“Blessed are those who are persecuted” and “blessed are the meek”— Matthew 5:10, 5:5.
THE MEMORY STONE
Epigraph: “Most people say that the bride was rather gloomy…”—Diana Whaley, ed., Sagas of Warrior-Poets (New York: Penguin Books, p. 136, “The Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue,” trans. Katrina Atwood). In the epigraph I have emended “Serpent-tongue” to “Serpent-Tongue.”
The rock with the footprints and ship-carvings actually does lie in the center of Stavanger, and anyone who wishes can stand on it.
The description of the landscape near Valhalla is derived from notes I took around Lillehammer in 2006. I am especially grateful to John Erik Riley for a beautiful driving trip toward Jötunheim.
THE NARROW PASSAGE
Epigraph: “… if foul witch dwell…”— Hollander, p. 239 (stanza 28; slightly “retranslated” by WTV).
As mentioned in the source-notes to “Where Your Treasure Is,” Rogaland is the district containing Stavanger.
According to this city’s Sjøfartsmuseum, Stavanger was one of the main embarkation ports for American-bound emigrants from 1825 to 1870. And here my celestial captain requires me to insert an endorsement for Den Norske Amerikalinje, eneste norske passagerlinje til New-York. This ship made seven hundred and seventy transoceanic voyages, the last one being in 1963.
The discussion of emigration in my story (including the tale of the Amelia) relies considerably on information in Egil Harald Grude’s pamphlet From Vågen to America: The Migrant Exodus 1825–1930, trans. Susan Tyrrel (Stavanger: Dept. Maritime Museum in cooperation with Stavanger Vesta Insurance Co., printed by Rostrup Grafiske A.S., September 1986). According to Eli N. Aga and Hans Eyvind Næss, From Runes to Rigs: Cultural History Treasures of the Stavanger Region, trans. Rolf E. Gooderham (Stavanger?: Kulturkonsult, 2001), the herring arrived suddenly in 1808 (p. 88); then (p. 94) “the influx of herring became more and more unreliable after 1850, and the fishery came to an end in the 1870s.”
Some of my descriptions of Stavanger and the herring factories at this period are derived from illustrations (and, occasionally, text) in Susan Tyrell, Once Upon a Town (Stavanger: Dreyer Bok, 1979), pp. 26, 32–37, 75. Nowadays Stavanger is blessed with night-water twitching with reflected window-lights, and rain clouds hang nearly blue over the great oil ships, whose bridges glow more brightly than anything, while faraway ivory-yellow windows call across the black water.
Saint Mary’s and Haakon’s church— These are at Asvaldsnes (a visit for which I thank Mr. Eirik Bø), and here I first heard of that Doomsday legend.
Hjelmeland and Suldal are two contiguous districts to the northeast of Stavanger, which, as I have said, lies in Rogaland. Hjelmeland is closer.
Reverend Johansen’s Bible passage: “Carry me, O LORD…”— Of course this is not a Bible passage at all, but a stanza from the Eddic poem “Skírnismál,” which I have clothed in a pseudo-Christian disguise. The original reads: “Thy steed then lend me to lift me o’er weird / ring of flickering flame, / the sword also that swings itself, / if wise he who wields it” (Hollander, p. 67).
Description of the “petroglyphs of long ships”— After a photograph in Frá haug ok heithni: Tidsskrift for Rogalands Arkeologiske Forening (Stavanger), nr. 1, 2007, p. 17.
“For the gate is narrow…”— Matthew 7:14.
“Glasir stands gold-leaved before Sigtyr’s halls.”— Snorri Sturluson, Edda, trans. Anthony Faulkes (London: J. M. Dent & Sons / Everyman, 1992 repr. of 1987 ed.), p. 96 (my “retranslation” of a line quoted in isolation from Skaldskaparmal). The title may be unclear, so let me note that this book is not in the Elder or Poetic Edda, which I cite as “Hollander,” but the Younger or Prose Edda, written ca. 1220–30. “Sygtyr” is one of Odin’s many names.
The maneuvers of King Rörek— Olaf Sagas, pp. 196–97.
“If you, Kristina, and you, Øistein, do not yet hate each other…”—Cf. Luke 14:26.
Description of the pond behind the Domkirke— Frá haug ok heithni, nr. 1, 2004, p. 7 (Bodil Wolf Johnsen, Byparken — En Historisk Oversikt, landscape painting from 1852).
THE QUEEN’S GRAVE
Epigraph: “But how is that future diminished…”— Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. E. B. Pusey, D.D. (London: Dent/Everyman’s Library, 1962; orig. Latin text bef. 430 A.D.), p. 274.
Description of the queen’s grave and its environs— After a visit in 2011 (thanks to the lovely Marit Egaas) to Hå Old Rectory, Nærbo, a seaside cemetery of sixty-odd Bronze Age mounds; and to Tinghaud and Krosshaug (near Klepp) where there is in fact an ancient queen’s grave.
The first Hnoss, Swegde, postmortem taxes to Frey, etcetera— Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, Part Two: Sagas of the Norse Kings, trans. Samuel Laing, rev. Peter Foote, M.A. (New York: Dutton: Everyman’s Library, 1961 rev. of 1844 trans.; orig. text 1220–1235), pp. 7–17. My Queen Hnoss is invented, as is her husband, King Yngvar, not to mention the Jötunsbok (I do wish that Frost Giants could write).
Einar Audunsson— My invention.
THE GHOST OF RAINY MOUNTAIN
Rainy Mountain is an invented place, but some of the landscape is indebted to the shrine of Nikko.
THE CAMERA GHOST
The watcher on the side— For readers who might not be familiar with Japanese Noh plays, the “watcher on the side,” the waki, is the one to whom the story (usually one of suffering as a result of an undying attachment) is narrated. Several other Noh references appear in “The Camera Ghost.” These would require much explication here, none of which is needed (I hope) to parse the story. A résumé of Noh characters and situations may be found in my book Kissing the Mask.
My camera’s eye— It was certainly strict in its fashion, neither blinking away an annoying telephone wire nor softening anything sad with a tactful tear. But because it was so uncompromising, it taught me how to see more carefully, so that unwanted telephone wires became fewer over the years.
“Was he two or were we one?”— These lines and the scene within the camera were partly inspired by watching the great Noh actor Mr. Umewaka Roruko in the backstage “mirror room” and interviewing him about his sensations. See my Kissing the Mask. It has been said that while preparing for a performance the Noh actor gazes into the mirror at his masked self, until he and the masked other come together. Still more haunting to me, the actor compels himself to see the stage as mirror and himself as reflected image. See Kunio Komparu, The Noh Theater: Principles and Perspectives, trans. Jane Corddry [text] and Stephen Comee [plays] (New York: Weatherhill/Tankosha, 1983 rev. expanded ed. of orig. 1980 Japanese text), pp. 7–8.
“Down this road we go, we go; / delusion’s road…”— Meant to sound like a Noh chorus, but all my mumbo-jumbo.
“and new pictures bloom up for the plucking, / so that I can never rest, never rest.”— This reflects the obsessive attachment of a ghost in a Noh play (or, for that matter, an Eastern European vampire who can’t help but count grains of rice until sunrise overtakes him). But in Noh the ghost would be so utterly tortured by his misery that he would be grateful to get freed by a priest and go into oblivion, whereas the protagonist of this story is proud to soldier on.