practice is often at odds with the teachings of the church, if not with that of the Bible itself.

Other times, a religion introduced to a society from outside can fail to adapt to it, especially when the pre-existing culture has values very much at odds with it. Japan has one of the smallest Christian populations in Asia, due to, among other things, the crucifix. As theologian Jack Miles says in the introduction to his book Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God:

The Crucifixion, the primal scene of Western religion and Western art, has lost much of its power to shock. At this date, perhaps only a non-Western eye can truly see it. A Japanese artist now living in Los Angeles once recalled the horror most Japanese feel at seeing a corpse displayed as a religious icon, and of their further revulsion when icon is explained to them. They ask, she said, “If he was so good, why did he die like that?” In Japanese culture, “good people end their lives with a good death, even a beautiful death, like the Buddha. Someone dying in such a hideous way- for us, he could only be a criminal” (Pg.3)

The Anglo-Saxons shared many cultural traits with the Japanese. Their society was semi-feudal, based on a code of honor that demanded absolute loyalty to one’s leader, even unto death. “The Battle of Maldon” and “Akouroushi”[1] would be mutually acceptable. Both Anglo-Saxon England and medieval Japan shared a belief in “fate”, the idea that one cannot change the course of one’s life, and therefore to fear the future, meaning death, is foolish. In both places warfare was chiefly an economic activity, bringing tribute, vassals, slaves, and prestige to the victors. Defeat was so shameful it could only be avoided by death. Pre-Christian, and to an extent Christian Anglo-Saxon culture placed, as do the Japanese, a great deal of emphasis in dying well. Beowulf goes fearlessly and heroically to his death. Countless saints smile and recite poetry on their deathbeds.

So how is it that the Japanese reject the crucifixion, while the Anglo-Saxons not only accepted it, but also wrote moving poetry in its praise? I think this is due to the fact that the Anglo-Saxons managed to adapt some aspects of Christianity to their culture, while changing or ignoring those that were distasteful to the Anglo-Saxon mind. If ever there was an example of this, if ever there was a poem to tempt the Japanese to Christ, “The Dream of the Rood” is it.

“The Dream of the Rood” manages with great aplomb to transform the story of a pacifist political and religious dissenter being tortured and sent to the gallows into the story of a “proud warrior” boldly climbing onto the cross to win victory. It is both a quintessential Christian poem, in that it deals with the defining moment of the New Testament, and a rather un-Christian poem. For, when one looks at the highly Anglo-Saxon heroic elements in the poem from a biblical perspective, it often contradicts the very story it was inspired by.

The First Stanza: Wealth and Judgement

On beginning to read “The Dream of the Rood” one is immediately struck by the archaic nature of the imagery, even if one is reading a modern translation. There are two elements in this stanza that, on deeper reflection, rather stand out.

The first of these is the description of the cross: “that emblem was entirely cased in gold; beautiful jewels/ were strewn around its foot, just as five/ studded the cross-beam.” This is a far cry from “The Old Rugged Cross” of the Protestant hymn. While it can be argued that by the time Christianity reached the hearts of Anglo-Saxon England the Church was a wealthy emperial power, given to adornment and display, most of its holy orders still believed in a life of material poverty. Poverty as a means to salvation is a cornerstone of Christ’s teachings. Throughout the New Testament there are admonishments against wealth and ostentatious displays. As Christ said, “A camel has a better chance passing through the eye of a needle than a rich man of entering heaven.” So why this gem-studded cross?

Put simply, in Anglo-Saxon culture wealth equaled virtue. If one was wealthy, it was due to one being valiant and cunning in battle, winning material gains along with military victory. A culture with values such as that would have difficulty accepting poverty as something noble. Therefore, even though it is demonstratively un-Christian, the poem contains many references to wealth as a sign of virtue. In the third stanza the voice of the Rood depicts being girded “with gold and shimmering silver.” In the final stanza, the narrator speaks of a heaven where one “feasts” and “dwells in splendor”, which sounds more like the Norse Valhalla than Augustine’s City of God.

Then comes the line “that was no cross of a criminal…” Here, as with the Japanese, we see the tendency to think of anyone put to such a shameful death as criminal. The poet obviously felt the need to make very sure that his audience would not make this mistake. At the same time, it sounds very judgmental. Which is fine if one is a proud Anglo-Saxon chieftain. Passing judgement was a large part of the role after all. But Christ tells us not to judge, “lest [we] be judged in heaven.” An oft-overlooked but very poignant moment in the story of the crucifixion is the conversion of the thief on the cross beside Jesus. Here we have an “actual” criminal, crucified beside Son of God, and yet still worthy of his forgiveness. This point seems lost on the author.

Second Stanza: Martial not martyred.

The business of any heroic poem is war, and the Anglo-Saxons loved their heroic poems, among which “The Dream of the Rood” could be counted. The problem is that in trying to turn the story of the crucifixion into a heroic praise-poem, the author had to stray a great deal from the scripture.

“The Dream of the Rood” is not the only example of this phenomenon from the early Middle Ages. The so-called Hildebrandslied takes the martialization of the Gospel to almost ridiculous lengths, resulting in a poem that Richard Fletcher in his book The Barbarian Conversion describes as “not Christian at all”:

The author of the Heliand used stock phrases drawn from secular epic to render the gospel narrative accessible to his audience. Jesus is the landes uuard, “guardian of the land”, the thiodo drohtin, “lord of the peoples”. The Virgin Mary is an adalcnosles uuif, a “woman of noble lineage”, and King Herod a boggebo, a “giver of rings”…The infant Christ is decked with jewels and the shepherds are transformed into grooms looking after horses. Jesus gathers about him “youths for disciples, young men and good, word-wise warriors”, just as a Saxon lord would seek sword-wise warriors for his retainers…At the entry to Jerusalem the ass is omitted: the Lord enters on foot rather than on an ignoble beast unfitted to his royal dignity. (Pg.266)

While not straying as far as Hildebrandslied, “The Dream of the Rood” contains many phrases that seem strange to a modern Christian, just as they would to an early believer. Early Christianity was very pacifist, so it comes as a shock when Jesus, he who counseled men to “turn the other cheek” is described as “the young warrior, God Almighty…firm and unflinching”. “The Dream of the Rood” transforms the crucifixion into a test of strength and manhood. Rather than sacrificing himself to redeem mankind, Jesus is portrayed as bravely climbing onto the cross to win victory. There is no mention of his cry “Father, why hast thou forsaken me?” Later, in the third stanza, Jesus is said to have “rested for a while/ worn-out after battle”. The fourth stanza praises his “great strength”, just as with any other Anglo-Saxon hero. Even the cross, the Rood itself speaks in a martial tone, saying that “strong enemies seized me” and that “Many enemies fastened me there”. In this stanza the “Prince of Peace”, the “Lamb of God” is portrayed as a war-leader, a lion. This emphasis on warriorism is patently un-Christian, at least according to scripture. As Owen Chadwick points out in his A History of Christianity:

Clement of Alexandria called Christians ‘the peaceful race’. They looked for an age to come when wars would be no more, and states would not make arms, and swords would be turned into ploughshares. They were sure that nothing could do more to end war than for all people to follow Christ. They seriously believed-and may be forgiven the illusion- that when the Gospel was accepted war would end. (Pg.44)

Fifth stanza: Valhalla or Heaven?

The fifth stanza contains a very telling line: “[They] live in heaven with the High Father, dwell in splendour.” The phrase “High Father” is highly reminiscent of the Norse/Germanic “All-Father”, used to describe the chief god Oðinn or Wodan. The portrayal of souls dwelling in “splendour” is telling as well. Heaven, in Christian terms, is a paradise where souls sing eternal praise to God. There is little mention of wealth, aside from the oft-quoted “streets of gold”. This sounds much more like a Valhalla, a glorious hall of warriors than a place of peace.

Another interesting line is “May the Lord be a friend to me,” which brings to mind the relationship between a warrior and his earthly lord. As in Hildebrandslied, the Germanic mind seems to have fit heaven into a pre-existing mold.

Anglo-Saxon Christianity to Protestantism.

The Anglo-Saxons adapted Christianity to their culture in more than just poetry. King Edwin is said to have promised to convert to Christianity on the condition that his campaign against his enemies was successful. This is not a terribly Christian way of thinking. It more closely resembles the sort of “bargaining with the gods” that took place in pagan Germanic rituals (Rosenberg, pg.219).

There are other interesting ways in which Anglo-Saxon culture influenced Mediaeval Christianity. “The Fortunes of Men” shows us how the Germanic idea of fate adapted itself to Christianity and vice versa. It is tempting to link this belief in unchangeable fate with the Protestant doctrine of predestination, whereby God’s elect where chosen at birth, and only those elect would enter the Kingdom on their death.

This is not the only aspect of Anglo-Saxon Christianity that seems to foretell aspects of Protestantism. After reading other poems and stories from this era one eventually gets a feeling that the Anglo-Saxon were more interested in loyalty to god, rather than the more conventional obedience. This is an important, but subtle difference. Loyalty implies a measure of reciprocation, a personal interaction with God, which is exactly the primary argument made by Luther hundreds of years later. The “militant” characteristics of Anglo-Saxon Christianity, as well as its equation of success and worldly wealth with virtue are likewise themes that become central to the Reformation. The Protestant work ethic, militant Christianity (in the form of organizations like the Salvation Army), and the personal, almost friendly relationship with God espoused by many modern Protestant churches, are all lurking between the lines of Anglo-Saxon Christian writing.

Perhaps then it should not come as a surprise that the Germanic regions of Europe were among the first to take up Protestantism, and remain so to this day. There is something very similar in “The Dream of the Rood” to later Protestant religious poetry, this time in the form of song.

Just think about the lyrics to two well-known English hymns in this context and the parallels become rather striking. First, there is the classic Anglican hymn “Onward Christian Soldiers”:

Onward Christian Soldiers

Marching as to war,

With the Cross of Jesus,

Going on before.

(Anderson. Pg.45)

Here, as in “The Dream of the Rood”, we see martial themes integrated into religious texts, with the cross playing a central role. “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, an iconic American hymn from the Civil War era (which once nearly replaced “The Star Spangled Banner” as the national anthem) is even more striking:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of

The coming of the Lord,

He has trampled out the vineyards

Where the grapes of wrath are stored.

He has loosed the fateful lighting

Of his terrible swift sword.

His truth is marching on.

(Anderson. Pg.56)

I think that a medieval Anglo-Saxon audience would find both these hymns very familiar in spirit if not in language. There is something of “The Dream of the Rood” in both these, and many other, latter-day hymns.

Conclusion: Culturally Adaptive Religion

If there is any lesson to be learned from “The Dream of the Rood”, other than that one should pray to the cross as a means of salvation, I think it rests in the very elements that make this poem vaguely un-Christian. Just as the Anglo-Saxons stretched and adapted religion to suit their culture, so do we today. In some cultures the majority of churches make no judgements on homosexuals, while in others this is an issue of hot and often divisive debate. One must be careful to avoid falling into the trap of judging religious belief in a vacuum, without taking into account the culture where said belief is practiced. But the variety of religious cultural expression continues to provide us with works of fine and fascinating art like “The Dream of the Rood”, and by that standard alone, it must be judged a positive thing.

Works Cited:

“The Dream of the Rood”, The Anglo-Saxon World, An Anthology.

Crossley-Holland, Kevin. New York, Oxford University Press, 1984

Chadwick, Owen. A History of Christianity. London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1995

Fletcher, Richard. The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity. Los Angeles, University of California Press. 1997

Miles, Jack. Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God. London, Arrow Books. 2002

Anderson, John G. Songs. San Anselmo, Songs & Creations, 1972

Rosenberg, Donna. World Mythology. Lincolnwood, NTC Publishing, 1993

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[1] A medieval Japanese poem recounting the story of a group of roninn, samurai whose leader, or shogun has been killed in battle. Rather than live with the shame of defeat they launch a suicide attack against the enemy who killed their leader. This poem is considered to be a masterpiece of the boshido code, which governed the actions of samurai, and is very similar to that of the Anglo-Saxons as portrayed in “The Battle of Maldon”.

Walking Northwards Into Darkness

Figure 1: "Wendigo Altar" by Walter Bruneel

Walking Northward into Darkness:

Wilderness, Wendigos, and Wastelands in the Writings of W. D. Valgardsson

Samuel Levesque

Icelandic-Canadian Short Stories Háskólí Íslands Haust 2005

Foreword: Wandering out of the world

I have my mother to thank for more than a few of my eccentricities. Growing up in the rapidly emptying Northeast corner of Oregon, she was all but raised in a ghost town, a weather beaten bit of hilly land east of Pendleton, which as of three years ago now lies completely devoid of habitation. Her youth was spent playing and exploring around empty farmsteads, aging grain elevators, and overgrown schoolhouses.

I spent my childhood in a town that was well on its way to becoming a ghost town. Throughout the late 70’s and 80’s, South Prairie, Washington was slowly sinking into economic desolation. There were abandoned homes scattered throughout town, ringed in protective thickets of black-berry and vine maple, while out in the woods the remains of railroad works, saw-mills, coal mines, and farms reclaimed by the forest provided a wealth of exciting, if rather dangerous, playgrounds. Mom loved it. So did I.

There is something particularly evocative about abandoned places, where the works of man stand visible, but conquered by the slow tide of Nature. There is also something thrilling, even downright scary about such places. The world is full of stories of haunted houses, abandoned mental hospitals that house maniacs with axes, and hidden ghost towns populated by inbred clans of cannibals. Exploring a newly discovered site was always a nerve-racking event for my friends and I, often with good reason, though we never encountered a horde of inbred man-eaters.

While the reality may not be so harsh, the wastelands we create nevertheless serve as a reservoir for our fears, real or imagined. No one was afraid of ghosts when they burnt down the old South Prairie School, but they were afraid of the teenage drinking and promiscuity that sheltered in its weathered walls. That alone was enough. Later on, in my teens, I had friends who were thrown out of usual society, more often than not due to their parents’ prejudices. Many of these friends squatted in the older neighborhoods and forgotten outskirts of surrounding towns. Being outside of societal norms, they not only had to fear the bugaboos of normal society such as murderers, rapists, and thugs, but also had to fear elements that society usually looks on as good, policemen, social workers, and missionaries, who often were as bad as the criminals. There are frightening things enough in the forgotten places of our world, but the imagination takes it further. It seems that these days, it is not the wide open untouched spaces that scare us, but rather the man-made, man-forgotten wilds in our own backyards. We want to put up signs bearing the legend “Here there be Dragons” under every urban bridge and around every sub-urban greenbelt. W.D. Valgardsson understands this fear. It is at the heart of much of his writing.

Introduction: Wendigos, Wilderness, and Wasteland, Oh My!

W.D. Valgardsson’s short stories are packed with allusions, metaphors, and themes that are so well integrated into the text that they often slip under the reader’s radar at first. The myth of the Wendigo, or its non-mythical sociological ramifications, pops up throughout his writing, even if never mentioned by name. Instead, the Wendigo myth is expressed through the actions, inaction, and motivations of his characters. Wilderness, that is the land and life of the land, appears in a Janus mask, at once the essence of home and the terrifying face of the unknown. Most striking of all, wasteland, a place both physical and physiological permeates the bulk of his stories in a myriad of forms. These three elements are worth examining in detail, as they are in large part the essential elements of Valgardsson’s prose.

Figure 2: Wendigo Costume by Comtemporary Artist Ken Warren

Walking with Wendigos

In the mythology of many North American tribes, especially those around the Great Lakes and northern plains, the Wendigo is truly fearsome and malevolent being, a disheveled brute with a chunk of ice for a heart, blackened fingers and lips, and terrible strength. Often the Wendigo is depicted as hugely tall, but also emaciated, and it is said that these creatures emit a terrifying combination of groans, snarls and whistles, being devoid of human speech.

But it is not this aspect of the Wendigo that Valgardsson makes use of, rather other, less graphic aspects of the myth. According to some of the legends, one can become a Wendigo, either by consuming human flesh, or by simply looking upon one. Once one has “gone Wendigo”, all food except for human flesh and unhealthy, often poisonous matter, such as frogs, moss, and toadstools, becomes unappetizing, and one is driven to kill and eat others, often starting with one’s own family. There have been cases throughout northern and central Canada of “Wendigo Psychosis” whereby an individual, most often a native, believes they have “gone Wendigo” and begin to crave human flesh.

It has been argued that the Wendigo myth was an important mechanism in Native societies to prevent widespread cannibalism during the long northern winters, but in Valgardsson’s hands, it becomes something else. When Valgardsson subtly and skillfully evokes the Wendigo he uses it as a symbol for the cyclical nature of violence, where victim becomes victimizer in an ever-expanding downward spiral.

The most effective examples, in my opinion, are in Valgardsson’s What Can’t Be Changed Shouldn’t Be Mourned, as well as in “An Act of Mercy” in Bloodflowers.

Starting with “A Matter of Balance”, and continuing through “Wrinkles” and “Identity”, the Wendigo keeps appearing in a rather subtle form in What Can’t Be Changed… In “A Matter of Balance”, the unnamed protagonist gazes upon the face of two men-turned-predators, bikers who live by symbolically feeding on others in the “wilderness” outside normal society. The protagonist has entered that world, both through the loss of his wife to a murderer, and by his harmless, but nonetheless illegal prospecting on public land. Once out in the wild, having seen the two “Wendigos” he begins to take on some of their characteristics. They plot with cool efficiency (hearts of ice) to head him off at the trail, and he plots with equally frigid heart to lure them onto a slope that only he is prepared to descend safely. Once the Wendigo bikers have slid down the slope and are hanging by their fingertips from certain death, the protagonist again coolly and methodically decides to leave them to die, rather than giving them a chance and thereby restoring his own humanity. As in the myth, he has looked at the face of a Wendigo, and himself become one.

This cyclical violence appears again in “Wrinkles”. The two young men Duke and Albert are already Wendigo. They wait in the woods, and are already in the “wild” outside of normal society. They both seem to have a drug problem, or in Wendigo terms, they subsist on poison when not preying on humans. Duke seems to be the originator of this Wendigo cycle, as it was he who bludgeoned “Wrinkles”, an elderly woman, to death with a hammer in a botched robbery. Having seen the face of the monster, Albert becomes one himself, selling his friend out to the victim’s vengeful fiancé, who has himself gone Wendigo because of the violence brought into his life by Duke and Albert.

But not all those who witness the Wendigo become the Wendigo. Many die before they have that chance. In “Identities” the unnamed protagonist wanders unprepared into the “wild” outside of his normal middle-class existence, where he encounters a Wendigo in the form of a police officer. The officer, who through the course of his job must have looked on violence and its perpetrators, kills the protagonist due to his own lack of humanity. His doubt and trust have been trained out of him, and his experience in the “wilds” of the urban ghetto forced him to go Wendigo.

Finally, there is the tale of two brothers, Niels and Helgi, in “An Act of Mercy” from Valgardsson’s Bloodflowers. The brothers share a fishing camp with their abusive drunken father, who foolishly attempts to bring in his nets in the face of a sudden early winter storm and is caught out on the water overnight. Despite their obvious dislike for their father, the brothers head out to rescue him as soon as the storm has cleared. After a long search, they find him frozen in place in a narrow cove, horribly frostbitten. This is one of the few instances where Valgardsson’s use of the Wendigo myth includes allusions to the actual beast. The father is described as having frozen black lips and a chattering, wheezing voice. His limbs have been frostbitten so badly that he is likely to lose an arm and both legs, and he begs his sons to push him into the water end his suffering. While the brothers disagree on what to do, one wishing to end his father’s suffering and the other unwilling to have it on his conscious, they are both acting out of human decency. When Helgi falls to his death, however, Niels decides to let his father live, rather than push him in, as he originally planned, as punishment for his brother’s death. As it says in the story: “All mercy in him died”. He has become Wendigo.

The Wendigo appears in Valgardsson’s work subtly, sneaking around the undergrowth of the stories, never calling itself by name. Rather than use the myth to provide an actual creature, Valgardsson keeps to a more modern interpretation; one expressed in films such as “Wendigo” and “Ravenous” wherein the Wendigo is not a physical presence, but rather a kind of contagious psychosis. Valgardsson’s Wendigos are the products of unresolved or unresolvable violence, and their propagation continues in a vicious cycle.

While many of these tales take place in the wilderness, many of them have an element of urbanity as well. The Wendigo, a spirit of the frozen woods, seems to have crept down into the cities and suburbs of Valgardsson’s world. This begs the question, why? Why would a creature of the vast wilderness confront modern characters? To Answer that question, we have to take a look at the next related theme in Valgardsson’s work, wilderness.

Wilderness: Romance or Rapine?

These days most people recognize, or at least pay lip service to the idea that wilderness is a good and valuable thing in and of itself. Beginning with Wordsworth and the other Romantics, and crystallizing with the American Transcendentalists, nature in wild and untamed form has been seen as a source of healing, spiritual renewal, and authenticity.

This is the wilderness that Valgardsson’s fellow Icelandic-Canadian author, Kristjana Gunnars, points to in her essay “Poetry and the Idea of Home”. Wilderness in this view is the unobtainable “home” that manifests itself in memory, evoked by sensual elements of the natural world. The poet longs for a home that never was and will likely never be, which, according to Gunnars, is where much of the emotional power of poetry resides. In simple terms, one could define this viewpoint as claiming that we all want to return to a natural state, to reenter the Garden of Eden and reclaim our unspoiled innocence.

This ideal of wilderness has been the most pervasive in recent years, but it has never managed to block out or silence and older, darker vision of wilderness that pre-dates the prevailing Romantic notion.

Beginning with Beowulf, (who himself encountered a “Wendigo” in the shape of Grendel) the very first written English fiction, and continuing unchallenged until the birth of the Romantics, wilderness was not a source of healing, spiritual renewal or sanctuary, but rather the visible darkness that lurked at the edge of the everyday world, the abode of monsters, beasts, and witches. The wilderness was a devouring thing that had to be kept at bay, and was only entered by the very brave, or the very foolish. This vision has continued to this day, but not in the “legitimate” literary forms. Rather, it has found a home in the horror and macabre genres, where wilderness still serves as the breeding ground of monsters, and in the adventure tale, where the harsh land challenges the hero and destroys the unprepared.

This is the wilderness most often encountered in Valdgardsson’s work. His characters are tested by wilderness, frighten by wilderness, and often killed by wilderness, but they are rarely comforted by it.

Which is not to say that the Romantic wilderness is completely lacking in Valgardsson’s work. In “The Man from Snaefellsnes”, Valgardsson-as-character is symbolically healed of his traumatic past and obtains a measure of peace with his immigrant up-bringing by baptizing himself in a hot spring on a trip to the Icelandic countryside. In “The Cave”, Valgardsson evokes the pastoral joys of a bright Winnipeg summer, replete with rose petals and lovemaking in haystacks to add an element of poignancy to the section of the tale dealing with his love interest. But even in that pastoral bliss, there is a creeping darkness. Early in the story, he mentions that Sigga is plagued with mosquito bites, which seems to affect Icelanders worse than others. Then, as the story progresses, the reader is pulled into the tale of Sigga’s father and grandfather, both of whom go mad upon entering the wilderness, symbolized by a cave on the shores of Lake Winnipeg.

In other stories, there is even less of the pleasant wilderness. In “Seiche” and “An Act of Mercy,” we see the harsh northern landscape taking a toll on the men who enter it, often ending in their deaths. Even the darkly comic “The Couch” pits its main characters against an absurdly malevolent wilderness that seems almost conscious. “The Couch” presents us with a wilderness that is actively trying to thwart the desires of the main character. While comic, this vision of wilderness as something antagonistic and dangerous, pervades many Valgardsson’s stories, whether it is the brutal weather of "An Act of Mercy,” the unpredictable danger of “The Seiche,” or the subtle slide into madness of “The Cave.”

In this, Valgardsson keeps to a common thread in Canadian literature, as Margaret Atwood points out in her lecture on wilderness in Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. There is a long history of Canadian story telling dealing with the madness of the northern wilderness, where men “go bush,” catch “cabin fever,” or “go Wendigo,” or are simply swallowed up by the harsh landscape. Discussing a poem based on the doomed Franklin Expedition, and its representation of the wilderness, Atwood states, “[It’s] noteworthy that the figure conjured up is giant, female, icy, connected to madness, and destructive: a sort of Nature white in tooth and claw.” (26) This is not the safe, tranquil and idyllic wilderness of the British, or even American mind, this is wilderness unbared, Nature as a bitch goddess and devourer of men.

Interestingly, this unbared wild “white in tooth and claw” is neither remote, nor untouched by the works of man. Like the wild in which his characters encounter their Wendigo fates, Valgardsson’s wilderness is at once removed from us, and lurking just beside us. The characters in “Seiche” are not a long way from help, but the just as well might be. “Waiting” gives us a man so at home with the wilderness that he is forgotten in it, even by his family. They move on to urban life, yet he cannot make that transition, even though such a move would be simple, at least in practical terms. The wilderness is a world away and right next-door. In “Snow,” the young couple is only a short walk from their home, but for all the husband is aware, he could be miles away. Lacking his wife’s keen sense of direction and instinct (she is the more successful hunter of the two), he has entered the wilderness unprepared, and the reader is left with the uncomfortable feeling that he will pay a steep price. The wife, however, is comfortable in the wilderness; she has been tested and proven herself.

This is the other main use Valgardsson makes of wilderness. It is the testing ground, the place that challenges and changes. “Saturday Climbing” is a perfect example. It is only by being tested on the cliff-face he is climbing that the father in the story can come to grips with his daughter’s newfound maturity. Loathe as he is to admit it, the wilderness forces him to accept it in very real and physical terms, when he must rely on his daughter to belay him, to literally hold him up. Faced with this hard physical fact, he can no longer entertain his illusions of paternal control and superiority.

Valgardsson’s wilderness is neither remote, nor static. It challenges his characters, and through them, the reader, in very dynamic ways. It lurks, for as dark a thing as Valgardsson creates can only lurk, just outside the everyday. It is a wilderness more mental than physical, and in that vast North of the mind, anything is possible.

Wasteland

The final element in Valgardsson’s work that frankly fascinates me is his occasional forays into what I have come to term “wasteland.” My use of this term takes a bit of explaining, and even then, I wonder if it is not simply an aspect of my own internal mythos rather than a literary concept.

Wasteland as a concept is perhaps best explained by T.S. Eliot’s poem of the same name. I have always interpreted it as a lament for the world lost in the fires of the First World War. The poem seems to say that the world has ended, and we are all living in the ruins of the world that was; the wastes of our own creation.

Wasteland can be a physiological, geological, or mythological place. It is that place outside of the illusion of normality, and it is wasteland that encompasses both the wilderness and the Wendigo in Valgardsson’s writing.

Wasteland contains wilderness. Even in the most densely packed urban areas; one finds pockets of the wild in forgotten, unnoticed places. These places are not, however, unpopulated. They are the home of the ghosts and monsters of the post-modern age: the homeless, the forgotten, the murderer, the criminal, and the poor.

It seems that Canadian authors are more aware of this world than their American and British counterparts. Charles DeLint, a best-selling Canadian fantasy writer, has made a career for himself writing about the strangeness that lurks just beneath the surface and around the corner of everyday life. Valgardsson’s fellow Icelandic-Canadian short story author, David Arnasson, sets many of his stories in places abandoned by or outside of what most people would think of as normality. It is this lurking wasteland that lends an aura of menace and uncertainty to Valgardsson’s writing. I think that Canada, with its multi-cultural ethos, tends to create more of this liminal wasteland than other nations. Instead of pockets of sub-cultures welded together by one over arching nationalism, Canada is much more an amalgamation of separate societies, making it easier for one to feel cast out.

“The Man from Snaefellsnes” gives us an especially clear example of this socio-phychological wasteland. Valgardsson-as –character in this story feels separated from Canadian society, remembering slights at the hands of “English” schoolteachers among others. His Canadian wife annoys him with her good-natured, but rather shallow attempts to connect with his, or anyone else’s for that matter, ethnicity. Yet he also feels separated from his Icelandic heritage, both due to the slights of fellow Icelandic-Canadians (he mentions being called útlendingur by his peers) and due to the historical injustices that drove his grandfather to Canada in the first place. He is in the waiting place, the wasteland between two worlds, and though this story ends with his reconciliation to both worlds, many of his characters do not reach such a happy ending. Rather, they are abandoned, or preyed upon in the wastes.

Abandonment appears time and again in Valgardsson’s stories. In “A Matter of Balance,” the action takes place along an abandoned stretch of railway converted to pedestrian trails. Duke and Albert in “Wrinkles” squat in abandoned buildings and Duke meets his end in an abandoned cistern. The young couple in “Snow” moves into an abandoned railway station on the outskirts of a country town. Another Albert, this time in “Waiting” is himself abandoned on his island by a family caught up in the rush of modernity. Jack and Dana Andrews drive into an actual wasteland, a place stuck between the developed and the wilderness in “An Afternoon’s Drive” and are nearly trapped there. Danny Thorson is trapped when he arrives on a bleak island wasteland seemingly forgotten by the rest of the world in “Bloodflowers.”

Yet it is not abandonment alone that makes a wasteland. People also drift into it of their own accord. Duke and Albert in “Wrinkles” are a good example, but the best example I can find are Norman Thomas and his family in Bloodflower’s “Brothers.” Thomas has married a Native woman and taken to the wilderness. In doing so, despite his protests to the “British” fish-camp owner Alex, he has stepped outside of the norm and into the wasteland, where nothing is certain. Alex, in comparison, holds tight to the ideals of civilization and normality. He flies the Union Jack above his camp, hangs the Queen’s portrait in the mess hall, and prides himself on keeping his operation both physically and morally “clean.” In this way he stays out of the wasteland that Thomas inhabits.

Another good example is the peddler in “A Place of One’s Own.” Separated from the narrow-minded mainstream because of his tattoos and wandering nature, the peddler exists outside of society in a myriad of ways. “Neither Fedorchuk nor his wife approved of people not brought up in the area. Of the peddler, they were particularly contemptuous because he had no place of his own and, therefore, no trustworthy identity. Like all people who live on the very edge of having nothing, a place one’s own was very important to them. Divorced from the land, constantly travelling, appearing and disappearing without explanation, the peddler was no better than a gypsy.” (53) This lack of permanence is one of the essential elements of the wasteland, but it is not just his unusual appearance or nomadic lifestyle that alienate the peddler, but even the manner in which he makes his living. Buying cast-off and fire-damaged goods and then re-selling them tie him to the wasteland. Storing these goods in an “abandoned church” which he rents out distances him even further. Even though he makes an attempt at re-entering the mainstream by buying a local store and taking a wife, he is nonetheless abandoned in the end, and goes right back to his nomadic ways. A sad ending, but it could be worse.

The wasteland, Valgardsson makes very clear, is a dangerous place where assorted creatures prey on the unwary. There are the bikers from “A Matter of Balance,” out to prey on the unwitting, and the policeman in “Identities”, trigger-happy and blinded by his prejudices. There are sweet-talking predators like Jack Spitzer and Henry Smith in “On Lake Therese,” plying with bottles what they cannot take by force. Even denizens of the “normal” world can be fearful to those living beside them in the wastes. Alex the fish-camp owner attempts to rape Thomas’s teenage daughter, precisely because she doesn’t fit into his narrow view of propriety. Orville in “Red Dust” prostitutes his niece to pay for a hunting dog, stating that “Everybody’s got to earn their keep.” One wonders if he would have done this if the niece were not already in the wasteland, separated from normality by her mental deficiency. “First Flight,” offers the reader another character wandering the wastelands of their own mind. Simple-minded Gregory Jorganson’s fateful amble through the empty streets of Middleton ends when the very men he idolizes, NATO pilots and personnel, turn on him, driving him out into the cold despairing night to end his life on the railroad tracks.

The wasteland is the unknown, the out-of-bounds, the between space where what we think we know may not be so. While it is tempting to say that it is the post-modern condition, this is not the case. Rather, it is a facet of the post-modern state that troubles and haunts us, and one that Valgardsson makes artful use of in his tales. Valgardsson returns again and again to the wasteland in order to makes us uncomfortably aware of it. By guiding his reader to look into the abyss, he makes sure that we acknowledge it, and in so doing, avoid it.

Walking back into the world

In the end, most of my squatter friends got places of their own, landed a job, moved on with their lives. But the time they spent out in the wasteland, amongst the Wendigos and wilderness left its mark. Many of them bare scars, physical and mental, and many will hurt for the rest of their lives. But the tragedy has a brighter side as well. As a group, they are less complacent, less materialistic, and consume less. They are also more willing than most others I know to reach out and offer aid and comfort to their fellows. Sadly though, some of them were lost. One of them even “went Wendigo”.

It is this danger and redemption, the state of being tested by the world that is at the core of Valgardsson’s writing. He seems to say to his readers, “This is the world you think you know, but look at all the strangeness and danger underneath it all. Look out for yourselves and others, lest you become one of the monsters.” Valgardsson presents us with tales that are dark and foreboding as a haunted forest, but he does so to warn, not simply to frighten or disgust. When one is wandering around the wilds of the wasteland, it is good to know about Wendigos, if only to avoid them.

Works Cited:

Valgardsson, W.D. Bloodflowers. Oberon Press, 1973

Red Dust. Oberon Press, 1978

What Can’t Be Changed Shouldn’t Be Mourned

Vancouver, Douglas & McIntyre, 1990

Atwood, Margaret. Strange Things: The Malevolent North in Canadian Literature. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1995

Gunnars, Kristjana. “Poetry and the Idea of Home”, Stranger at the Door.

Online search: Encyclopedia Mythica: “Wendigo” 20.11.05 http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/americas/native_american/articles.html

Online Search: Wikipedia: “Wendigo” 18.11.05 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendigo

Online Search: Native Online: “Wendigo” http://www.nativeonline.com/wendigo.htm 18.11.05

“Ravenous” Fox Pictures Inc. Antonia Bird, Director 1999

“Wendigo” Magnolia Films. Larry Fessenden, Director 2001