Magnus (Canongate Classics)

Rating:
Summary: Northern Light
Review: I had the great fortune to meet George Mackay Brown while he was still alive, and the great MISfortune of not knowing what a great writer he was at the time. I was at Stromness in the Orkneys in October 1976 and had just come out of a bookstore where his picture was prominently displayed on the backs of several interesting books of poetry, essays, and fiction. I asked him, "Are you George Mackay Brown?" He smiled, answered, "I do not deny it," and walked on with his hands in his pockets.

Now that I have read several of his books and am continually scouring the world for more, I see this as one of the great missed opportunities of my life.

Who was Magnus? Saint Magnus was one of the great Earls of Orkney in the time when the Isles owed their fealty to the Kings of Norway. Those Viking raids that so terrified Europe all stopped off at Orkney for provisions before going off to pillage the Southrons. Into this maelstrom came a saintly Viking (if that isn't an oxymoron!) named Magnus, who was forced to share power with one of his kinsmen. The latter decided to grab it all, and had Magnus butchered under a flag of truce.

Brown takes episodes in Magnus's life and holds them up in the light to see how it reflects off their surfaces. In Magnus's death, he sees Auschwitz in one famous scene which many critics have disliked, but which I thought was brilliant. Somehow, it took a fellow Orcadian to see Magnus to his core; and Brown does it with majesty, lyricism, and love.

In Kirkwall stands the 12th Century cathedral of St Magnus. I am not sure but that George Mackay Brown, that wild lonely man, built a greater one in this book.