SONG: “Shining Stone (Calcite Double Refraction).” (To download: double right-click & “Save As”)
ARTIST: grant.
SOURCE: Based on “Magical Viking stone may be real”, The Telegraph, 2 Nov 2011, as used in the post “How Vikings found the sun”.
ABSTRACT: Viking navigators. I wanted to make a song that sounded like a saga. Like an ancestral memory. Like a hymn. So, I did what a good choirmaster would do and borrowed the melody from an old hymn – in this case, Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy’s take on “Idumea,” which was written some time in the 1700s. I’m a sucker for a good drone, and actually spent more time getting the drone just right than I did on the words. I did work in a few kennings, which makes me happy.
The verses are unrhymed, I’m getting over a cold, and I think it came out exactly the way it should have. Hoarse and wandering, but not lost.