A Landscape of Tales Exhibition

A Landscape of Tales

I’m very honoured to be a part of a new Orkney exhibition where I dared to enter a troublesome hogboon and standing stone giant. I hope they behave!

Nela Scholma-Mason talking about the exhibtion. Photo Credit: Orkneyology.com

A Landscape of Tales is a fascinating exhibition that explores how folklore and archaeology interact with one another. Orkney is a land of ancient mounds, standing stones, burial tombs and other archaelogical sites that are full of mystery. It’s a place of ancient magic: both in the physical artifacts we’re left with today and the spoken stories that have been passed down from Orcadian ancestors.

‘A Landscape of Tales’ is based on research carried out in Orkney by Nela Scholma-Mason while studying for her PhD. It looks at archaeological sites and the folklore attached to them. It is also accompanied by artwork inspired by Orkney’s folk tales.

Tom Muir at the Orkney Museum

Artists were asked to illustrate this link between the sites and the folklore surrounding them. I was delighted to contribute a wee creature or two… but what would I choose?

Hogboon

Also known as a Hogboy, these impish creatures haunt mounds, as well as the small holdings and households nearby. The famous burial chamber, Maeshowe, is said to be home to a hogboon who many report is more than a bit troublesome! Hogboons like their homes run a certain way, they like to be remembered, respected, and even occaisonally fed a small offering. If you anger the hogboon in any way, then expect nothing but mischief!

Nela Scholma-Mason created a fantastically funny short film highlighting the mischeif-making antics of one such hogboy! You can watch the film at the Orkney Museum on your way to the exhibition.

I decided to illustrate one such little hogboon lurking under a mound, about to chomp a juicy apple. But the question is, was he given it or did he nick it? And what else is stashed away in his grassy home?

My illustration of a hogboon lurking beneath an Orkney grassy mound

Standing Stone Giant

As well as grassy mounds and mystical hillocks, Orkney is a land of standing stones. Many of these standing stones are said to be giants – some of them even come alive on certain nights of the year! The Ring o’ Brodgar is a circle of mysterious standing stones and one of Orkney’s most well-known attractions. One night, the ring of giants were dancing and drinking just a tad too much mead or ale, and not even the blootered fiddler noticed the sun creeping up over the horizon. Sunlight turns certain giants to stone, and there they still stand today.

I illustrated one such giant, eyeing up his dragon’s tooth drinking horn. What is he thinking exactly? Is he wondering what exactly was in that mead to make them so merry that fateful night?

My illustration of the giant trapped within the standing stone

The Exhibition

The exhibition has a collection of amazing artworks, artifacts and information.

It runs from 7th December to the 1st February at the Orkney Museum, Kirkwall. The museum is open Monday to Saturday, with opening times 10.30am-12.30pm to 1.30pm-5pm.

The exhibition tells a story around the room. There are books of folklore told by wonderful Orcadian storyteller Tom Muir and illustrated by Bryce Wilson. (The room is full of Bryce Wilson’s original work to – so it was a real treat for me!) You can read all about folklore of the land, sea and stone and you can even see a pair of witch’s shoes and the marks people made to ward witches away!

My hogboon lurking under his hill mound in the exhibition. Photo Credit: Orkneyology.com

It’s truly a magical space, full of little wonders, stories, artworks, books and archealogical finds. I hope you can make it along and check the giant isn’t using foul language again! And that hogboon, I can just imagine him clonking around in those rare pair of witch’s shoes!

Ellen x

A cheeky close up of my hogboon illustration!

A Fantastic Day at Orkney Library’s Fun Palace

What magic! A wonderful afternoon spent with all the kiddies (and parents!) at Orkney Library’s Fun Palace 2019. As with last year, I was endlessly impressed with the little imaginations and the tiny hands creating magic, silliness and beautiful colouring…

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Tiny hands doodling a Finfolk beard full of spiders, a werewolf, and colouring a beautiful unicorn

Before I settled into creating enchanted doodles with the kids, I had a quick wander round – there was a lot to see! Indoor football, kickboxing, massages, spooky crafts, origami, photography, a Lego table, Dungeons and Dragons, the list goes on and on… The Salvation Army band was just starting up and my lovely friends at St Colms were busy providing hot drinks and delish cakes to everyone. My beloved library was buzzing and the mood was infectious.

Heather, who organises Orkney Library’s Fun Palaces, made things super easy for me, regardless of all my health conditions. I also had the help of my trusty ‘Minions’ (aka ‘Mum and Dad’) who tirelessly let me boss them about and did anything and everything I needed. A huge thank you to these three superhero’s – you see what I can do, not my limitations!

We quickly set up and then it was all go, go, go…

In a blink of an eye, kids were colouring Mester Stoorworm dragons, all tangled up in a Celtic knot. Orkney’s Mester Stoorworm could slither it’s body all the way round the world so it was naturally a very hungry creature. What would you feed it…? Pizza, stars, squiggly monsters, fresh meat, a giant frog, and a Cyclops is the answer, apparently.

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Mester Stoorworm Dragons eating a pizza, some monsters, and a Cyclops for their dinner!

Meanwhile, Scottish unicorns were getting glammed up, coloured in and decorated with all sorts of fabulous hair accessories. Neon and pastel seemed to be the fashion statements of the day.

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Some gorgeous Scottish unicorns were decorated with pom poms, bows and hair extenstions

Things quickly got witchy, where we were visited by young witch and wizard familiars! Familiars help their witch with magical tasks, spells and all sorts of fun and trouble. Some were cute, some were wise, others tried to lick my pencils! What does your magical friend look like?

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Some witches familiars in the forms of an Arctic Fox, a raven, and a dog.

Who doesn’t love to scribble? It’s very chilly here in Orkney, especially under the waves, so the kids helped to warm up a few freezing Finfolk with some scribbly, bushy beards! Some beards were metallic, others were brightly coloured, but all fantastic and cosy!

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Fantastic scribbly Finfolk beards – can you spot the fish?

There were so many wonderful drawings – I wasn’t always quick enough to photograph them all and sadly can’t include all of them here. The day’s doodlings ranged from spider-webs, bogies and zombie heads in magical potion jars, to merpups, seabunnies, and a two-headed snake mermaid! *shudders*

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Wonderful mermaids, from bunnies, doggies, and pussy-cats, to a favourite toy called ‘Peaches’ (bottom right)

And not forgetting, our ever popular ‘fairy pencils’ that change colour when you draw with them! The kids loved these, and created some very cool effects. But how do they do it??? Tis magic.

A truly wonderfuss day! Thank you for everyone, organisers, helpers, friends and kiddies who turned up to make the day simply magical! Hag hugs, elf kisses and dragon fist-bumps to you all! x

Little hands getting stuck in some arty faerie activities

Orkney Library’s Fun Palace 2019!

Today I’ll be at Orkney Library’s Fun Palace event with my Orkney faerie and folklore activities! You can draw, doodle, scribble all sorts of wonderfuss creatures and magical things!

I’ve also gathered some little faerie oddities, you can chat all things folklore with me, and tie a wishing rag to my magical staff! Ooh, make a wish quick!

All ages, abilities, and drawing skills welcome – I’ll be there from 1pm- 4pm.

Orkney Library’s event is the most northernly Fun Palace and is running from 10am-4pm today (5th October 2019). It’s all free, all are welcome and you can try a variety of different things from kickboxing to yoga, 3D Printing to sewing, massage to musical instruments. (Full list of fun activities below – they really are very cool.)

If you’re in Orkney, I’d love to see you there… even just to say hello!

Note: You better watch out for book imps, goblins, and the occasional witching ‘lose-your-keys’ spell which may follow you home!

If you’re not in Orkney, Fun Palaces are happening all over the place on the 5th and 6th October – take a look at their links below.

Orkney Library: Website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Fun Palaces: Website, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Ellen Forkin (Wonderfuss Faeries): Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

A Flying Orkney Trow

I’ve finally illustrated quite a common sight in Orkney skies – flying trows. They scoot about on bulwands and menace everything from local birdlife to seastacks, chimney pots to washing lines. Crashes, entanglements, ker-splats and so on happen often. On purpose, of course. I wouldn’t suggest anything otherwise.

‘Bulwand’: An enchanted dock leaf, or dock leaves, that trows use to fly.

A tangled mess of earbud wires trying to get in the way of my painting. This was likely to be the doing of angry gnome. It’s a long story.

This particular trow was the wilder side of tipsy. In a bizarre manoeuvre, he swerved towards a telephone cable and got horribly entangled. The mini power cut was blamed on a chirpy bunch of starlings.

I glared at him and the whiskey bottle both. Amazingly, he turned a bashful beetroot red; it’s the only time I’ve got away with any sort of critism of these trickety trows.

The zig-zagging chap happens to be the lesser hairier variety of trow. (Some trows are gloriously shaggy). As you can see, they resembles small wiry-haired, bushy-eyebrowed old men with long crookity toes and noses like a vegetable.

A blootered trow zig-zagging through the windy Orkney skies

So if you see a trow carreening about over your head, avert your eyes, cross your fingers, and say goodbye to your satellite dish.

All artworks and text copyrighted to Ellen Forkin and an irritable goblin called Trupp-Trink.

Sea-Runes

Orkney is a land of runes. These islands were a hot-spot for the Vikings in medieval times who left behind some wonderful runic graffiti. What is not well known, is that FaeryFolk of the sea also wrote in runes – and still do.

These runes are quite mysterious. Not in the least, because most people don’t know they exist. Or if they have spotted them, they’re put down to nature.

Sea-runes, or possibly ‘mermaid-runes’, carved into a rock nestled amongst seaweed

I’ve tried to speak to Gnöll, Bannafeet, and Megrani about the runes. It seems trolls, trows and even witches are reluctant to talk too much about them. I did once hear Megrani the crow witch mumble something about ‘mermaid runes’ when she caught me scribbling some silly runic messages. She flapped off before I could ask her more.

Our ‘Secret Beach’ in Deerness, Orkney

So I once more haunted one of my local beaches, searching for these magical treasures carved into the rocks. The more I see, the more questions there are…

Over the years, I listened to the seashells, the whispering tide, the selkies and their distant songs…

They got me nowhere but it was pleasant.

Who writes them? What do they say? Do they hold magical powers?

Sea-runes that a Viking would’ve been proud to carve…

Instead, I’ve daydreamed about what they could be… Love notes from a shimmering mermaid? Records of important oceanic wars of the Finfolk? Or secret directions to a selkie’s hidden sealskin?

Maybe we’ll never know. But I’ll keep looking and listening and hoping to stumble upon a mermaid one of these days…

Note: Mermaid runes are not to be confused with toothy sea-sluggits trails, ancient witch maps of ocean currents and magical ley lines, or scaly skin shed by juvenile stoorworms.

I’d love to see any sea-runes you’ve found!

A Night of Storytelling

I was delighted that, with permission from my troupe of goblins, I could enjoy an evening out: a storytelling event at my local bookshop.  I thought I should go along, and hear some Orkney tales from a human’s perspective for once.  The story of the man lured into the fairy hill for a year varied wildly from Guppo’s Trow-Foot’s version.

The human storyteller’s in question were Tom Muir and Fran Flett Hollinrake.  They told their tales beautifully –  even Trupptrink shut up his grumblings to listen.  Some stories told the miracles of St Magnus: the Saint, Martyr, and Viking Good Guy.  I decided not to sketch one of his many miracles involving wolves regurgitating human flesh.  We heard  a bad-breathed polar bear escapade from Shetland and a personal account of an irritable guardian-angel-type figure.  And, of course, we were also treated to folktales from the hills and households of Orkney.

As you might expect, I tried to capture a few of the images flitting about the room, by snagging them to paper.  I decided to do little illustrations to two of the tales.

 

The Changeling

Tom Muir told of a baby whisked away by fairies…  It was replaced by an ugly, wizened changeling, who wailed day and night.  The changeling however gave the game away when it demanded, in a gruff voice, whiskey from the baby sitter.

    

 

Here he is: yowling blue murder in his cot, then playing his penny whistled created with straw from the byre.  I’ve never met this faery, but I hear he sometimes busks outside Orkney whiskey distilleries, hoping for a free dram.

 

Baby Dragon

Another image to captivate my inner-eye, was a tale that included a cute baby dragon.

St Magnus – a different fella to Orkney’s Magnus – performed miracles in Germany by slaying troublesome dragons.  Personally I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding between human and dragon, but these were olden times and people don’t appreciate being eaten.

Anyway, St Magnus the Dragon Slayer spared this wee hatchling because of it’s innocence.  And because it was adorable, obviously.  The saved dragon is still mooching around the Swiss hills, thoroughly miffed with humans, as we all come to be eventually.  Best leave him be.

 

 

I had a delightful evening, and so did everyone else by the look of it.  I was particularly pleased that no books were shredded by the sprites who escaped from my handbag.  And I successfully managed to convince an ogre not to read melancholy poetry that can last up to eight hours.

Take a look at the Orcadian Story Trust (links below), and if you’re in Orkney, watch out for future Storytelling Festival events.  If you see an harassed looking English lady in the audience, swatting invisible pixies from her hair, and whispering to her shoulder, that’s me!

Orcadian Story Trust Website

Orcadian Story Trust on Facebook

@OrkneyStoF on Twitter

Other Links:

Books by Tom Muir

Fran Flett Hollinrake’s Blog

Orkney FolkLore Storytelling Centre

Info on St Magnus and Dragons

 

All words and artworks created by Ellen and belongs to a cantankerous goblin called Trupptrink.