December 15, 2024 - On this midwinter full moon we're joined from across the sea by Gerald Charles Dickens, who talks with us about our favorite story - his great-great grandfather's classic Christmas ghost story, A Christmas Carol. Join us to find out all about Gerald Dickens' childhood memories of A Christmas Carol, its origins and its sly sleight of hand.

• What is it about A Christmas Carol that it remains such a classic and a powerful story?
• In defence of Scrooge the businessman - not a complete villain?
• Charles Dickens' early childhood with a father in debtor's prison, child labor, humiliation, lonliness and parental abandonment
• The importance of books and stories in Dickens childhood
• The Man who Invented Christmas
• Dickens' writings and his marvelous descriptions of food, celebration and togetherness
• The tradition of ghost stories for Christmas, and Dickens' love of ghost stories
• The haunting tale of TheSignalman, and its real-life, deadly inspiration
• Dickens' terrible PTSD related to rail travel
• Gerald Dickens' favorite A Christmas Carol films
• Gerald's American tour of his one-man show of A Christmas Carol and how he got started working as an actor with his grandfather's writings; the eucatastrophe of forgetting his notes!
• How Charles Dickens' stories lend themselves to actors' interpretations
• Favorite lines from A Christmas Carol
• Was Marley Scrooge's only friend?
• Noticing something new in A Christmas Carol every time we read it
• Dickens' influence on our now-traditional celebrations of Christmas
• Gerald Dickens talks about his own books, including his experiences over 30 years of touring with A Christmas Carol - Gerald Dickens: My Life on the Road with A Christmas Carol
• What it's like to stand on the same stages as his great-great grandfather
• Another book by Gerald Dickens, Dickens and Staplehurst: A Biography of a Rail Crash - the real life traumatic incident that led to the writing of The Signalman

Mentioned in the podcast:

On the Road with Gerald Dickens blog - https://geralddickens.wordpress.com/

Gerald Dickens' website, videos and books - https://www.geralddickens.org/

Charles Dickens' books read as audiobooks by Gerald Dickens: https://www.audible.co.uk/search?searchNarrator=Gerald+Dickens

Denholm Elliott in The Signalman - I couldn't find it on Youtube at the moment, but Tom and I were able to watch it here: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6c73c3

Tom's stories recorded during lockdown, Tales for Troubled Times: https://www.orkneyology.com/tales-from-tom.html

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We're bringing you a brilliant conversation on with this full moon night, with visiting friends R. Carlos Nakai, of Navajo and Ute heritage - and the world's premier performer with the Native American flute - and Will Clipman, passionate world percussionist, poet and performing artist.

(Please pardon the scratchy voices and coughing in this epsode. We'd been having a lovely time together roaming around Orkney together with RC and Will and their wives, Pam and Sherry, for several days before we recorded this. Unfortunately, along with the stories, music and breaking bread we also passed around a pretty bad cold.)

We're so pleased to bring you this far-reaching and musical conversation among friends. Join us to hear about these and many other things:

• R. Carlos Nakai speaks of ancient tribal history from his early home in Arizona
• About ceremony, culture, storytellers and gathering knowledge from the elders
• Will's early beginnings with drumming; being born to a musical family in Philidelphia; What's in the "boom boom room"?
• The musical marriage of RC's Native flute and Will's passionate percussion
• The Native "culture of women" - life creators
• RC: Learning how we belong - "Who are you?"; philosophies and stories of all of our clans all over the world
• Will: finding his Swedish Sámi roots; the Sami Pathfinder and the ceremonial drum
• Singing the songs of humanity, and the ancestors' residing in the music
• We all have one human story
• The magic of music, improvisation and what the listener brings to the music
• Anthropologists as listeners
• Shapeshifter and the wallaby dance
• Working with children: mythic creation, mask-making and storytelling; the power of saying, "Yes!"
• A musical treat, and a bit about how RC and Will approach performing together
• Singing to the sea; praying to the water
• Drumming inside the Dwarfie Stane
• Will tells a Sami raven tale, and other stories from RC and Will's Indigenous cultures
• The freedom of poetry and making music
• Elders in many cultures; the knowledge within us

Website for R. Carlos Nakai: https://rcarlosnakai.com/

Website for Will Clipman: https://www.willclipman.com/

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This full moon October night, we're having a Halloween-appropriate visit with Hjörleifur Helgi Stefánsson: Icelander, author of Icelandic Folk Tales, fabulous traditional storyteller ... and Tom Muir's pet Viking.

No Picts were harmed during the making of this podcast.

A peedie warning: Not surprisingly, some of the conversation is a bit dark for the very sensitive, or bairns. See topics below and proceed informed.

Join us for a blether between two storytelling northmen, mildly spooky at times as is suitable for the Halloween season, where you'll hear about:

• Storytelling traditions old and new in Iceland
• "Destination Sagalands" (EU project) - friends made in the Nordic lands, and fun personal stories
• Finding a unique voice for stories and storytelling
• Hjörleifur's book, Icelandic Folk Tales
• Storytellers like being admired!
• Hjörleifur's family stories tradition
• Life in an Icelandic turf house
• Hjörleifur tells the story, The Merman Laughs (and eating rotten shark!)
• The dark details of making of a supernatural slave to steal neighbors' milk from the cow; the primal fear of the people living in turf houses
• How to make necropants
• Raising the dead
• About Icelandic rímur, and samplings of rímur, "sung with gusto" by a man with a golden voice
• Iceland and her trolls
• A troll folktale
• An Orkney ghost story from Tom
• A comparison of Orkney and Icelandic tales
• Announcing a new book-in-the-making with Hjorleifur and Orkneyology Press!
• Hidden People tales

Also mentioned:

Cape Clear festival website https://capeclearstorytelling.com/ and Rhonda's personal Cape Clear video https://youtu.be/mEInv4Miz3A?si=CpvVk6pbwc1-VXK_

Hjörleifur's Icelandic Folk Tales book link: https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/icelandic-folk-tales/

Heather Yule, storyteller: https://www.heatheryulepapertales.co.uk/my-story

Liz Weir: https://www.lizweir.org/

Terry Gunnell's Hidden People book: https://www.goodreads.com/author/list/1687155.Terry_Gunnell

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