I think one of the best smells in the world is that of opening a box of apples, or picking one directly from the tree and enjoying the anticipatory tantalising aroma before taking a bite. With over 2,000 different cultivars in the UK alone, Apples are one of the nation’s favourite fruit, and at this time of year, (the start of autumn) if you drive through any country areas, you will likely have seen many laden trees. But did you know that apples are actually magic?

If you cut an apple in half widthways, you’ll see a five pointed star in the centre.

Not surprisingly, then, there are pieces of folklore relating to them, along with some great traditions, many from the west country. In older orchards, it was traditional to leave the last apple on the tree for the Apple Man - the spirit of the orchard, who protects it. If you can peel an apple in one continuous strip without breaking it, and then throw it over your shoulder, your future spouse or love will be revealed.

At Halloween if it often customary to go apple bobbing, which has older associations with Samhain and the Celtic new year. Just before this, on the 21st of October is considered Apple Day in the UK, with many traditional places, and orchards opening their doors and encouraging everyone to help with the harvest.

Of course the most famous of these traditional celebrations in England is Wassailing which takes place in January. The idea is that everyone make as much noise as possible to ensure that any bad spirits are chased away from the fruit, to enable a good crop. The oldest tree in the orchard has libations of cider and slices of bread soaked in it, placed in it’s branches, this to appease the spirit of the orchard to continue protecting the orchard. Usually the cider flows freely and a good time is had by all.

Another name for the mythical Isle of Avalon, the place where the legendary King Arthur is said to rest, was the Isle of Apples.

Apples are often linked to youth and beauty in mythic tales, this is particularly evident in Norse mythology, the gods rely on the goddess Iðunn’s golden apples of eternal youth, to stop them growing old and dying, maybe the old saying “An apple a day, keeps the doctor away,” is linked to this idea of health and youth too?

Lastly I was initially reluctant to share this somewhat closely guarded family recipe with you, mainly because I wanted to an maintain an air of mystery around the cake, but also because its a direct link with my grandmother. However the recipe for Dorset Apple cake on the whole, is fairly well known, but my gran’s recipe is much better because it has simpler and easier to obtain ingredients. I have converted it into grammes.

My Gran’s Dorset Apple Cake.

Ingredient:

225g Self-Raising Flour

115g butter or spread

115 g granulated sugar

1 or 2 heaped tsp of mixed spice

1 tsp of cinnamon

1 egg

5-6 tbsp of milk

225g (or more if you like) apples, any will do, peeled and chopped into tiny cubes.

100g sultanas

2 tbsp demerara sugar.

You will need

A cake tin with a loose bottom, greased and lined at the bottom with greaseproof paper.

Gas mark 4 180 celsius

Method:

Tip with flour into a mixing bowl, add the spices and combine well. Add the butter or spread and with your finger-tips rub until it resembles breadcrumbs. Add the granulated sugar and mix together, add the egg and milk and combine until it is a dropping consistency. Add the apples and combine, followed by the sultanas. When everything is mixed, spoon or pour into the prepared tin, and sprinkle the demerara sugar over the top. Place in the middle of the oven for 45 mins, and afterwards, check with a skewer to see if it comes out cleanly, if not, put it back for 5 more mins and continue checking.

Allow to cool in tin for 10 mins before turning out onto a cooling rack.

Serve hot with clotted cream or cold with a cuppa.

Let me know how you get on!

All photo & words: ©Thea Prothero.

Painting of Iðunn with Bragi (1846) is by Nils Blommér.

Wassailing The Orchard sketch is public domain.

All my work is 100% AI free.

I don’t know about you, but I have found at this time of year, as August slips into September, the land seems to hold its breath.

All the frantic growth and frivolity of midsummer has faded, leaving us with shorn fields, heavy dust and that unhurried amber light that feels so much older than it did a month ago. To walk the path right now is to step onto a slow threshold, the liminal corridor between high golden summer and into the shadow of winter.

At this time of year, I become restless, and often walk, sometimes aimlessly, often just for the sake of walking. For the first time, this year, my disquiet wasn’t simply because of the calendar date, but instead the full, low hanging, August Moon. Interestingly, in old Swedish belief, this period was known as Rötmånaden - the rot month, a time of intense humidity and heat, when milk spoils instantly, and meat tends to rot. A full moon during this dangerous time was treated with caution, as it symbolised the summer’s decay.

This year, we all know exactly how this feels.

For those who follow the Heathen path (or not), this full moon signals a profound boundary marker between two states of the year. Mani is at his most dominant, signalling that the bright shining shield of summer is finally fracturing. To me, this was a luminous command to take to the ancient trackways and see how the land is responding to the changing tide of the year.

As I stepped onto the well-worn dirt track, I could feel the landscape still reeling with the scars of the season. Behind is a summer defined by relentless, parched drought that has baked the earth into a hard, cracked carapace. Behind us, too, is the memory of the mid-August dramatic solar eclipse. Sunna and Mani finally meeting or clashing perhaps, meaning the earth was darkened and eerie in a strange, cold twilight.

A portend, perhaps.

My pilgrimage walk took me to the earthworks at Woodhenge, alongside the massive ancient footprint of Durrington Walls. At the edges of the full-moon sky, the grass is brittle and dead, and standing beside the concrete markers that mark where ancient wooden pillars once stood, the landscape feels empty and hollow. The earth has been shaved clean by the harvest, weeks ago, revealing the stark white chalk bones, ridged like the corpses of strange beings, maybe gods, who knows.

But walking here, you are never truly alone; the landvættir, spirits of place, and our long-dead ancestors turn their curious eyes, watching me absorb the desolation.

As I strike out towards the linear spine of the Greater Circus, I feel a definite shift in mood; they are turning inwards due to the weight of this heavy summer.

The wind rattles through the dry thistles, dead seed heads of wild parsley, with a hollow papery sigh. The birds are largely silent.

Walking this ancient landscape feels almost like attending a funeral, my walk a silent vigil.

Climbing to the King Burrows, the ancient processional pathway opens up, and these rounded mounds sit on the ridgeway, silhouetted against the pale morning light, like the knuckles of our buried gods.

When I walk down the avenue toward Stonehenge itself, the monument becomes the anchor point in the entire sky.

Walking here means matching your breath to the rhythm of the landscape, its contours and ditches. How I long to press my hands on one of the rough outlying sarsens! I want to feel the residue heat from all its summers and understand, even fleetingly, what our ancestors felt when they watched endlessly, all the eclipses and droughts that are time-immortal events.

Leaving these beloved stones behind, I head along the final stretch. Descending from the open, timeless, parched belly of the plain, back towards the jarring infrastructure of modern life, feels stifling.

The melancholy that we all feel at this time of year is not a sadness that can be cured by modern distractions. For me, this late summer ache, sparked by the call of yesterday’s moon, and framed by the death of this suffocating summer, is a form of reverence. It is the emotional echo of a landscape that knows how to die gracefully, trusting completely that the sun will return,

always.

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Orphir is a small and seemingly sleepy settlement on Orkney mainland that overlooks Scapa Flow.

At Yuletide in 1136  things were decidedly not quite so sleepy! On the hillside stood Earl Paul’s brù, (drinking hall,)there was feasting, merriment and copious amounts of drinking and boasting. Conveniently the brú was next to the church of St. Nicklas, so the drinkers could offer penance for any sins committed without delay.

The church of St. Nicklas is described in the Orkneyinga Saga as “Magnificent.” Built by Earl Haakon Paulsson in penance for murdering his cousin Magnus around 1116, (latterly St. Magnus as mentioned in a previous blog post. )

It is the oldest surviving round church in Scotland and is thought to have been modelled on  The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, after Haakon participated in a crusade visiting the Church.

Today the remains of the church and Brú are still visible in the ground, as well as the later edition of a graveyard. We arrived later in the day, the sun was lower in the sky, and shone through the church to create a deeply spiritual atmosphere. It was hard to imagine the hustle and bustle of a thousand years ago, on a gently calm and perfect summer evening when you could even hear the sea lapping against the shore.

We lingered in the graveyard, reading names of the dead as the sun set and wondered if they appreciated being remembered, even by strangers.

As we returned to the car park, we passed the Orkneyinga Saga centre which was unfortunately closed this late, but would definitely be a place we would return to - one day.

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My introduction to Tove Jansson was as a child, when I found the world of the Moomins listening to many of the stories read at bedtime to me by an adult, possibly a grandparent. But my love of Jansson’s The Summer Book, as an adult, made me appreciate her all over again. The book itself was written in 1972, is semi-autobiographical, and is filled with the silent, delicate portrayal of loss and grief, but primarily the healing power of nature. This is Jansson’s innate genius - her ability to show how a landscape can heal us.

The Book, then, is deeply personal to me.

I therefore had huge trepidation when I found out about the film adaptation, especially with an American director and it being an English-language film. For one thing, Jansson’s work is intrinsically tied to her Finnish identity, and how can a film capture the endless, intense silence that is the mainstay throughout the book?

That the film was shot entirely on location in Finland, specifically across the rugged, untouched archipelagos of Kotka, Porvoo, and Espoo, with no dramatic CGI effects, makes it immediately stand out. On-screen, the Finnish summer is portrayed with such breathtaking beauty that you can almost smell the crisp sea air and run your hands over the stark, sun-drenched granite rocks. In the film, the landscape isn’t just a setting; it takes on a life of its own, becoming a character in its own right and serving as the film’s primary focus, thus ensuring the story never loses its authentic sense of place.

The cinematography is beyond anything I have seen in a long time, and I found myself enchanted and encapsulated, longing to set foot in the little ramshackle cabin on the island with the family.

Examining the Grandmother’s character is where comparisons between the book and the film become interesting. Both versions offer an incredibly rare portrait of being old, especially with our modern pursuit of youth, and desire to be forever-young, world.

In Tove Jansson’s novel, the Grandmother is not your typical sweet old lady figure. She is wonderfully cantankerous, fiercely independent, and a bit of a rebel. Jansson portrays her not as an authority figure instructing a child, but as Sophia’s equal in all things, since they both stand at the opposite edges of life.

Glenn Close’s grandmother, on screen, brings a stalwart strength to the role, much like the rocky Baltic shores she hobbles across. The film, I believe, softens her edges just a touch, turning her into more charming, (running around the island naked when her family is away, and sneaking the odd cirargette when she thinks no-one is watching) but equally steely. In the film, she is the emotional anchor for her grieving family. Where the book’s grandmother can be sharp and impatient, Close plays her with quiet wisdom, which you see in her silence. Grandmother teaches us that ageing doesn’t mean fading away into the background.

I found the film incredibly beautiful, and very soulful, with the superb cinematography stealing the show and making me want to move to Finland! My main bugbears are, firstly, the total lack of Finnish actors within the film, and I have no doubt that there are many who could have played any or all of the three main characters with equal skill and presence. Next, is the woeful underuse of Norwegian actor Anders Danielsen Lie, who plays the semi-silent father. And lastly, perhaps most importantly, why is the film in English? I can, like most people, read subtitles!

Having said all that, I still completely fell in love with it. I love the way McDowell’s film doesn’t try to compete with the book. Instead, it is a tender companion.

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If you ever happen to visit Kirkwall on Orkney, you cannot fail to notice the beautiful red stoned cathedral devoted to St. Magnus, considered the patron saint of the Orkney islands.

Construction of the cathedral began in 1137, by Magnus’s nephew Earl Rognvald after Magnus was betrayed and murdered  by his cousin Haakon Paulsson approximately twenty years earlier. Magnus became a saint in 1136. Throughout this life, Magnus was considered a peaceful and pious man - celebrated qualities in a godly man but often derided  and scorned in Viking culture. With Christianisation came new world views which often were very different from the cultural norms of the newly converted. In the Orkneyinga Saga, for example Magnus’s gentleness was considered cowardly, and his refusal to participate in raids in Anglesey only added to the animosity towards him. After being originally buried firstly on Egilsay then Birsay, (on Orkney,) his remains were eventually placed in St. Magus Cathedral.

When I first visited the cathedral, a few years ago now, I was serenaded by an impromptu violin concerto in the choir that echoed around the red stoned aisles, acting rather like an amphitheatre.  Many visitors were reduced to tears and everyone was transported to their own divinely spiritual place.

Since then St Magnus Cathedral has always held a special place in my heart. I was keen to visit again and experience the same spiritual intensity which enabled me to fully appreciate the cathedral and its importance within the community. Inside, the cathedral is surprisingly small compared to others, such as Winchester, and is seemingly built on a slight angle.

The aisles are filled with interesting grave markers, many featuring vantitas style skulls with apocalyptic warnings about sins of the flesh. Called ‘The Light of the North’ I find this simple declaration comforting - in times of darkness whether seasonal or personal, this  place will always be a beacon to guide and offer hope. To me, this sits seamlessly with the Scandi hygge and with this in mind, I lit a single small candle as a wayfinder for all those souls ‘lost in the dark’.  I spent time contemplating this sitting in the pew amongst the faithful and the awed tourists who seem completely overwhelmed by this unique expression of Orkney’s beloved saint. I’m not sure I fit into either of these two categories, but  felt strangely at home here,  more so even any other place of worship that I repeatedly visit. Perhaps it’s not so unusual - Orcadians are very warm hearted and the cathedral is a perfect expression of this.

St Magnus Cathedral became a site of pilgrimage during the medieval period when under the diocese of Nideros Cathedral (Trondheim). Today it is the final stop on the newly created St Magnus way pilgrimage, a 55 mile route through the Orkney Mainland, visiting important sites in the life of Magnus and its islands

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For more information on pilgrimage, please take a look at my book, A Guide to Pilgrimage, available from all bookshops both online and in-store.

As I stood at the base of the Longstone, or Mottistone, on the Isle of Wight, the only standing stone left on the island at 6000 years old, and a place of meeting for the Anglo-Saxon rulers, I wondered to myself if King Arwald, the last pagan king of this land, had stood in this very spot during his lifetime.

With blood and fire, the ancient kingdom of the Jutes was violently destroyed in 686 CE. At the centre of this often forgotten apocalypse was King Arwald, the last pagan king of Anglo-Saxon England, who ruled over the Isle of Wight, then known as Wihtland.

To understand Arwald’s tragedy, it’s important first to understand his people. When the Roman Empire collapsed, Britain was claimed by three distinct Germanic tribes: the Angles, the Saxons, and the Jutes. While the Saxons dominated the south and the Angles claimed the north and midlands, the Jutes, who were migrants from the northern reaches of Denmark, settled primarily in Kent, southern Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight. The Jutes of Wihtland, known as the Wihtwirra, maintained a fiercely separate identity from their neighbours. They boasted unique legal customs, traded deep into Frankish Europe, and crafted exquisite garnet jewellery. Crucially, by the late 7th century, while the massive Anglian and Saxon kingdoms had surrendered their old gods to the sword and cross of Roman Christianity, Arwald’s 400 island families remained proudly, stubbornly pagan, worshipping Woden and other gods, including Nurthas or the Earth Mother in their untouched forest clearings.

To their Christian Saxon neighbours, they were the final, defiant obstacle to a completely Christianised England.

Most of what we know about Arwald comes from a singular, dark account in the Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. In 686 AD, King Cædwalla of Wessex launched a merciless invasion of the island, heavily backed by the ambitious Bishop Wilfrid. Cædwalla’s objective was total conquest and religious erasure. Arwald was killed in battle while defending his kingdom, and Bede explicitly details that Cædwalla attempted to exterminate the native Wihtwirra, replacing them with Christian settlers from Wessex.

Following the collapse of the island’s defences, the royal heirs, some accounts say it was Arwald’s brothers, whilst others mention sons, fled across the Solent to the mainland. They embarked on a desperate escape route into Ytene (the ancient name for the New Forest), seeking refuge from Cædwalla’s advancing army. Slipping deep into the forest, they made it as far as a place Bede calls Stoneham (near modern-day Southampton). Believing they were hidden safely away, they were ultimately betrayed by a resident to Cædwalla’s forces. The wounded king ordered them to be executed at a nearby location known as Hreutford (modern-day Redbridge). Before the sword fell, an abbot named Cynibert from a monastery at nearby Hreutford intercepted the executioners, convincing Cædwalla to let the boys be baptised first. Because they were forced to convert to Christianity moments before their execution, the Church ironically canonised them collectively with Arwald as “St Arwald”, celebrated to this day on April 22nd.

As we all know, historical records are entirely written by the victors; modern storytellers have stepped in to fill the vacuum, giving a voice back to the silenced islanders. In his historical recordings and folklore collections, award-winning storyteller Brice Stratford re-anchors this tragedy within the physical topography of the Hampshire landscape. Crucially, while older historical sources label the fleeing royal youths as Arwald’s brothers, Brice Stratford’s account suggests that they were actually Arwald’s sons.

To add drama to the story, Stratford adds a starkly defiant twist to their final moments: instead of submitting to a forced Christian baptism, one of the young princes violently resisted, impaling himself upon a tree to dedicate his soul directly to Odin in the ancient manner of a sacrificial warrior. Interestingly, Stratford states that folklore acts as a living archive, and declares that the legend of Arwald and his kin is a modern celebration “by Christian and Heathen alike”

His reimagining of the story makes the New Forest a central point in the ultimate betrayal of the two young men, reminding us that folklore is the surviving shadow of real history.

Where folklore looks at the remnants, author Jan Harper Whale builds an immersive epic. Across The Wihtwara Trilogy, she extensively reconstructs the everyday world of the island’s ancestors, transforming the victims of Cædwalla’s purge into fleshed-out human beings. She portrays the Wihtwirra not as primitive idol worshippers, but as a deeply spiritual community intimately connected to nature and the Earth Mother, Nerthus. Her work directly tackles the brutality of the Wessex genocide, using historical fiction to reclaim the identities of a forgotten people. As the overarching ancient Wihtwara message embedded in Jan Harper Whale’s books reminds us, a forgotten history has been rediscovered.

Arwald’s death is a significant point in British History, marking the end of the all-too-brief pagan Jutes and their independent spirit: the Isle of Wight was the very last place in England to convert to Christianity.

Today, his legacy has experienced a massive resurgence. Every April 22nd, modern Pagans, islanders, and the local Hampshire Heathen kindred celebrate St Arwald’s Day. It serves as a poignant reminder of the island’s enduring, fiercely independent spirit.

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All writing is ©Thea Prothero

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Images:

Langstone pictures, © Thea Prothero

Arwald Mask is © Nigel George

Arwald line drawing is from www.iwhiddenheroes.org.ukThe

Last image Illustration is from New Forest Myth and Folklore.

If you are interested in more information about King Arwald’s pagan beliefs, then please buy my book, Heathenry for the Solitary Practitioner. Its available from all bookshops, online or in person.

“…one of the most distinctive and easily recognisable features of Pompeian houses is shrines that we now call by the Latin name Lararium, shrine of the Lares or household gods..”

Mary Beard. Pompeii

I remember visiting Butser Ancient Farm’s Roman villa many years ago, before it was completely finished and being struck, not only by the grandeur of the main house, with its red walls and intricate frescos, but also by the simplicity of the kitchen. It was a functional space, easily recognisable to the modern eye with its hearth, ovens and working spaces, the notable exception was the household altar set into the wall. The shrine stood alone and apart from the rustic appearance of the the rest of the room. The guide told us the altar was dedicated to Cares, goddess of the harvest, agriculture and motherly relationships. Beneath her shrine was the bread making area and oven, which seemed fitting.

The idea of a household shrine is not specific to Roman culture or the Empire, but that one that stayed with me, I liked the idea of a dedicated spiritual space within the domestic sphere of the kitchen, the heart of the house. In my own practice I have several Lararium throughout my house, including one in my kitchen which is a place of offering and dedication to my local and specific vaettir (spirits) who protect both my house and my family.

On my recent visit to Pompeii, I specifically looked for Lararium, in the personal houses of the victims of the tragedy. Most are not visible anymore, due to the destruction and devastating nature of catastrophe that befell the city, but as I wandered through the quieter areas, inside what would have been peoples domestic areas, I could imagine coming across a small altar or shrine incorporated into a wall, likely with figures and offerings, decorated and visual. A highly personal and sacred space for personal devotion.

Imagining this familiar activity - worship, and maybe even prayer - which is still an ongoing practice in today’s society - made the everyday occupants of Pompeii, the people who lived, ate and breathed here nearly two thousand years ago, alive again, becoming relatable and truly real to me at that moment.

I would be interested in hearing about your own household shrines, if you have them.

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I don’t know anyone who has not been wowed by the latest adaptation of Homer’s epic prose, The Odyssey. It is the major film release of the summer, and at three hours long, it offers the viewer everything they could want to see in an epic tale. I enjoyed the way Nolan, the director, stripped away the polished marble-white aesthetics of traditional Hollywood epics, making it a sensory triumph that, if you haven’t seen it yet, will have you sitting on the edge of your seat and weeping by the end.

By incorporating powerful aspects of Norse or Viking mythological imagery, Nolan makes the ancient, familiar feel of the Greek underworld genuinely unpredictable and terrifying. The seamless way this is achieved in the film completely alters the film's overall feel and adds to Odysseus’s psychological burden.

This thematic shift from one mythology to another begins with Nolan’s choice of a seagoing vessel. Homer’s epic tale places Odysseus aboard a Bronze Age Mediterranean galley, a long-slung, multi-oared ship built for the sun-drenched Aegean Sea.

The film, however, uses an authentic 115ft oak-planked replica Norse Longship, Draken Harald Hårfagre. In the Viking Age, these ships were masterful tools designed for exploration, trade and warfare. But they also had a spiritual presence in the afterlife of many high-status warriors and elite nobles, where these ships were famously buried with the dead. By trading the two types of ship, the nature of Odysseus’s journey changes meaning, particularly as the ship approaches the underworld, when the Longships funerary symbolism takes the central stage. Here, the creaking timber and tar-sealed oak feel less like a ship of adventure and more like a floating funeral pyre.

The ship becomes a metaphor for death.

Further evidence of this mythological blending is found in the specific rewriting of the underworld’s geography. In Emily Wilson’s translation, (Which Nolan used), Circe instructs Odysseus to steer his ship towards a foggy watery boundary:

“…shrouded in mist and cloud.”

(Book 11, lines 14-19)

Nolan’s Odyssey, thought, completely subverts this representation; in the film version, Circe explicitly tells Odysseus that his path home requires navigating “…the land of ice and fire, where the breath of the living freezes before it hits the ash.” By replacing Homer’s fog and clouds with the intrinsic Norse concept of ice and fire, Nolan directly evokes the creation-and-destruction myth of Niflheim and Muspelheim. He replaces the Greek underworld with a volcanic wasteland where the world is actively tearing itself apart.

To match the whole Ice and Fire ethos, Nolan films the encounter with the dead amidst the unyielding landscapes of Iceland. The scene instantly takes on a heavy, end-of-the-world, authenticity because of the blackened volcanic terrain and freezing glacial air, which only adds to the overall sinister feel of speaking with the dead, and, ironically, brings each word spoken to life.

The brutal setting strips away the comforting shadows of classical mythology and instead presents the afterlife as an inescapable void.

I would be interested to hear what you think of this hypothesis and your own thoughts on the film as a whole.

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“But Death and Quiet spread their pinions here,
And faintest whispers strangely strike the ear;
Halls for long ages shut from cheerful day
Temple and bath, and narrow tomb-lined way,
Sleep in the Summer sun…”

Pompeii by Nicolas Michell (1807-1880.)

Earlier this week I visited Pompeii.

I have been several times before but not for many years, and although dreading the intense unbearable heat and lack of sanctuary and shade, I faltered into a sense of nostalgia and decided to frequent probably the most touristy place in southern Italy. Pompeii and its sister site, Herculaneum are marvels to us and offer an incredible opportunity to view life in Roman times by literally walking the same streets, allowing us a rare glimpse into times prior to BCE (or AD) 79.

However, one of the most poignant and hard to reconcile aspects for me, is the constant reminder that Pompeii is one giant memorial, an imprint of the dead. Everywhere you walk, you are treading in the footprints of the tragedy’s aftermath. People died in ways we cannot possibly fathom, very horrifically, where we tourists stand taking selfies.

It is almost as though the immense horror and unthinkable agony that took place here, are ground into dust beneath the millions of visitor’s feet; becoming more fleeting and insignificant with every camera flash or fake smile posted on Instagram. It is surreal and depressing, and I half felt like I was in a strange computer game. Perhaps because of this ever-present sense of death, although it was the last thing I was expecting, I did experience something out of the ordinary and rather eerie.

I had followed the tourist gravy train along the main drag, and photographed the incredibly beautiful frescos and decorations, but felt the desperate need to escape the colossal number of people, so walked away, along some lesser streets until I was alone. It was extremely hot, and I found a small entryway into an open ruin of a house, with a degree of shelter in one of what would have been, the central gardens. I sat with my back against a wall and gratefully gulped my water. It was quiet and the peace was sublime. I closed my eyes, relieved and hydrated.

I think I may have dozed because I was startled awake by what felt like a heavy fabric brushing against my arm - as though someone had walked past me, opening my eyes I glimpsed something red moving away just out of sight, behind me, the sense of a woman, the robe of a woman, dark hair loosened. My nose was filled with the perfume of rich flowers and warm oil, the moment was carefree and delicate, like a rose petal. A word, or part of a phrase floated around me, spoken with a hushed voice, deep with implication, as though it was echoing through a tunnel: “Veni…”

I blinked and rubbed my eyes and understood I was alone. No one was there. Except perhaps for the ghosts - not one of terror and death, as you’d expect, however. Instead, a brief moment caught out of time, a flash of joy in a singular word – “The faintest whispers…”

My books, A Guide to Pilgrimage, & Heathenry for the Solitary Practitioner are available through all booksellers both in person or online.

All images and text are ©Thea Prothero.

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If you looked at my bookshelf today, you would see a clear line stretching from the skies of Pern to the fiery battlefields of Westeros. My love affair with the fantasy

dragon began in my teens with Anne McCaffrey’s novels, where I found an absolute lifeline in the character of Lessa as she formed her unbreakable partnership with the wild and fierce golden dragon, Ramoth. At the time, the Dragonrider series was profoundly empowering for me as a teenager trying to navigate the overwhelming traumas of adolescence. That deep connection enabled me to understand my own early animist principles, and cemented a belief I’ve held ever since: dragons are intrinsic to humankind, and are so more than just a token evil monster meant to be slain by a sword-wielding knight. My love for these complex creatures has only grown over the years, culminating in the modern era of Westeros. Who could fail to be impressed by Daenerys Targaryen’s jaw-dropping dragon-wielding power, and the absolute immensity of how that dynamic plays out in Game of Thrones?

Yet, I have always harboured the notion that there must be something behind all the myths and stories relating to Dragons. My own interest in archaeology has always caused me to wonder how much the accidental discovery of dinosaur bones by ancient civilisations fueled these stories in the first place. That curiosity is precisely what drew me to Dave Stone’s new book, Dragons of the Deep. Stone beautifully reinforces the idea that dragons were never mere monsters. Instead, he explores how ancient worldviews intimately tied the dragon to water worship and a profound animism.

Dragons of the Deep: Origins & Lore is Dave Stone’s third book and first published with Moon Books.

Dave is probably better known to you as the stone carver behind Stone Mad Crafts, but his deep interest in all things dragon eventually led to writing this great book. For the dragon lovers out there, you will not be disappointed!

Inside, Dave offers a comprehensive study that dismantles the Western, medieval image of the dragon as a greedy, mindless monster. Stone argues that serpent and dragon worship were historically indistinguishable within global folklore, revealing that these creatures are “iconically linked to the worship of water and, in turn, with ancient animist worldviews.” This unique book explores how ancient cultures actually viewed dragons as tangible, elemental forces bound to rivers, wells, and the primordial ocean. And for anyone who grew up admiring the intelligent, complex dragons of fantasy fiction, like myself, Dave provides the real-world historical foundation to match that grand scale, showing how a single motif united different tribal movements under a shared, common humanity.

But what really makes Dragons of the Deep truly stand out for me is how it bridges this profound spiritual history with the physical world. While Stone observes a fascinating divide between the “celestial dragons of divine myth” and the landscape-shaping beasts of local folklore, the book leaves plenty of room for the tangible origins of these legends. It is an enlightening, accessible, and deeply resonant read that forces us to rethink what the dragon truly represents. To me, this is the essence of what Dave’s book is all about.

To dive even deeper into these fascinating concepts, I sat down with the author himself to ask how these ancient myths continue to speak to our modern world.

Your book “deep dives” into the overarching global mythology of the dragon. Do you think there is a possibility that a creature matching any of the shared depictive elements of what we know as a dragon, actually could have existed in some form, or do you view them strictly as a psychological and cultural metaphor?

“I think that there are accounts of huge lizards from various medieval writers. I think Marco Polo writes somewhere about being taken to see some ‘dragons’ which were large lizards of some description. The same goes for serpents, too. Some accounts of dragons were possibly also supported by fossilised dinosaur remains. So, no doubt, such accounts of giant lizards, etc., bolstered the images seen in bestiaries and the tales told of them. But in the myths and stories relating to dragon-lore, which I explore in the book, the dragon can be seen as many things: an essence, an elemental, a genus loci... and ‘dragon’ is the gown with which legend and lore have gowned it. For example, the Chinese dragon is most often a hybrid, and in art it is visualised with very identifiable features; yet it embodies the clouds, storms, rains and water.”

You are widely known as a stone carver and for your deep interest in mythology and history, and specifically in Celtic subjects, which were the subject of your first two books, so what was the inspiration to write a book dedicated to the lore and myths of the dragon?

“Yes, for decades researching designs to carve, and needing to find out what they were all about, got me wondering about the profusion of serpent and dragon motifs in Celtic and Norse art. In 2013, I was travelling through the Greek islands and Turkey. The Dragon myths kept appearing. The more I looked at them, the more the patterns and similarities between different dragon stories began to puzzle me. The more I looked into the corpus of dragon lore, the more research began to gather. It became a bit of an obsession. In many ways, what I found ties into much of the same body of work as the book on faerie lore. These are very ancient themes.”

What is your personal favourite story or myth about dragons? (modern or old)

“Oh, I have many. I think those that follow the Great Battle theme are my favourite. This is probably best epitomised by the ancient Sumerian tale of Tiamat, queen of dragons. She is a very maligned entity and suffers at the hands of the sky god, Marduk. In many ways, this sets a precedent for the raft of Dragon-slayer myths that come after it, including St. George. But Tiamat’s has the ingredient of an epic, even though the poem in which it is told, The Enuma Elish, isn’t so long. But, to be honest, there are so many dragon tales that resonate with me.”

What is your earliest dragon memory?

“I have a few. At primary school, Puff the Magic Dragon definitely did something to my brain. I’m not sure what, but it made me empathise with them for sure. Later, I think it was the 1981 film, Dragon Slayer, that I loved. I probably saw it at the pictures on the big screen, so it made an impression on me. If I remember rightly, Sean Connery was the voice of the dragon. Nowadays, I’m less sympathetic to the dragon-slayers, and I’m definitely on the side of the dragons.”

Thanks to Dave for taking the time to answer my questions.

In conclusion, both Dave’s brilliant research and our insightful interview prove that dragons were never just mindless, evil beasts meant to be slain by a knight, but rather sacred, animist symbols born of ancient archaeology and the life-giving power of water. By stripping away medieval clichés, this book bridges the fantasy worlds we adore with a genuine global mythological history, proving that the dragon remains an enduring, vital anchor for the human imagination.

For anyone interested, my own two books also published by Moon Books are available in store or to order from everywhere that sells books.

All words are © Thea Prothero and Dave Stone. Please dont use without permission. All photographic images are ©Dave Stone and used with his kind permission.

All my words and Dave Stone’s are 100% AI free.

In one of the most remote parts of the northern Scottish mainland, situated down a narrow pot holed road in the middle of a desolate windswept moor are two of the oldest chambered cairns in Scotland. The cairns are over 5,000 years old, and in remarkably well preserved condition. (Although the larger of the two, had to be restored when the roof collapsed,)smaller  cairn in near perfect condition.

As you can see from the photo, the inside includes a capstone with a long narrow entrance which you have to crawl along on hands and knees, to enter the inner chamber.

The knees of my jeans will never recover!

Earlier in the week we visited the famous Clava Cairns near Inverness and although much younger, (Bronze Age as opposed to Neolithic,) the probably corbeled roofs at Clava are missing. Having now stood in a far older cairn, I could reimagine how the Clava would have looked prior to excavation and destruction.

Crawling on hands and knees to enter a sacred space, seems devotional, in an almost prayer-like supplication. You cannot fail to wonder if this was the purpose of the deliberately small and long passageway  entrance.  Would our Neolithic ancestors have brought offerings to their dead? Would they have spent time in the deep womb of the cairn reverencing their kin?  It is an incredibly humbling thought that by simply entering the cairn this tradition remains current.

It’s hard to describe the complete silence and solitude inside the belly of the cairn. Sitting in darkness with only a faint glow from the entrance, which seems like a world away, with only your thoughts for company. It feels completely natural to be here.

It is tempting not to leave…

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“I lingered round them,

under that benign sky;

watched the moths

fluttering among the heath and hare-bells;

listening to the soft wind breathing through the grass;

and wondered how anyone

could ever imagine unquiet

slumbers for sleepers in that quiet earth.”

Emily Brontë. Wuthering Heights.

When Emily Brontë penned the closing lines of Wuthering Heights, her sentiment was not entirely accurate: Walking the cobbles of Haworth, especially on a moody, rain-filled afternoon, makes you realise that the village is not simply a peaceful sleepy village in the Pennines, but instead a vast mausoleum hewn from black gritstone. The town breathes deeply through its stone, its cottages huddle together around a crowded graveyard, holding over 40,000 souls tightly packed in overcrowded, overgrown, and long-forgotten graves. Even on a sunny day here, the air is thick with the weight of those who came before.

Most tourists come to admire Charlotte’s dress or minuscule hand-bound books inside the wonderful Parsonage Museum.

I came to grieve for the dead.

Entering Haworth is a deliberate and heavy act of literary pilgrimage - a boundary crossing into the realm where eternal sleepers are hardly restful, and the very earth refuses to remain still.

I was not drawn to look at glass cases or domestic trinkets; I came to confront the wildness, the animistic current that broke those glass cases open all those years ago. This journey was a revisit of the path I drew out in my 2024 book, A Guide to Pilgrimage:

“In 2008, as a final year student studying photography, I made a pilgrimage to Heptonstall in West Yorkshire to visit the grave of the poet Sylvia Plath. I had been using her poems to create a set of self-portraits and wanted to pay my respects and lay flowers on her grave. The journey to Heptonstall wasn’t an easy one. I had my camera/tripod and other equipment with me, and it was February with the threat of snow, as I climbed the steep hill on the Calderdale Way. I felt as though I had stepped into Ted Hughes (Sylvia Plath’s husband) world of whirling winds and remote otherworldly wildness. I made my way through the ethereal churchyard and ruined church dating from 1260, (made even more ethereal, by the swirling sleet that surrounded me,) to the more modern cemetery. It was a true awakening, and I felt a strong connection to both of them. When faced with the grave, I was overcome with emotion, having reached the end, both of Plath and my work on that project. I laid bedraggled tulips and muttered a few words of thanks. The feeling of completion and strength I drew from that pilgrimage enabled me to finish my degree and look beyond the physical in every part of my own creativity.”

In the pages of my book, I explore how true pilgrimage requires us to face the specific spiritual tax a landscape demands. The raw genius loci, found in this specific landscape, is an ancient energy that feeds on mortality, refusing anything but the starkest, abrasive, rough love. It was this harsh beauty that drew Sylvia Plath decades later, and that is the cornerstone of all Ted Hughes poetry.

Walking these heathered ridges, Plath felt the fierce predatory nature of a landscape that outlived the hand that tried to express it within her work.

“If I pay the roots of the heather

Too close attention,

they will invite me

To whiten my bones among them.”

Sylvia Plath. Wuthering Heights.

Visiting Heptonstall, a small hamlet above Hebden Bridge, a few miles from Haworth, is like stepping into the valley of the dead. Hughes described the area as “physically inhospitable….the insularity of the valley was in some ways almost complete…” in the introduction to Elmet, his standalone monograph on the specific geographical place we are talking about.

The roofless, gale-ridden ruins of St Thomas A Beckett churchyard mean you are literally walking over the dead. Every area on the floor, the walls and even under the trees is piled high with recumbent gravestones, some defaced and ruined, and others a stark remembrance of those who have gone before.

“Black village of gravestones.

The hill’s collapsed skull

Whose dreams die back

Where they were born”

Ted Hughes. Heptonstall

Sylvia Plath’s grave is in the new cemetery on the other side of the newly Victorian-built church that towers above every other building in its vicinity.

Finding her grave is an exercise in modern folk magic; her headstone does not sit in pristine isolation but functions as an altar for those who admire her work and try to understand her short life. On the day I stood before her grave, the grave was overgrown with wilted offerings of flowers and pens thrust into a pot like iron wards. I placed a modest group of wild-picked flowers as an offering and bowed my head.

My only thought as I looked around this quiet, unassuming place, which tries desperately to hide the wild edges of the moor and remote location with neat lines of white headstone - much like a white picket fence, and signs to guide you, was it would be a good place to whiten my bones one day.

As I turned and walked away to begin the long descent, I could feel the grit of Heptonstall in the tread of my shoes - along with the fierce bone-deep certainty that our ghosts never really leave this place.

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All words, except the quotes and poems, and all Images are ©Thea Prothero, please don’t use without permission.

All my work is 100% AI free.

If you want to learn more about my pilgrimages and how to go on one yourself, then please consider purchasing my book, A Guide to Pilgrimage.

Available anywhere that sells books.

I think it was my good friend the wonderful Scott Richardson-Read of the Cailleach’s Herbarium, (a beautiful resource on Scottish folklore and magic, do check out his website,) who first alerted me to Kilmartin. I believe he was running an expedition up to the glen with wild camping. To my lasting regret I was unable to attend but looked into the area and was astounded by the level of archaeology and arranged to visit in 2020 - of course that didn’t work out, for obvious reasons.  eventually I managed to visit in 2022 for six glorious days of exploration and connection.

The area is packed with stone circles, including Nether Largie (above)which is suggested to be unusually lunar  aligned, and features cup marks. Temple Wood is an interesting grouping of a cairn with standing stones around it amongst a grove of oaks

. A linear cemetery of cairns, dating from late Neolithic to Bronze Age are everywhere you look, some with supposed drawings and cup marks., Dunadd Iron Age fort where all the kings of Dál Riata (about 600AD) would have placed his foot in a special carved footprint after being crowned.

As if that isn’t enough, no visit would be complete without spending time at Achnabreac Forest Park –  with its mysterious rock art carved on giant slabs.

The only missing link in our visit, was the museum which had been closed for renovations in 2020. It would have been fascinating to view the actual artefacts found in the various digs and literally place them back in the landscape they came from. It would have been a perfect and unique reference point.

After visiting two years ago we promised ourselves we would return after the museum reopened and this week we did.

Re-opened in late 2023, the museum has been completely refurbished and expanded to include more galleries and interacted elements. The modern museum design includes large windows that look out onto the archaeological sites in the glen and features an area for art exhibitions and a sympathetically designed cafe - again looking out onto the star of the show - Kilmartin Glen.

It was amazing to see the artefacts a highlight of the collection is  the beautiful jet necklace found in Glebe Cain.

As you walk into the exhibition space, you follow the history of how the area has developed from the last ice age to the current issue of deforestation.

Although I am not a Gaelic speaker, I admire the linguistic nuances that create place names, all describing how geographical areas would have looked to the humans who named them. I was pleased to see some old Norse fragmentary names, highlighting the complex history of this iconic area of Scotland.

If you are interested in visiting a very special area, on par and even better than Stonehenge then I highly recommend making Kilmartin part of your holiday planning.

For more on the museum  & area, visit:

Kilmartin Museum

For more about The Cailleach’s Herbarium vitit: Cailleach's Herbarium - Exploring Lost Scottish Folk Traditions

Also please check out my two books available from any good booksellers, online or inperson:

Standing amid the ancient ruins of Grimspound last week, I found the intense heat and blinding sunshine felt almost out of place for such a notoriously moody landscape. Yet, even under a bright blue sky, Dartmoor’s deep history was undeniable. Lacking modern archaeological tools, early Anglo-Saxon settlers looked at these massive Bronze Age stone walls and attributed them to something supernatural. They named the site after Grimnir, the mysterious, hooded alter-ego of the Norse god Odin.

My recent trek took me up the rocky slopes of Hookney Tor, which rises directly over the valley to offer a spectacular vantage point of the sprawling ruins below. Descending from the tor toward the ancient settlement, I crossed the path of Grim’s Lake, known locally as Grim’s Water. This vital stream traditionally cuts right through the northern wall of the prehistoric enclosure, and provided water to the site. However, during this rare, scorching heatwave, the stream had completely vanished, leaving only the skeleton of a stony channel running through the landscape. This is another stark reminder of the distant past. Grim’s Lake is a seasonal winterbourne stream, flowing vigorously in the wet, mist-choked colder months but evaporating entirely under the summer sun.

Walking within the 150-metre-wide boundary wall in the blistering heat, the intense light cast sharp, dramatic shadows across the 24 ruined hut circles. Sitting on a scorched granite boulder and shielding my eyes from the glare, I couldn’t help but wonder how a landscape that felt so vibrant and parched today became permanently tied to Grim, the hooded wanderer from the frozen North.

In Anglo-Saxon mythology, Grimnir, which translates to “The Hooded One” or “The Masked One,” is one of the most famous pseudonyms of Odin, known as Woden by the Anglo-Saxons. Odin frequently wandered the mortal realm disguised as an old man with a long grey beard, wearing a dark cloak and a wide-brimmed hat which hid his true identity. The Anglo-Saxons associated Woden/Grim with sorcery, boundary-marking, and monumental works of construction. Because of this, they regularly mapped his name onto the English landscape whenever they encountered massive earthworks or unexplained, ancient ruins whose true origins had been lost to time.

This custom of naming anomalous landmarks after Odin’s alter ego is very common across England. The Anglo-Saxons essentially treated “Grim” as a convenient placeholder for anything colossal, ancient, and unexplicable.

The most famous example outside of Devon is undoubtedly Grime’s Graves in Norfolk. When the Saxons encountered this bizarre, pockmarked, lunar-like landscape of over 400 grassy craters, they had no idea they were looking at a massive complex of Neolithic flint mines. Instead, they assumed it was a series of pits or quarries dug out by their god. Nearby sits Grimshoe, a large mound that served as an ancient meeting place, translated as "Grim's burial mound”. My first visit to Grimes Graves was a significant moment in my life, as I write about in my book, Heathenry for the Solitary Practitioner:

“I visited Grimes Graves in Norfolk. This is a Neolithic flint mine, which was renamed during the Anglo-Saxon period after their god Grim (which means ‘masked’ or ‘hidden one’), another name for Woden (Odin). I had recently made a new set of Runes from sacred stone and decided to bring them with me that day. I cast them on the ground near to one of the infilled mineshafts and concentrated. It was not the ground that I had cast onto, but a shadowy hand. “Not now” was all I heard.

That night I dreamt of the grey figure in the mine shaft at Grimes Graves, his face was covered by a large hat, and he carried a staff of wood that seemed to climb into the clouds.”

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This linguistic naming of the unexplained after Grimnir is repeated across nearly every county in the country, with bank-and-ditch earthworks from the Iron Age or Roman periods, routinely called Grim's Ditch or Grim's Dyke.

Returning to Devon, Grimspound and its seasonal stream are clearly part of this wider Anglo-Saxon phenomenon. Beyond the walled settlement of Grimspound at the southern end of Dartmoor lies Grim's Grave. Situated on a remote expanse of moorland, Grim's Grave is actually a Bronze Age kistvaen, a stone-lined burial chest surrounded by a small stone circle. Famously, during the Anglo-Saxon times, Odin became mortal and, therefore, could die, and to some extent, this meant Grimnir disappeared into folkloric story. Local Saxon legends reinterpreted this prehistoric tomb as the literal burial place of a giant named Grim. Similarly, features like the Grimsstone served as ancient standing stones that marked sacred, permanent boundaries protected by divine wrath.

While I experienced Dartmoor at its sunniest, with its life-giving streams evaporated by the heat, the Anglo-Saxons encountered a landscape of wildness, with untamed places. Odin was known as the Lord of the Wild Hunt, leading a spectral procession of hounds riding through storm clouds. This strongly mirrors Dartmoor’s own deep folklore regarding the Wisht Hounds, the ghostly black dogs led across the mires by a dark, cloaked figure. Grim, therefore, became a convenient, awe-inspiring label for anything ancient, colossal, and pagan.

As I finally walked away from Grimspound and back over the sun-baked hills, the name took on a much deeper meaning. On Dartmoor, and indeed across the length of England, you are not just looking at local place names on a map. You are walking through a physical landscape mapped out by early medieval minds who looked at these very stones, tracked the path of a vanished stream, and, despite the beautiful sunshine, saw the inescapable shadow of Odin himself.

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All images and words are ©Thea Prothero, please dont use without permission.

All my work is 100% AI free.

If you want to find out more about Odin & the other gods of the Northern Tradition, the Anglo-Saxons, Heathen Cosmology or anything else to do with Heathenry, then my book, Heathenry for the Solitary Practitioner is your answer:

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This September marks 70 years since Gilbert White’s House has been open to the public, and a few years ago, for my birthday I received a gilded 1890 edition of Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne”. Originally published in 1790, it is a series of letters and a “Kalander” detailing the phenology of Selborne- from birds and insect habits to plants and trees throughout the year. There are many illustrations of rare and unusual species which White documents in a scientific way. The book, which is considered to be the precursor of nature writing, is an exquisite time capsule of how the natural world was during the eighteenth century.

“Every natural fact is an emanation of divinity.”

From reading this book, I was inspired to spend as much time in nature as possible and focus more deeply on mindful walking. In turn, this encouraged me to venture further into wilder and untouched places, which lead to writing my book A Guide to Pilgrimage, (published in October this year.) In my book I explore mindful walking in nature to a greater extent, and hopefully encourage readers to venture into places unknown, which will lead to a shifting and profound connection to the spiritual or divine.

“The happiness and beauty of our fellow-creatures should never be sport to us.”

Another legacy from Gilbert White’s nature writing is my continued interest in ecology and studying his book emphasised the terrible loss of nature and wildlife in our modern world. It’s a sobering thought that three out of five wild species mentioned in White’s book are facing extinction and 15% of the rest are in serious decline. Today raw sewage is dumped into rivers, air pollutants in most parts of the UK exceed safe limits, and the planning laws around building in environmentally sensitive areas are being relaxed.

“Objects of natural history are of more consequence than they are generally considered.”

This, to me, makes every moment of time spent in nature more valuable and every observation of the natural world that much more precious. Whist supporting environmental charities is an excellent way to give nature a voice and make your choices heard, leaving only footprints when spending time in the natural world is another way to help protect nature. Joining in litter picking and clearing of invasive species, organised by local environmental groups. Or by simply doing as Gilbert White suggests: “There is nothing sweeter in this sad world than the sound of the wild thrush's whistle.” Becoming a witness to the fragility of our world, and reverencing what we see is something we all can easily do.

“There is no greater luxury than to read in the open air.”

For my last birthday I made a pilgrimage to visit Gilbert Whites House in Selborne which is preserved as a museum and offers a glimpse into his life. Surrounding the house is a large garden which is managed in traditional ways with original plants and large swaths of natural meadows encouraging wildlife. I spent a time relaxing on a bench next to the meadow reading his book. Upon returning to the house, I found a simple chalk board with encouraging ideas to #BeMoreGilbert which are excellent suggestions that I have reproduced here:

1. I will walk short journeys no matter the weather.

2. I Will spend time in nature every day.

3. Leave a bit of your garden wild.

4. In warm weather I will leave out a shallow dish of water for wildlife.

5. I will start a nature diary, write a poem, or do some art inspired by the natural world.

#BeMoreGilbert.

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My book on pilgrimage is available from all good booksellers both online and in person.

This article was originally published in Moonscape June 2024.

All words and most of the images are ©Thea Prothero. The other images are copyright free.

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I first met Amanda Edmiston in 2018 at the Taibhear Collective's ‘Dreaming Bread and Skyrie Stanes’ event in Edinburgh, and was instantly struck by her friendly welcome and tenacious personality. As a storyteller, she offers a unique blend of humour, passion and plant knowledge, which completely enchanted the entire auditorium. Since the event, we have remained in touch primarily through social media and the odd email, and I am thrilled to offer this review of not one but both of her herbal companions.

Both of Amanda’s books, The Time Traveller’s Herbal and Collected Curiosities, offer readers a completely new style of plant guide. These volumes weave together a nuanced and well-defined historical guide, traditional folklore, practical insights, and highly accessible botanical recipes. Written in Amanda’s uniquely captivating storyteller's voice, they offer the reader a totally immersive, multisensory journey through what can only be described as ‘herbal academia’.

The newly released edition, Collected Curiosities, re-opens the historical apothecary cabinet where the Time Travellers Herbal left off, taking readers through the 1800s to the 1920s. What I found most poignant in the book was the way Amanda explores massive historical shifts, from the Highland Clearances to the First World War and their direct effect on the people who survived. Of particular note is the book's emphasis on the resilience of women’s voices throughout history, including those of suffragettes and the travelling community. One fascinating example of this is the story of Lady of Lawers, a 17th-century seer who made several eerie predictions about the area around the banks of Loch Tay; her prophecies included foretelling the invention of steamships and the arrival of trains. Amanda’s tale recounts how she foresaw the village's end and the community's destruction.

Inside, you will find highly accessible eco-conscious recipes using commonly found plants, often considered weeds, such as cleavers and plantain, alongside stories of mermaids and ghosts, as well as the sombre reminder that blue and green bottles in pharmacies used to contain poisons and should only be handled by those who understood how easily a cure could kill.

Of course, this review would not be complete without a brief examination of the foundational text, The Time Traveller’s Herbal, which, for those who have not read it, is the prequel to Collected Curiosities. This volume sets the stage by anchoring readers in the preceding centuries, beginning in ancient Rome, before entering the dark, savage times surrounding the Scottish Witch Trials and the Jacobite Rebellion. Throughout, Amanda explores the ancient, lost art of plant medicine, which in the past was the bedrock of healing and protection in communities. The book also contains over 25 practical instructions for making salves, tinctures, teas, balms and baking using only traditional methods, including garden staples like rosemary and chamomile.

At the heart of the book is the core message that all plants, even common weeds are vessels for cultural memory. Reading these books is a slow, meditative ritual, enabling a deeper connection to both the plants themselves and, thereby, the world around them.

Amanda writes from the heart, with a lifetime of knowledge that encourages us not only to slow down but also to forage safely and be present in the world around us.

The Time Travellers’ Herbal and Collected Curiosities are the perfect companions for any would-be herbalist or simply those interested in historical herbalism.

Please check out Amanda’s website here: https://www.botanicafabula.co.uk/about-botanica-fabula

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And as always, please check out my books, A Guide to Pilgrimage and Heathenry for the Solitary Practitioner, available from all good booksellers online and in-person.

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We were fortunate to spend some time walking the beautiful, rugged coastline of North Wales and the Llyn Peninsula. This area, along with the Eryri (Snowdonia)National Park is a place of extremes – of weather, light and geology. Our walk, which was around 20km along the path featured torrential rain, crashing waves over 10m high, and winds that could have swept the us out to sea; together with bursts of sunshine that warmed our wet faces and the singular delicate song of a solitary blackbird from somewhere in the golden gorse that marked the boundary between rock and vegetation.

There followed a sunset that had  a serious wow factor. The shoreline at that point,  was completely flat and the raging waves far out,  which created the  surreal quality of horses forever racing towards the beach but never arriving. Light and shadow were perfectly aligned. A true chiaroscuro moment.

The huge endless Turner-like horizonthen darkened and a tunnel of rain pelted us as we hurried back the way we’d come, our minds filled with roaring fires, hot tea and slices of buttered bara brith. 

As we drove through the discarded slate mountains to Blaenau Ffestiniog, the air crackled with ozone as flashes of lightening lit the road, reminiscent of the path to the underworld, and startling a greying fox sniffing around a dustbin. There was an eery otherworldly feel. 

Annwn, the otherworld in Welsh mythology, was reputed to be located at Harlech in North Wales according to the second branch of the Mabinogion,although it could be an island location as well as suggested in the Arthurian poem Preiddeu Annwn, (The Spoils of Annwn in English,) from the Book of Taliesin. Could this mysterious island location be Bardsey Island?

Bardsey was  a renowned pilgrim destination after a monastery was set up in the 6th century by St. Cadfan. The name Bardsey, possibly means ‘The Island of the Bards’, or it maybe connected to a Viking Yarl named Barda….nobody is sure. (In Old Norse the ‘sey’ at the end of place names, means island.) In myths, the site is reputed to be the burial place of the mythical figure of Merlin. On our walk, earlier, we could not quite see the Isle of Bardsey, there was a rain mist adding to the overall sense of the enigmatic.

Is there one course of wind?

    Is there one course of water?

   Is there one spark of fire

   Of fierce tumult?

From ‘Preiddeu Annwfn’ 

English translation by Sarah Higley

From:

Preiddeu Annwn: The Spoils of Annwn | Robbins Library Digital Projects

All words and images are ©Thea Prothero. Please dont use without permission.

All my work is 100% AI free

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Fancy going on a walk, or even considering a pilgrimage? Then my book, A Guide to Pilgrimage is available now from all good booksellers online or in person.

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For those of you who haven’t been following my recent Instagram posts, here is a general recap: for the past week or so, I have been posting about books which demonstrate my enduring fascination with Iceland. These have varied from my old battered copy of the Rough Guide to Reykjavik to The Sagas of the Icelanders. (Please check out my Instagram profile heathen_pilgrim for more.) There is a unique magic in both Icelandic literature and books about the country, that have captivated me since I first picked up that guide book many years before I visited.

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This week’s blog post concerns the changing seasons, as we have officially stepped across the threshold into Heyannir - the Old Icelandic month of “hey making”

In a land with a brutally short summer, July was never a time of relaxation, but rather a frantic race against time to cut, turn and store enough grass to keep livestock alive during the perilous winter.

To understand the divine force behind this agriculturally intense period, its necessary to travel east from the quiet hey making of Heyannir in Iceland, to the grand heart of Pre-Viking Age Sweden. When I walked beside the monumental burial mounds at Gamla Uppsala in 2023, the scale of which I have never seen before, which in turn, forces a shift in perspective. Here you are faced with the remains of a site that served as the spiritual axis for the entire region; the place where human need and godly intervention met.

German chronicler Adam of Bremen write extensively about the ritual site of Uppsala in his 11th century Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, in which he describes the magnificence of the temple where the three figures of Thor, Woden and Fricco - the Latinised name of Freyr, were housed. Adam explicitly notes that Fricco is the god who “bestows peace and pleasure on mortals.” In a society plagued by the real threat of crop failure and disaster, “peace and pleasure” symbolised a freedom from famine, good weather and the success of the harvest. Fricco could, therefore, be considered the lord or god of the harvest.

Freyr was also identified by his Swedish ancestral name: Yngvi (or Ingvi). According to Snorri Sturluson’s Ynglinga Saga, Freyr established his capital at Uppsala and founded the most prestigious royal house in Scandinavia, the Ynglinger. As a divine ancestor, Yngvi-Freyr tied the authority of the Swedish kings directly to the yield of crops and agriculture. Under his reign the sagas record many seasons of plenty, so much so, that the king himself became synonymous with the harvest.

In Sturluson’s Hákonar saga góða, it is recorded that toasts were raised to Freyr and Njord “Til árs ok friðar” - a ritual formula that translates roughly to “A good year and peace.” This indicates that the grand temple, home to the gods on earth was the centre of negotiation between the communities and their deities: the community offered their most precious assets, including humans in order to assure a seasonal peace and good harvest.

The Old Norse mindset viewed the divine not as separate , but as a practical, lived system of reciprocity, as Neil Price in his seminal work, The Children of Ash & Elm, says that this belief was a framework through which communities understood the success of the harvest, the turning of the seasons and the survival of the household.(Price. 2020 Chapters 3 & 4.)

Even today as we tend our modern patches of soil, although we no longer (on the whole) pour blood on an altar to secure a good year ahead, instead we water our crops, pull weeds and work until our fingernails are cake in dirt - much as our ancestors did.

If you read my Wednesday re-visit, this week, “Growing Things”, you will understand how the growth we see in July is a manifestation of Freyr’s presence in the soil. A true relationship with the god of the harvest is not always forged at the festival bonfire, or with elaborate offerings, instead it is forged by tending the land, by giving your physical labour to the earth. In doing this you are engaging in the same ancient exchange and paying your dues to Freyr.

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Images:

Images of Uppsala and the Harvest are © Thea Prothero

Images of Iceland in the summer are copyright free from Wikimedia Commons.

1. Yngvi-Freyr constructs the Temple at Uppsala in this early 19th century artwork by Hugo Hamilton

2. In Freyr's Temple near Uppsala" (1882) by Friedrich Wilhelm Heine.

Text Sources

Adam of Bremen. Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum ( History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen) Book IV Chapter 26. (1073-76 describing the temple at Uppsala)

Snorri Sturluson Hákonar saga góða (The saga of Hakon the Good) Chapter 14, in Heimskringla

Snorri Sturluson Ynglinga Saga, Chapters 10-12 in Heimskringla.

Neil Price. The Children of Ash and Elm - A History of the Vikings. Chapters 3 & 4. Penguin Books 2020.

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if you want to read more about the Norse gods, cosmology and other aspects of Heathenry, please check out my book:

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To me, summer is a busy time at home mainly because my family have an allotment. Although I love to walk the land – it’s intrinsic to me as part of my spiritual connection, (which no doubt you may have read in previous blogs,) another way I relate to the spirit of the place is through tending and caring for the areas in which I live. This includes volunteering at my local nature reserve once a month, clearing rubbish, rebuilding paths, and keeping track and recording sightings of various protected wildlife inhabitants which in turn protect the reserve from re-development.

 However, nothing compares to the smell of rich soil after being turned ready for planting, and the sense of connectivity when crumbing the loam in my hand - all my senses are at one with the earth, communing with an ancient visceral language that is pure and immense. I bless each seedling or plant as I carefully entrust its care to the bed of soil, I feed it with organic nettle or comfrey tea and water every day, hoping in turn to be blessed with edibles or visual beauty. 

Our allotment isn’t neat and tidy, or have regular sized beds with straight paths and perfectly sized courgettes - it’s overgrown in places and we don’t cut the grass much, we let weeds grow and most of the greenhouse doesn’t have glass. We primarily don’t use any substance that could harm the wildlife, except some baracades to protect our trees from the deer, and netting to protect our swedes/kale from pigeons in winter. We follow some permaculture methods, such as companion planting crops that protect other crops, we collect water from rain and make our own compost, and allow plants to grow where they want to. That probably sounds odd, but as an example, our raspberries never really thrived in the area we originally placed them in, but instead re-sprouted a few feet away in our blueberry bed and are now perfectly happy, along with the lemon balm and blueberries!

Most importantly we try to grow in a way that works with the land and wildlife. We left some overgrown leeks to flower, encouraging hoverflies and bees, and leave some berries on the red and black currants for the blackbird family that resides in the next allotments bushes.  Our next project is to create a small pond from an old bath we were given to help the frogs who live under a greenhouse nearby, who in turn will (hopefully) eat unwanted slugs and snails on our bean crops.  We don’t go home with cart loads of crops, or prize winning cabbages, but we always go home with joy in our hearts and a few runner beans or the odd squash now and then.

We have quite a few apple and fruit trees, and were very lucky that when we acquired the allotment there was already an old and well established apple tree in one corner. Every year we are blessed with rosy red apples in October and cooling shade on hot summer’s day.  In January we traditionally wassail our old apple tree, after pruning and checking her over.  For those who don’t know, wassailing is the old tradition of ensuring a plentiful crop by toasting and offering libations (usually with cider) to the trees At the same time, it is necessary to make as much racket as possible, playing loud music and in some parts of Somerset, firing a shot gun through the branches of the tree to frighten the devil or bad spirits away who hide in the tree. It’s a good reason to have friends over, drink cider and brighten up a cold dull January night with fire and song.

I have recently been reading Mary Reynold’s book “The Garden Awakening” which is a fascinating insight into holistic bonding with land as a living being. In one chapter Mary speaks about beating the boundaries as a symbol of your purpose to form a relationship with the land. Walking the edges of your land was traditionally done annually in Ireland as a marker. The intent  should be clear as you  mindfully concentrate, you need to  make the land understand by maybe speaking or even singing your intention, as you pace  You could use a drum, or stones, which create resonation and clear stale energy.  Although I have not done this, it sounds like a beautiful way of creating a familial bond with the land you are working with and it’s something I will be doing from now on.

The most important part of our relationship with the land is allowing yourself to bond and heal the earth and yourself with it. Sitting in the shade listening to birds singing, the sun touching your skin in dappled light, breathing with, and feeling the heartbeat beneath your feet or hands, being as one.

This is the greatest gift we are given.

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Words and photographs are ©Thea Prothero

All my work is 100% AI free.

My two books, A Guide to Pilgrimage and Heathenry for the Solitary Practitioner are available from all good booksellers, both online and in person.

When we think of summer gods in Norse mythology, we usually think of the bright, shining Baldr or the thunderous storm power of Thor. Iðunn, the quiet keeper of Asgard’s youth-giving fruit, is usually left in the background, often viewed simply as a gentle goddess holding a basket. Yet if we look more closely at her history, Iðunn is much more than a secondary character. She is the true power behind summer’s life force.

In our busy, modern world, it is easy to lose our connection with the cycles of the seasons. The story of Iðunn is relevant right now. At midsummer, her myths offer a framework for rebuilding our own internal energy.

Uncovering her deeper role as a goddess of fertility and harvest bridges the gap between historical research and everyday inspiration. This balance between history and modern connection is exactly what author Olivia Church explores in her upcoming book, Pagan Portals: Idunn: Keeper of the Apples of Immortality. By looking at how Iðunn mirrors the heartbeat of the land, we can understand the true power of Asgard’s quietest protector.

The Midsummer Shift: Nature at its Peak

We usually view Iðunn’s famous kidnapping by the giant Thjazi as a simple story about winter’s arrival. However, some Norse scholars found a much bigger picture. Hilda Ellis Davidson argued that the details of the story actually point to an ancient agricultural ritual. Looking closely at the 10th-century poem Haustlöng (which translates to “Autumn-long”), Davidson and Norwegian scholar Anne Holtsmark explained that the story acts as a symbolic code for the seasonal crop cycle and the end of the harvest.

Through this lens, Iðunn represents the vital transition from spring flowers to the heavy, physical fruit-bearing of high summer. To understand this connection, we have to look at what her fruits actually were. The Old Norse word used for her fruit, epli, did not just mean modern orchard apples, which did not grow widely in early Scandinavia. Instead, it was a general term for any round fruit, wild berry, or hazelnut ripening in the woods right now.

Because of this, Iðunn functions directly as the goddess of active summer growth. She rules over the green tree canopy, the swelling of wild plums, and the thickening of crops. Thor might bring the summer rain, but Idunn is the biological response. She represents the invisible growth turning summer sunlight into food.

The “Dísir” of the Brooks: Summer Ecology

For anyone wanting to connect with nature today, Iðunn offers a great way to engage with your local environment. In the ancient poem Haustlöng, written by the Viking poet Þjóðólfr of Hvinir, Idunn is described with a specific poetic phrase: dísi bekkjar brunnakrs. While standard translations by scholars like Anthony Faulkes read this literally as the “goddess of the bench of Brunnakr [her home field]”, language experts look deeper. Because the word bekkr can mean “brook” and brunnr can mean “well” or “spring”, language analysis by scholars such as Edith Marold translates the phrase as “the dísir-goddess of the brooks of the source of harvest”. In the heat of midsummer, these “brooks of the harvest” are indeed life lines for the soil. Indeed the recent heatwave experinced in the UK and temperatures roaring up to the high 30s, means that fields crops are at risk, but the hidden streams and natural wells are a welcome relief, and offer salvation for our harvest. Connecting with Iðunn is in tune with honouring the water systems that support us and the foundation of our lives. She is found in the cool dampness of a morning garden, the wet soil of a riverbank, and the shaded woods where wild fruits grow.

Relatable Immortality: Beating Summer Burnout

One of the most relatable things about the Norse gods is that they are not naturally immortal. They age, go grey, and grow weak just like us. They can only stay young by eating Iðunn’s fruit every single day.

Many of us experience summer as a time of limitless energy, we fill our calendars with numerous social gatherings, outdoor projects, and travel to distant places. However, pushing ourselves too far, can lead to burnout.

Iðunn reminds us that our energy is a treasure that we must actively protect. She does not hand out her fruit carelessly; she watches over it with intent. Working with Iðunn’s energy in the summer means slowing down to curate what keeps us feeling youthful, inspired, and healthy.

Iðunn Today

We must read between the lines of the old texts to find Iðunn because her footprints are subtle. To help us explore how these academic threads weave into modern, everyday life, Olivia Church provides an excellent guide. Her upcoming book, Pagan Portals: Idunn: Keeper of the Apples of Immortality, published by Moon Books, perfectly balances historical facts with personal inspiration. It is a fantastic summer read for anyone looking to step into the orchard and discover the quiet wisdom of Asgard’s vital goddess.

This summer, instead of chasing the sun, search for Iðunn in the wild fruit ripening on the branches and the forthcoming harvest, protect your personal energy reserves, and honour the quiet cycles of renewal that keep us all alive.

The ending of Olivia Church’s book, Idunn: Keeper of the Apples of Immortality features a prayer, offering a simple way of connecting with this enigmatic goddess.

Hail to Idunn!

Keeper of the Apples of Immortality,

Goddess of the Orchards,

Bringer of the Renewal of Life,

Wise one of the Elven Kind,

and Gentle Friend to All!

(Shared with permission)

All text and photographs are ©Thea Prothero. Prayer to Idunn is ©Olivia Church and can be found in her newly released book: Idunn; Keeper of the Apples of Immortality published by Moon Books and available from all good booksellers.

My work is 100% AI free.

Other images used are from Wikimedia Commons and freely available as follows:

1)Bragi sitting playing the harp, Iðunn standing behind him (1846) by Nils Blommer

2) Ydun statue (1858) by Herman Willhelm Bissen

References in the text are as follows:

Church, O. (2026) Pagan Portals - Idunn: Keeper of the Apples of Immortality. London: Moon Books.

Clunies Ross, M. (2005) A History of Old Norse Poetry and Poetics. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer.

Davidson, H. E. (1993) The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe. London: Routledge, pp. 41-45.

Faulkes, A. (ed.) (1998) Snorri Sturluson: Edda: Skáldskaparmál. Vol. 1: Introduction, Text and Notes. London: Viking Society for Northern Research.

Holtsmark, A. (1949) ‘Myten om Idun og Tjatse i Tjodolvs Haustlong’, Arkiv för nordisk filologi, 64, pp. 1–73.

Marold, E. (1993) ‘Die Hauptprobleme der Haustlöng’, in Wolf, A. (ed.) Skaldenschaft und Poetik. Tübingen: Gunter Narr, pp. 115–123.

Þjóðólfr of Hvinir (10th Century) ‘Haustlöng’, Stanza 9. Edited by the Skaldic Project. Available at: skaldic.org

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And finally, if you want to know more about Heathenry, and the other gods of the North, my own book Heathenry for the Solitary Practitioner is a great foundational text, and available from all good booksellers, online or in person.

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