A Word I Don't Have by Joan Lennon

English is a rich and wonderful resource, but it has gaps that other languages have managed to fill.  Words for things we feel but haven't a term for.  Like akihi in Hawaiian, which means that thing where you listen to a string of directions, walk away, and promptly forget the lot.  Or arigata-meiwaku in Japanese, for that feeling of having to be grateful for something someone has done for you that you really didn't want them to do in the first place.  Or l'esprit de l'escalier in French, for that clever repartee that comes to you when it's too late to deliver it. 

The word I don't have is maybe a bit specialized, but if it existed it would express something that writers of historical fiction - and non-fiction - feel.  Deeply.  Viscerally, even. 

It's a word to describe that stomach-tightening, hand-dampening, shallow-breath-inducing feeling that we are overwhelmed by when a new programme comes on TV, or a new article appears on the internet, or a new tome is published, on the topic of the book we've just written.  The book where the plot is dependent on a particular understanding of historical events - where the characters have formed themselves around and out of that understanding. The book we've put time and effort and thought and care and tons of research into, and now it's too late to make any changes.

That.

I suspect that out there, in some language or other, there may very well be a term - a word that says, "please, please - I want to go on learning - just don't tell me anything that will blow my book out of the water * - please, please, please ..."   If you know the feeling, let me know.  If you know a term or phrase that English, the great word-grabber, can acquire from some other language, to express this particular discomfort, let me know that too! 

Joan Lennon's YA debut novel Silver Skin is being published by BC, Birlinn Polygon's new imprint, on 16 June 2015.  She continues to watch, listen, read and learn about the late Stone Age but, metaphorically, from behind the sofa.  

* So far, it hasn't happened.  At the end of Silver Skin, I included this Note to Readers:

So much of what we think we know about the time when the Stone Age was bleeding into the Bronze Age is based on bewildering artefacts and guesswork.  What we do know, however, is that during this time, the climate worsened.  There are many scientific, anthropological, archaeological theories about the effect climate change might have had on the civilisation of Orkney, and I have cherry-picked indiscriminately among them.  This story is just that – a story.  It is driven by the interactions of fictional characters in a setting that has sparked my own imagination for years.  I have researched and visited museums and sites and taken photographs and talked and listened, but if you are looking in the result for a historical document, you will be disappointed.
Maybe I should have put it at the front!

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.

Orkney: A Historical Guide by Caroline Wickham-Jones - reviewed by Joan Lennon

This is not the first occasion I've indulged my delight in guide books and Orkney (see The Elevated Limpet) but this time I've brought things right up-to-date.

Caroline Wickham-Jones is an experienced archaeologist who has worked on and written about sites across Scotland and Scandanavia.  Her Orkney: A Historical Guide was first published in 1998 and has been updated and re-issued a number of times since then.  Wickham-Jones' clear writing, expertise and obvious enthusiasm for her subject make her brand-new 2015 Guide a must-read for anyone drawn to this approximately 70-island-strong historical treasure trove.

There is so much to see, and one of the confusing things about visiting Orkney is the way remains from so many different historical periods often sit cheek-by-jowl in the landscape.  Wickham-Jones' Guide is extremely helpful in separating the layers out, starting with a series of maps, which show:

     Neolithic sites
     Bronze Age, Iron Age and Pictish sites
     Norse and Scottish Earls sites
     18th- and 19th-century sites
     20th-century sites

The chapters of the book take the same approach, with an overview for each block of time and then a description of sites of interest - and accessibility.  She also explores the effects of geography on the Orkney Islands' history.  The power of the winds, the fertility of the soil, the lack of trees and the easily splittable sandstone rock - all have their place in the way human life here was shaped and preserved. 

I would thoroughly recommend this Historical Guide for your reading and research pleasure - and I would also thoroughly recommend using it on a visit to Orkney.  Orkney may seem a bit out-of-the-way (though you can't really see the edge of the world from there, as Pytheas of Marseille claimed in 330 BCE).  But for a large part of her 10,000 years of habitation, the sea roads made her nearer to being at the heart of things than the edge.  Granted those roads were treacherous* and, as Wickham-Jones says,

"Rather like a six-lane motorway today, you have to know what you are doing, but the northern seas could lead you directly to your destination and provide varied benefits in the form of sheltered harbours and plentiful supplies."

Reading her book, I defy you not to be convinced that those "plentiful supplies" include history preserved in abundance, to excite the imagination and furnish us with thoughts and ideas, whether as readers, writers or historians. 

* Don't worry - the roads to Orkney are much safer now. 


Caroline Wickham-Jones' Orkney: A Historical Guide
pub. Birlinn Books
pub. date 12 March 2015
ISBN: 9781780272641          


(With a YA novel inspired by Skara Brae coming out mid-June, and therefore at too late a stage to change anything, I approach all archaeological writing on my period with some uneasiness ... I'll be talking more about that another time!)

        

Joan Lennon's website.
Joan Lennon's blog.