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The ghost of Sigurd the Volsung in Eketahuna

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Abstract

While William Morris was creating the narrative poem based on his translations of the Icelandic tales of Sigurd the Volsung, in the 1870’s, groups of Scandinavian settlers were encouraged to come to New Zealand as part of a grand scheme of borrowing money from Britain to develop the new world country for further settlements. These immigrants were to clear and fell some of the densest bush remaining in the hinterland of the North Island for road, rail and the concomitant communications that would follow. They came willingly, anticipating better lives for themselves, although the reality was disappointing at best and devastating at worst.
While the foot print of their efforts is still evident, and the towns and even cities they created, including Palmerston North and Eketahuna, are flourishing, the immigrants have become invisible, no more remembered than the nameless chain-gangs of prisoners or the unemployed, who took over their effort and continued with progress in the early 20th Century, on land that had been bought cheaply from the indigenous Māori.
But what intellectual footprint did they leave this inhabitation? What stories and links with stories did they bring, coming from the great Viking traditions of Saga and Skald? This paper will consider the stories brought and left by the Scandinavians and their small, flickering presence in New Zealand poetry, song and story.

Item Type: Book Chapter
Additional Information: Here is a rough guide Gail. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods. xxdh Contents Introduction: Inhabitation and the Imagination Dominique Hecq and Julian Novitz Chapter One: Milyikalu Inma: walking no-man’s land Lia Hills Chapter Two: Travels through the Kingdom of Night: Writing about the history of the Holocaust in End of the Night Girl and Navigating the Kingdom of Night Amy T. Matthews Chapter Three: What colour are my characters? What languages do they speak? Eugen Bacon Chapter Four: Plexus: Creative Writing Beyond Habitus Graeme Harper Chapter Five: The Ghost of ‘Sigurd the Volsung in Eketahuna Gail Pittaway Chapter Six: The Ghost in the Machine Katharine Coles Chapter Seven: Unheimlich flânerie? Toward a poetics of wandering Dan Disney Chapter Eight: Squaring the Circle: Dante, Memory and the Project of Writing Simon West Chapter Nine: Poetry Reloaded: revision as practice and art Paul Hetherington and Paul Munden Chapter Ten: Impossible, Now, to Read the Rosetta Stone: Cultural hybridity and loss in the Ernestine Hill Collection Eleanor Hogan Chapter Eleven: Crypts of loss, love, lack Dominique Hecq Chapter Twelve: Unsettled Inhabitations: Bodily Difference in Poetry Andy Jackson Chapter Thirteen: Matri-Liminal Bodies: Oceanic empathy in Dorothy Porter’s Crete via Anne Carson’s ‘The Anthropology of Water” Shari Kocher Coda: Re-Collecting the Self as An o/Other: Creative writing research matters Amelia Walker
Uncontrolled Keywords: poetry, Icelandic tales, Sigurd the Volsung, Scandinavian settlers
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PE English
P Language and Literature > PR English literature
Divisions: Schools > School of Media Arts
Depositing User: Gail Pittaway
Date Deposited: 22 Jan 2018 00:33
Last Modified: 21 Jul 2023 06:34
URI: http://researcharchive.wintec.ac.nz/id/eprint/5765

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