I forget where I first came across mention of George Mackay Brown — he is, in fact, likely better known as a poet, although I’ve yet to read his poetry — but according to my records the first book by him I read was Beside the Ocean of Time (1994, UK), a novel, back in 2016, and it was enough for me to keep an eye open for his other works. Brown is an Orcadian writer, that is, from the Orkney Islands, north of Scotland. It’s a place I’ve never visited, and, to be honest, had never had any real desire to do so. The Orkneys are Scottish islands, perhaps a little more Scandinavian in character than other Scottish islands, but nonetheless grim and inhospitable small parcels of land in the middle of a grim and very inhospitable ocean.
Brown does not by any means make the islands welcoming and friendly. His novels and short stories are not tourist brochures. They’re historical novels, and the history of the Orkney Islands is as grim and inhospitable as their landscape. And that is, I suppose, chiefly where the appeal of Brown’s fiction lies.
I admit, my biggest takeaway from Beside the Ocean of Time was “brochs”, the Iron Age drystone towers found across the Orkney Islands. While the UK has a great deal of history on ready display, little of it stretches back to 800 BC, and it’s easy enough from the construction of brochs to underestimate their age.
However, the Orkney Islands’ most active historical period is perhaps that around the first millennium, when first the Vikings arrived, and later the Catholic Church. The Magnus of the title refers to Saint Magnus, who was Earl of Orkney from 1106 to 1115. Brown’s novel is a story about a figure who is a product of his position — the ruling noble family of the Orkneys — and whose actions are more or less dictated by historical forces.
But then that’s as much a Calvinist thing as it is a Catholic thing. Protestantism, as a rule, allows for more of a human hand in affairs — but, to be fair, Magnus is set around 1000 years ago when views on religion were very different. Certainly religion played a greater part in people’s lives, to a greater extent it even dictated how they should live. Brown’s St Magnus is a reluctant hero, one who fulfils his historical role more by accident than design. Except, not entirely by accident — it’s implied there are greater forces at work. It’s a standard trope in fantasy, but not much used in mainstream fiction — in historical fiction, perhaps, and Magnus certainly qualifies as that, but it’s not a trope that sits well in contemporary-set fiction. Brown’s genius is not only that he posits these forces but that he makes them an unremarkable part of the lives of his characters. To further confuse matters, he also shifts his narrative to WWII and a concentration camp.
I discovered George Mackay Brown by accident, but I have come to treasure his fiction. Not all poets make good writers — although, to be fair, I’ve yet to read Brown’s poetry. But I think the move from admiring a writer’s prose to discovering their poetry is a route less open to disappointment than admiring a writer’s poetry to reading their prose.
Bah.
I don’t know what that means. Read George Mackay Brown. I can vouch for the prose, if not for the poetry. But I plan to read the poetry.
