Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison

Monday, 3 August 2020

Cover art by Kevin Huizenga: usscatastrophe.com/kh

Image description: a book cover with green horizontal bands on the top and bottom. The text on the top reads “The story of Halla, a girl born to a king but cast out onto the hills to die. She lives among bears; she lives among dragons. But the time of dragons is passing, and Odin All-Father offers Halla a choice: Will she stay dragonish and hoard wealth and possessions, or will she travel light?”—Amal El-Mohtar, NPR, You Must Read This. The middle has a black and white cartoon illustration with two booted legs dangling from the sky, clouds in the background over a landscape with trees, hills, dragons, water, buildings (some of them domed with crosses above), humans, bears, and a pegasus. Across the water from the main cluster of buildings are some houses on fire. The lower portion of the cover has text that reads, “Travel Light Naomi Mitchison Author of The Corn King and the Spring Queen”

“Those who live in caves, die in caves,” said All-Father, “and the love of the Wanderer is to wanderers.”

Last night I finished Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison, published by Small Beer Press. I had read Mitchison’s The Corn King & the Spring Queen years ago and remember being captivated by the way that Mitchison conjures archaic feelings. This is also present in Travel Light: the travels of Halla Bearsbairn (her surname shifts with the shifts in her circumstances, so Bearsbairn gives way to Godsgift, Pathfinder, and so on) are also travels between forms of social organization. Halla travels from a northern kingdom in a rocky cleft to a place she knows as Micklegard, but which others call Constantinople; born as a human, raised by bears and then dragons, until Odin, the Wanderer, sets her to wandering.

We see Micklegard not only through Halla’s eyes, but through the eyes of three supplicants from Marob, on the shores of the Black Sea, who have come to plead with the emperor for protection from the cruelty of their governor. Halla, whom Odin has given the gift of tongues (human and animal) acts as their interpreter while they learn Greek as it is spoken here in the capital. As the company progresses in their project of gaining an imperial audience, the political machinations they encounter, and the corruption of the Christian church here leave them sadly disillusioned.

This Christianity is far from the one they know from Marob, where it is still a relatively recent development: the travelers recall the martyrs of their grandparents’ generation. And they also ponder that in another time, one of their company, Tarkan Der would have been their Corn King (as I remember it from The Corn King & the Spring Queen, a sacred king whose responsibilities encompass political leadership and ensuring the fertility of the realm).

Halla’s animal upbringing guides her adult life. She intercedes with racehorses in a way that is mutually beneficial for the horses and for her traveling companions. Rats warn her of danger and guide her to safety. Dragons fireproof her, and bears and dragons shape her ideas of comfort, safety, aggression, wealth, and justice. Humans attempt to fit her into their worldviews—is she a witch? A saint?—or coopt her towards their ends, but as Steinvor, the Valkyrie who periodically visits Halla, remarks, Halla is one of the All-Father’s wish-children. And significantly, she is also her own person: refusing nunneries and marriage, deferring the invitations of the Valkyries.

This gets at one of the aspects of the book I really appreciated. As opposed to a writer like Padraic Colum (who in A Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter is a man telling the story of a boy), Mitchison is attuned to the stakes of life for women in the ancient world and today (although her today was in 1952, in this case). The unwanted attentions of men are woven into the story as one of its dangers just as the will and discernment of Halla are celebrated by Mitchison, the storyteller who, from the few biographical details I’m aware of, seems to have been a woman well-versed in the art of traveling light.

Travel Light reminds me of

·      one of my talismanic books, Padraic Colum’s The Boy Apprenticed to an Enchanter, in that it describes a journey from innocence to experience that loops through a mythologized Byzantium

·      Samuel Delany’s Tales of Nevèrÿon, in that it depicts ancient states of mind in the places where the societal meets the personal (meets the mythical) and that it shows the complexity and intrigue of courtly life through the eyes of an intelligent but ostensibly unsophisticated outsider

·      Peter O’Leary’s The Sampo, which breathes new life into some of the stories of the Kalevala

·      Compare Mitchison’s “As she grew older the fact of being a human weighed on her less. Often she forgot it for days at a time.” with, “I am 15. Female. Human (I think),” from Michelle Detorie’s After-Cave.

PS Some of the linked books go to my Bookshop.org storefront, and I get a percentage if you buy from there, but don’t forget about the library! I anticipate meeting you in the future where we don’t have to monetize everything to keep body and soul together!