July 3rd, 2009

I ran across a fun news article about Cornwall’s mid-summer Golowan Festival, which has its strongest representation in Penzance.

(If you want to get a taste of the culture of Cornwall, make sure you watch the video as well.)

So what was the theme of this year’s Golowan Festival in Penzance? Well… it was the Cornish story where King Arthur protects the coast from Viking raiders.

And I laughed when I heard this, because the Vikings didn’t come until the 700’s, and King Arthur lived in the 500’s. How could King Arthur fight the Vikings when they didn’t overlap?

But then my daughter, Adele, told me a few of her theories. Now, mind you, her theories may sound strange, but she has researched both widely and deeply into the myths of Britain, Ireland, England, and Scotland, and you would be hard-pressed to gainsay her.

Her first (less controversial) theory is that there was more than one King Arthur … first of all an earlier one whose legends became attached to and confused with the later, 6th century one.

Her second (more controversial) theory is that this early King Arthur, Fionn mac Cumhaill (Finn McCool), and Robin Hood were all three contemporaries who fought the same people… in pre-Christian Britain.

This theory is “felt” as much as it is fact-based: She perceives the many threads of similarity at the heart of these legends and has found clues that other people dismiss or skip over.

And so she posited a very interesting idea: Since she has found evidence of both Robin Hood as well as Fionn mac Cumhaill fighting the Lochlainn (Norse, or pre-Vikings), then surely King Arthur did as well.

This was entirely a guess on her part. She challenged me to look at the oldest Welsh text about King Arthur found in the Red Book of Hergest to see who his enemies were.

So I looked, and after much digging, was very surprised to find that King Arthur did indeed fight the Norse. Here is what “A Dictionary of Celtic Mythology” by JAMES MacKILLOP says about the Dream Of Rhonabwy (a story in the Red Book Of Hergest):

The different heroes and companions that compose Arthur’s army are minutely described. Although Arthur is to ride to do battle with his enemies from Llychlyn [Norway] and Denmark, he is more concerned with the chess-like game of gwyddbwyll he is playing with Owain son of Urien.

There it was. The text even uses the Welsh “Llychlyn“, which is equivalent to the Irish Gaelic “Lochlainn“, the EXACT word my daughter had used before we knew it was in the text.

So, maybe that Golowan Festival in Penzance is right after all. Amazing!

The other nice thing about this is that I have now learned the ancient name for Norway, which will come in mighty handy for my Book 2 of the Merlin Spiral: Merlin’s Shadow.

Not that there’s any invasion from Norway in the book, but I’m delving into the fascinating history of King Lot and his family background.