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Queer Amusements: Northwards lies the road to hell

Blackpool North Pier - Image by Stephen Kidd via Unsplash
In the medieval world’s heart of darkness, did the Vikings go to Fleetwood market?

Queer Amusements writer-in-residence Jane Claire Bradley returns to explore Norse underworlds, death goddesses and more.

Last time I shared an update on my research for my Queer Amusements residency, I explored the Norse history of Blackpool and the surrounding areas. Since then, I’ve been continuing to dive deeper into that research, and there’s been a recurrent theme in it I’ve found fascinating: the idea of the North as a portal to hell. 

Of all the compass points from which terror might emanate, there was one which held the greatest dread… the medieval world’s heart of darkness: the North.

Take this description from Thomas Williams’ book, Viking Britain: “Of all the compass points from which terror might emanate, there was one which held the greatest dread. This was not just because the sea had repeatedly disgorged boatloads of child-snatchers and hall-burners from precisely this direction, nor indeed because empirical observation demonstrated that this was the horizon over which the most wretched weather tended to hurtle, but because the Anglo-Saxons already knew full well that it was here that Satan had set his throne. This was the medieval world’s heart of darkness: the North.”

In this context, of course, ‘the North’ refers to Northern Europe; the Scandinavian territories from which the Vikings originated before setting sail for our shores. But the idea that ‘Northwards lies the road to hell,’ is one which keeps pulling at my imagination. I’m a Northerner by birth and I’ve lived in Northern England almost all my life. But I’ve spent some time in other places, including London, and I’ve seen the way a more national definition of ‘the North’ can be by turns demonised, mythologised and fetishised by those unfamiliar with it.

There are indisputable, well-documented systemic inequalities between Northern and Southern England. Inequalities between the regions doubled between 2010 and 2020, with that disparity set to increase even further by 2030. Alongside significant inequalities in education, housing, healthcare, crime and poverty, life expectancy is longer in Southern England. Over a 50-year study, statistics showed that mortality rates in the North were always at least 15% higher than in the South, an equivalent to an average of 38,000 excess deaths in the North each year.

Inequalities in the way Northerners are impacted by illness and death leads me to reflect on our collective relationship to concepts of an afterlife, a concept which exists in various forms across time and place and culture. In the Norse pantheon, though, ‘hell’ wasn’t a place but a person: the death goddess Hel, from whom the Norse underworld of Helheim gets its name. (I loved listening to this podcast to learn more about her).

The North is not my idea of hell, and especially not when it involves hunting for Vikings, Norse death goddesses and bargains all in the same expedition.

Some academics believe that Helheim is the origin of the Christian concept of hell: it was a recurring theme as Christianity attempted to erode and replace older, pagan beliefs that some of the core ideas from those other religions would become syncretised (like the winter solstice being eclipsed by Christmas and the Gaelic pagan festival of Samhain eventually becoming more culturally recognised as All Hallow’s Eve and then Halloween).

Unlike the Christian hell, which is typically characterised as a fiery inferno of eternal punishment where sinners are sent, the Norse Hel is simply an underworld where the dead go once they die (providing they didn’t die in combat; warriors went to Odin’s hall, Valhalla). Ancestors in Hel could be called on for guidance in times of need through magic rituals including seidr, a form of Norse sorcery.

To learn more about the Norse legacy in the local area, I consulted Viking expert and living history enthusiast Heather Brewster (who also leads the Kilgrimol heritage crafts group). Heather shared a wealth of knowledge with me, including: details of how the supposedly drowned village of Kilgrimol was likely a waypoint between Viking strongholds like Dublin and York; how there may have been Norse watchtowers either side of Spen Dyke – the same one which once flowed into a ‘black pool’ from which the town supposedly takes its name (better known now as Marton Mere); and possibly my favourite research discovery so far, the revelation that the Vikings may once have traded at a market in Fleetwood.

Earlier in its history, the place we now know as Fleetwood was apparently known as ‘Quaggy Meols,’ a term used to describe its marshy land and sand hills, coming from the Old Norse word for sandbank, ‘melr.’ The Norse origins of the Quaggy Meols name leads some to believe that there may have been a pre-Viking beach market in the area that could have eventually been taken over by Norse traders.

Although the modern-day Fleetwood market is one of the oldest in the country, dating back to 1725, and with a history going all the way back to a charter in 1216, I love idea that the Vikings may have used it centuries earlier to trade animals, tools, jewellery and other treasures, and that contemporary market-goers may be treading in their footsteps. The North is not my idea of hell, and especially not when it involves hunting for Vikings, Norse death goddesses and bargains all in the same expedition.

The research and writing for my Queer Amusements residency will be culminating in a live performance in September, so stay tuned for more details about that next time. Until then, Queer Amusements continues with a zine workshop with the Bearded Sewist on 3rd August. In the meantime, you can get fourteen days of free writing prompts from me or sign up to my newsletter.

Reclaim Blackpool - Mapping Sexual Harrasment
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    Jane Claire Bradley is an award-winning author, performer, therapist and educator. She is Blackpool Social Club's writer in residence for Queer Amusements 2024.

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