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Viper’s Daughter by Michelle Paver - Ep 25
194 Plays4 years ago
It’s been two years since we published the last episode, and it’s been ten years since Michelle Paver published the last of her Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series of Mesolithic set books that had started with Wolf Brother. But we’re both back! We kicked off this podcast with Wolf Brother back in 2015 and now I get to talk to the author as she publishes a new book in the series, Viper’s Daughter, that sees Renn, Torak and Wolf journey to the far north and encounter new tribes, new dangers and the last surviving mammoths.
Links
- Wrangel’s Island Mammoths
- PreHistories Episode 2: Wolf Brother
- Buy Viper’s Daughter
- Michelle Paver on Twitter
- Michelle’s Website: https://wolfbrother.com/
Contact
- Twitter: @prehistpod
Recommended
Transcript
Kim's Return and Passion for Storytelling
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Hello, I am Kim Bedelf and I'm back with the Pre-Histories podcast on the Archaeology Podcast Network. I'm really glad to be back. It's been over a year since I last recorded for this podcast.
00:00:26
Speaker
and I must apologise for that hiatus. On this podcast, we're fascinated by stories. Storytelling is obviously a very fascinating thing for everybody around the world. There's a huge publishing industry, there's a huge film industry, and it's all about storytelling. What I've always been most keen on, even as a little girl, were stories about the past.
00:00:52
Speaker
As archaeologists, we find out about and say things about the past, but we rarely tell a story. Storytelling is an art in itself. It takes a lot of practice to hone storytelling skills.
Historical Fiction and Author Insights
00:01:04
Speaker
And I think that during my time on the podcast, I've found that the best stories about the past are those told by professional storytellers rather than professional archaeologists.
00:01:17
Speaker
Sorry about that. Sometimes the facts are wrong in these stories by storytellers, but the story is good. And when the story is good, it has traction in the public consciousness. Quite often though, the storytellers have gone to great lengths to get the details right. Take Margaret Elphinstone's The Gathering Knight, which she wrote with input from an expert on the Scottish Mesolithic, Caroline Wickham-Jones.
00:01:43
Speaker
I've been lucky enough to have Caroline on the podcast along with Spencer Carter to talk to me about that book and you will find it in my back catalogue. Jean M. All's Clan of the Cave Bear series is also full of vast amounts of research on the late Upper Paleolithic. Some of the aspects of the book are clearly influenced by modern sensibilities though.
00:02:07
Speaker
But isn't that the case for archaeological theories as well? The very first story I reviewed on this podcast was Wolf Brother, a children's book by Michelle Paver. This book was set in Metalithic Scandinavia and followed the adventures of a boy named Torak and his wolf.
00:02:24
Speaker
and his friend Wren. Great and evil magic was abroad in the forest and eventually, over six books, the friends were able to defeat it. My guests on that episode were Matthew Ritchie of Forestry and Land Scotland, Donald Henson of the University of York, and James Dilly of Ancient Craft. Here's a clip from that episode.
00:02:51
Speaker
On this episode, we're discussing Wolf Brother by Michelle Paver that was actually published over 10 years ago now. It was the first in a series of books called The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness and is set in the metallithic of Scotland. Wolf Brother brings to the table is a real insight into the past, but one that you immediately pick up on and then off with the adventure, off with the social side of life.
00:03:20
Speaker
and living in the middle. I'm going to read a little bit about when Taurac, we've talked about this before, finally comes to a camp and sees lots of people all at once, and imagine up until this point, and he's about 12, he's only been with his father, and unfortunately, his father dies on the first page, I think, killed by a bear, and he's wandering alone and finds these people, and they are the Raven Clan.
Exploration of 'Wolf Brother' Series
00:03:46
Speaker
I'll just read this short extract.
00:03:49
Speaker
The trees opened into a clearing. Torak smelt pine smoke and fresh blood. He saw four big reindeer hide shelters, unlike any he'd ever seen and a bewildering number of people.
00:04:01
Speaker
On the riverbank, too many. It's a lack of evidence. There have been arguments that we get in evidence of textiles and they are fragmentary, to say the least, that go back to the Upper Paleolithic. But they are very fragmentary. The problem that I see is that we do have to be quite nuanced, as you say, about how we talk about the Mesolithic as not some kind of magical time where
00:04:31
Speaker
people never did anything wrong. And I think there's an interesting connection there, isn't there, between a book you mentioned earlier, The Gathering Night, by Margaret Elphinstone, again set in Mesolithic. And Margaret worked very closely on that with Caroline Wickham-Jones, the archaeologist. Oh, right, yes. Caroline herself then published a book called Fear of Farming, which was really an intensive look at what that hunter-gathering lifestyle might have been
00:05:08
Speaker
In short, we loved the series. Matt sent the link to Michelle's agent and Michelle sent back a lovely thank you letter, which was really nice to get. And then we thought that was that. But a few weeks ago, I had an email from Annabelle Wright telling me Michelle had written a new book in the series after 10 years. Imagine my excitement.
00:05:30
Speaker
The new book is called Viper's Daughter and is set three summers after the end of Ghost Hunter, which was the last in the series or so we thought. I'm very pleased to say that I have the author Michelle Paver herself here on the podcast with me. Hi, Michelle. Hello, Kim. It's great to be back.
00:05:49
Speaker
It's lovely to speak to you. It's really nice that you can come personally on the podcast. I'm just so pleased. Of course, luckily for me, we have met before at the Chilton Open Air Museum. One of my colleagues there, Kathy Silman, has created a Wolf Brother themed set of sessions for schools so that they can use the book and come to the museum and experience what life might be like in the woodland.
00:06:17
Speaker
for someone living in the time of Taurac and Wren and Wolf in the Mesolithic. Do you remember that day? How can I forget it? I mean, I remember there was an amazing mage who would tell them stories around the fire and there was, I think it was called Bambi, that incredible sort of fabric deer that was hung up by his back hooves. And then I think it was a zip fastening. You zipped open his belly or her belly and out came guts. I think in fact, sausages, they were just wonderful.
00:06:46
Speaker
And the children really seem to love, you know, whole body usage, even if they're vegetarians, they love the fact that you use the bits. And that was such a great way of explaining it. Do you still use it? Oh, yes, Bambi is still in use. He's needed a little bit of TLC over the years as he keeps on getting ripped open and then he's got to put back in. One of our volunteers knitted all of the insides
00:07:12
Speaker
That's right. They were knitted. Yes. Yes. And I just love showing the kids how long the small intestine is and getting them to pull it out little bit by little bit and go way away in the in the woodland. Yeah, it's it's a great session.
00:07:30
Speaker
I know that the visiting school that we had there, the children there, really loved the talk you gave them as well. Oh, I'm so glad. That's excellent. I mean, it was great fun showing them all the artifacts, you know, the birch bark cup and the reindeer hide mittens and things like that. I think they'd like to be able to touch things that were authentically made.
00:07:50
Speaker
I know, yes. Have these been gifts to you from various communities that you've gone to visit? Often I buy them because they make them, you know, the reindeer hide mittens I got from when I was up in Churchill that had some bay in Arctic Canada. Those were made, I think those, yes, those were in which made the birch bark cup
00:08:10
Speaker
that was made by the Dene people, again, one of the Arctic Canadian cultures. So yes, I just pick them up where I can find them. Sometimes, you know, I get given them, but mostly I'll just buy them, you know, a little remote outpost or something. I don't suppose there's much of a market for necklaces made of bare claws and teeth, but, you know. Oh, I'd love one of those. But you go on such amazing adventures yourself.
Research Adventures for 'Viper's Daughter'
00:08:36
Speaker
Well, it's part of the fun. I mean, I never really anticipated that when I started writing Wolf Brother. It was just, I remember thinking, well, you know, I'm gonna, I want to create an authentic Mesolithic world. So let's go to the forest. And that was just the thought, you know, going up to Finland for the first trip. And I did it on horseback, because it's a good way of seeing the country and then, you know, camping. But and it kind of went on from there, because, you know, these, these aren't, you know, I have to be clear, I'm not
00:09:04
Speaker
trying to teach anybody anything, I'm just trying to entertain and create an exciting adventure, but I want to make it an authentic one. And so it really helps me write the books if I can do what my characters will do and sort of go where they go. And then it gives me ideas for the stories as well. You do seem to take that to quite amazing ends, you know, having to go into an ice cave and things like that for this book.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah. Viper's daughter was quite an interesting one to research because I knew I wanted to get, I mean, basically, you know, in the story, Ren, it's Ren leaves and Taurac and Wolf have to find her. And so they head north to the edge of the world. And so I wanted to head north. And so I took an icebreaker through the Bering Straits to Rangel Island, last home of the Lully Mammoths. Oh, I wanted to talk about that.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yes, we will, I'm sure. And then also to Alaska. And yes, I knew I needed an ice cave. I wanted an ice cave towards the end of the book. So I managed to find a guide to take me under the Mendenhall glacier. There is a huge ice cave there. It's quite tricky to get into because bits keep falling off. So this young man, he was only about 24.
00:10:16
Speaker
And he told me, just wait, and then I'll signal when you can go in. And he had a sort of dart inside, but it was extraordinary once I got in. I mean, this really otherworldly blue light, even the air seemed to be sort of misty and blue because it was full of water vapour. Very, very strange with this vast weight of glacier on top of you. Yes. Amazing.
00:10:38
Speaker
I have to point out that in a first for Prehistories, my daughter, Catherine, who is 10 years old, is also waiting in the wings on this podcast because she loves the Wolf Brother books so much. And she's desperate to talk to Michelle. Now, she has written one question for me, which I thought it would be a good time for her to ask now if that's all right.
00:11:06
Speaker
ask that question. Once you're scared with wolves and bears.
00:11:09
Speaker
Well, Catherine, I was not scared ever with the wolves. I met the wolves at the UK Wolf Conservation Trust and they're not tame because you can't tame a wolf, but they're not completely unused to people. So as long as you approach them using wolf good manners, you tend to be all right. So I knew a little, I don't know as much wolf talk as Taurac, but I knew to talk softly and look not straight into their eyes because that's a bit threatening for a wolf and not to sort of try to pour them and stroke them all over. And then
00:11:38
Speaker
That meant that I got on very well with them. And so I wasn't scared. I was just so amazed because they're quite different from dogs. A wolf is a little bit more distant than a dog. You know, a dog will come up and I love dogs, but sort of lick you all over and everything and wag their tail if they like you. But a wolf will come on, you know, if they know you, as I knew them, they would sort of come up and touch noses and then wander off.
00:12:01
Speaker
So they're a little bit more distant but very charismatic. Now the bear, you asked about a bear. Yeah, that's a different matter. I don't think I get on very well with bears. The first time I encountered a bear actually helped inspire the story. This was long before I wrote Wolf Brother and I met
00:12:17
Speaker
Just by accident, I was hiking in the states, in the forest, and I encountered a mother black bear with two cubs. And I didn't see them at first, so I got a bit too close to the cubs. And of course, I backed off, but the mother bear didn't like it. Yeah, she got a bit annoyed with me and sort of champed her jaws.
00:12:39
Speaker
which is a sort of threat and came towards me so that was very frightening and I managed to calm her down and get away but that stayed with me and so that helped inspire the demon bear in Wolf Brother.
00:12:54
Speaker
so yes i am very scared of bears i'm very careful with bears particularly polar bears i saw a lot of polar bears in the research for viper's daughter and i'm very careful about them because they regard us as prey so you have to be really careful with polar bears.
00:13:11
Speaker
Oh, amazing. Great question. Good question. She's writing a few more down, so maybe we'll come in another time. So it's been 10 years since the last Wolf Brother series or Chronicles of Ancient Darkness series book was out Ghost Hunter. But you haven't just been kind of resting on your laurels in those 10 years, have you? We've been doing some other writing as well. I have, yes. Now I wrote, after Ghost Hunter, I wrote Dark Matter.
00:13:38
Speaker
my first ghost story for adults, which was taking me back to the Arctic. I couldn't lose the Arctic. And I had, I mean, it was a very difficult book to write, but it was, it was enormous fun. And then I wrote the Bronze Age series, Gods and Warriors, five books set in what, about sort of three and a half thousand years ago, which took me, that was a sort of another period I've always loved, actually. And so I had a key in the hero,
00:14:06
Speaker
and a Minoan heroine, which was terrific fun. And then I wrote Sinner, another ghost story, set in the Himalayas, and latterly, a Gothic story, Wakenhurst, which was set in Suffolk. So not because I was tired of travelling, but the story just dictated that it take place in the Fens.
00:14:29
Speaker
We have to get hold of those, Catherine. I think you'd love the Bronze Age ones, particularly. I'm trying, obviously, to make her an archaeologist, but I think Catherine's more interested in being a writer, actually, having read all these amazing stories. You're very good at the sinister and the threatening, aren't you? There's quite a lot of that in the Wolf Brother books as well, and I particularly found that
00:14:51
Speaker
The magic in the books is always just on the edge of being able to be explained by natural events, but obviously the main characters very much believe in magic and they see omens in the natural world around them. Where did you get this idea from? Or was that something that you had observed anywhere or anything like that? Well, I think it arose naturally because right from the start with Wolf Brother, I wanted to create an
00:15:19
Speaker
as far as I could, an authentic Mesolithic world. And so I thought, well, I can't interview a Stone Age person, but I can talk to and read about peoples who still live in traditional ways, the Inuit, the Sami, the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest, the Haida, the Tlingit, those sort of people that I knew in Japan. So I did a lot of work on that reading and then visiting the Inuit. And
00:15:47
Speaker
what really came through to me very, very strongly was, well, partly, you know, the hunter gatherers, so they have this tremendous connection with the natural world, because they depend on it for survival, but very much a feeling that there is no distinction between the supernatural and the natural. And there's a there's a very much in all the different cultures, a strong awareness that, you know, people can talk to animals, maybe animals become people, there's a sort of transformational
00:16:14
Speaker
thing going on all the time. Omens, they're always on the lookout for interpreting their world. Some of that is extremely good biological observation, tracking, and noticing when birds migrate and the behavior of animals and plants, but also the supernatural comes in as well. If an animal does something unusual, it's an omen.
00:16:39
Speaker
And I love that idea, you know, because sometimes you do see an animal doing something a bit odd. You see different behaviours, and then if you're a hunter gatherer, you will think that might be an omen.
00:16:48
Speaker
And it could well
Spirituality and Prehistoric Storytelling
00:16:49
Speaker
be. If they're doing something odd, there might be some reason for it. Well, you see, that's what I love. Because, for example, we know from biological studies that if there's a volcanic eruption is imminent, you get certain odd behaviours. Toads start leaving the pond, or snakes start moving around.
00:17:11
Speaker
different behaviours. And so yeah, and hunter gatherers tend to be much more observant of the natural world than we are. You know, an Inuit person might take an hour to sweep his surrounding tundra with binoculars, whereas a Western eye like me will take about five minutes and say, well, there's nothing there.
00:17:31
Speaker
But an Inuit person will take ages because they're seeing all sorts of things. And so that's where I got that idea from. It's something I have to keep reminding myself to do. And also the idea of sort of personifying the natural world. I mean, to a Sami person, they tend to have the view, I think, that everything in the world
00:17:52
Speaker
can think, but not everything can talk. Everything can see and hear and think, but not everything can talk, which is quite a strange idea. Next time you sit down and have a picnic by a large clump of boulders, if you're Sami, you believe that they're watching you. So the whole world is animism, really. Absolutely, yes. And that's very important.
00:18:15
Speaker
I think in archaeology, in the last 10, 20 years or so, that's been a feature in the theoretical side of things as well for us, is thinking about the fact that the religious and the secular, if you want to call it that, were not at all separate. In most societies, whether hunter-gatherer or early farming societies, even metal-making societies, that's the way of the world actually for most people.
00:18:44
Speaker
And that out the Western modern supposedly way of life is actually very strange and anomalous. Yes. I mean, the idea of, yes, in some cultures, perhaps like Christianity, you know, going to church on Sundays and they're not, I mean, obviously that that's a good Christian would say it permeates one's whole life. But I think for hunter gatherers, I mean, you know, doing the research for Viper's daughter, I went to Haida Gwaii.
00:19:11
Speaker
and talked to the Haida people, and even now, you know, that there's everything they do is imbued with their beliefs. And traditionally, you know, I've done a lot of work that hasn't come into Vyper's Daughter yet, but not those books yet, but it will, I hope, you know, the building of the canoe and all the different
00:19:32
Speaker
bits of gear that you put in your canoe, even the baler, you know, it might have a seals head on it or the head of an orca, because that's very important in their culture. Everything you use is carved and has a meaning.
00:19:48
Speaker
you know, which the spirituality is part of the use, which I have to be careful though, when I'm writing the books, because I'd love to describe every bit of gear that Torak and Red have, but then, you know, it would be pages and pages before they get moving every morning. So this is supposed to be an adventure story. So all the research boils down to just a few little details, preferably being used in the story, you know, not just add-ons.
00:20:16
Speaker
We talked about Margaret Elphinstone's Gathering Night. I don't know if you've read it, but it's in Mesolithic Scotland as well. And it kind of takes place around the time of the tsunami that flooded Doggerland. And she worked with the archaeologist Caroline Wickham-Jones to kind of build up her knowledge about the Mesolithic.
00:20:37
Speaker
and Caroline was really keen to get in stone tool making stuff. But Margaret made the point that that would have been so ordinary to the people who were in that time. They would never explain it, they would never describe it, and she was writing it. Well, it wasn't quite first person, but it was a storytelling type of premise. So yeah,
00:20:59
Speaker
you know, we try those are the things that occupy archaeologists a lot. It's kind of how did they mix their tools? But it's really not that interesting. Well, I funny you should mention that because I remember in Spirit Walker, the second book, I think it's the second book in Spirit Walker, there is a scene when Fin Ceddin makes a microlith
00:21:18
Speaker
knife from Taurac. And it wasn't just because, you know, I wanted to get that in because I never do that. That's death to storytelling. But yes, that's it's an example of where, you know, there was a point to that, you know, he was telling Taurac something quite important. And in between, you saw Finkett in doing these little bits, which end up being the microlith.
00:21:37
Speaker
But you have to do that, you only do that, that's my rule, if it's important to the story. And then it enriches it, then it can be actually quite interesting. It makes an ordinary conversation that little bit more interesting and more stone age. But yeah, you've got to be really careful, it's got to be a point to it. And then of course, he uses a knife and it's from Vincedin, who's the father figure. But yeah, you've got to be so careful. And a lot of my rewriting is sort of cutting that out.
00:22:05
Speaker
Yeah, I think during the course of doing this podcast, one of the things I've noticed is that the books, stories set in prehistory written by archaeologists are not as good as those written by authors, by proper writers, you know, storytellers. That is the craft. The storytelling is the craft. And if it's written by an archaeologist, there's just too much archaeology. So it's been an interesting journey to see that anyway.
00:22:35
Speaker
I can say it, it's fine. Let's talk about the new book because we haven't really, we've, we've skirted around it, but I really enjoyed coming back to it, my, and back to the, to the, to the characters and seeing what they were doing. And it was lovely, like coming back to, to friends that you'd known from ago.
00:22:58
Speaker
But obviously, I'm really interested in how you depict the Mesolithic. What I've always thought about, all of them actually, is how you depict a very rich culture, even though there's sometimes struggles to survive, but they've got a really, like, as we've talked about, a deep
00:23:16
Speaker
understanding of the natural world, but also the stories around it, the things that they make, and the social relations as well between people, between different clans. You have clans named after animals, but you also have within each clan a different way of organizing families and organizing what you do with children and how men and women relate to each other and their gender
00:23:41
Speaker
division of Labour. And I think that's especially in this one that comes out quite a lot with a Narwhal clan being quite different to everyone else. So that's what made you decide to write the clans that way and those kinds of social relations?
00:24:01
Speaker
It started small with Wolf Brother. I just thought, well, it'd be a great idea to name different clans, because that's how they lived, we think, and name them after different animals and plants, rather like the clans of the Pacific Northwest. And then when I was planning Wolf Brother, I thought, well, let's just give them each clan a particular characteristic and make them different.
00:24:21
Speaker
it was reasonably cursory to begin with and then it became richer. As each book went on, some of the clans became more distinct. For example, the deep forest clans are all a bit weird. They are very, very fundamentalist religious nutters, some of them. They really are and I've had huge fun with them.
00:24:42
Speaker
Where is that the Raven clan are much more moderate and you know that much more easy going and that's been hugely helpful and then I've used different sort of more modern hunter-gatherers as my models for some of the clans for example the white flock for white fox clan I should say that Torak and Ren meet again in Viper's Daughter.
00:25:02
Speaker
Those are, you probably recognize quite a lot of the Inuit in them. They're quite easy going. They don't discipline their children traditionally. They just hope that they come to their senses. And they're quite egalitarian about rules for women and men and that sort of thing. When it came to the narwhals, I wanted something really different. And just by chance, as I said, I went up to, well, I went to Siberia on my way to Wrangel Island.
00:25:28
Speaker
And I stayed for a bit in Chukotka, which is the far east of Siberia, and talked to some of the Chukchi people. And they're lovely people, but traditionally, their way of life, they were walrus hunters. And so they were very strict, and they had these incredibly strict upbringings of their children. The boys were brought up by their uncles, and the girls were brought up by their aunts, because thinking was that parents would be too soft on them.
00:25:55
Speaker
Whereas uncles would, you know, wouldn't hesitate to dissipate that really stood out for me, which is really tough. Yeah, they had such tough upbringings. And, you know, the idea of boys being made to drag a walrus skull up and down a hill. I didn't make that up. I did not make that up. So the Chukchi gave me a lot of really good ideas for to make the character make the clan distinct, you know, and
00:26:25
Speaker
also that the relationships between men and women are very far from being egalitarian. I'm not quite, I think that yes, there was a little bit of that in the Chukchi, but the thing is, you know, I'm not saying that the Narwhal clan equals the Chukchi, I take bits from them, and then I sort of exaggerate some of them. And that's what I do. So it's sort of very useful as a means as a guide to and plus, the other thing is, you know,
00:26:49
Speaker
What I have learned is just when you think you've, you've kind of got the hunter gatherer cultures covered, you know, you, you start studying a new one and they're completely different. Their whole approach to life is different and some lovely belief that some in it believe that the moon is a thin disc of ice. That's perpetually spinning. I love that idea. And it's actually seems quite believable, but I put that into the mouth of her, a novel mage.
00:27:16
Speaker
So sometimes it's the little touches and other times it's the big things like how do they organize their societies.
00:27:21
Speaker
Yes, I think that is something that is difficult to get across sometimes because in archaeological theory, we also talk about some of these traditional communities and what they can tell us about the archaeology that we're digging up. It is difficult to get across to people how much variety there is in ways of organizing your lives and your society. So I think that the
00:27:48
Speaker
through the books, I think that's really one of the huge strengths through your books is showing that life wasn't just the one way for everybody. And of course that's different and a lot of the time based on their geographical location and what kind of environment they're actually living in.
00:28:09
Speaker
The geography of your, there's a good segue there. The geography of your books was originally the coast of Norway, is that right? Or kind of Norway and the forests and so on. Well, it was northern Scandinavia. Although I never made it sort of explicit in the afterward to Wolf Brother. I have now for Viper's Daughter because so many people asked me. I changed the coastline and mountains and things to suit myself.
00:28:38
Speaker
But in terms of the sort of latitude, I've sort of kept to North Norway, so that I can be relatively accurate about the kinds of plants and animals that you get there, the hours of daylight and things like that. So that's where it is. But then I have completely changed. Yes, I haven't been bound by
00:28:57
Speaker
modern topography. So you won't find Taurac's world if you look in the Atlas. No, indeed. Although of course, coastlines have changed. Indeed they have, yes. But yeah, I was interested in that this for this one, you seemed quite influenced, as we've talked about by the Eastern Asian or indeed North American side of the Arctic. And as you say, around the Bering Straits,
00:29:23
Speaker
of North-West Canada with the Haida Gwaii and used some of the ideas from those cultures over in what is basically North-Western. Well, it's not North-West when you're talking about the Arctic, but you know what I mean, in that Scandinavian area.
Cultural Elements in Storytelling
00:29:40
Speaker
Yes, I mean, I've all the way through Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, the Wolf Brother books, I've taken ideas from all over the world. I haven't hesitated to borrow things from the Saan Bushman, you know, Torek's attitude to tracking is pretty Saan.
00:29:55
Speaker
bits from the I knew in Japan, you know, I, I'm quite unrepentant about that. I think I think one of the things I mean, actually, the Pacific Northwest will be particularly useful in the third book of the three years I'm writing. One of the things I did use was the whole idea of the mask, the transformation mask that comes into I went spoiler alert, you know, but
00:30:18
Speaker
Oh, yes, I love that towards the end. And I've always loved the way they use masks. I mean, moths come in, in various aspects in other stories, because they come into all sorts of hunter gatherer cultures. But there was that was particularly useful, the idea that you can make one mask, which then turns into another mask. And so you spiritually go from one
00:30:38
Speaker
creature to another because yes quite widespread in hunter-gatherer cultures that you know if you put on a mask you become that thing or emulating that spirit which I love. I love that idea.
00:30:50
Speaker
I've seen that, yeah, when you were describing the mask in the book, I was thinking very clearly of one that I know from the Pitt Rivers Museum when I used to work there from the Haida Gwaii Islands, where it is, I think it's a raven or an eagle that turns into, you can open the beak. Yes. Yes. And see another face inside it. That's right. Yeah. And it's quite, quite amazing engineering to actually, because it's got all these,
00:31:19
Speaker
tremendously. It's got all of these little wires inside that's now strings and things. Yes. And that's where, you know, I got, I got did a lot of work on masks. But then, you know, again, you come back to the story and
00:31:34
Speaker
you know, describing things. So you have to write it right down. But the essence of the idea, you know, the idea that when you put a mask on, you become transformed into the thing that the master depicts, that is such a strong idea, that that it's, it's a shame not to use it.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Well, as we've strayed into spoiler territory, I am desperate to ask about this because you've got mammoths in the book, which are one of my favourite ever animals to ever live. Do you know what? I did not know that they survived up on Rangel Island until
00:32:13
Speaker
only 6,000 years ago? Or is that even longer than that? Actually, it was much more recent than that. It was about 3,500 years ago. And I'm so glad you mentioned them, because I don't know if you remember this, but I have a pretty strong recollection that when I was last on your podcast, we were talking, I think we're talking about Richie and
00:32:29
Speaker
you were all saying, oh, it was so good that, you know, you'd written about the Stone Age, but you hadn't included, you know, anachronistic things like, and I think you mentioned mammoths and everything. And I was thinking, oh, my God, she's going to roast me. But what happened was I didn't know when I wrote the Wolf Brother books, I didn't know that mammoths had been around, you know, after Taurac. And then I went to that brilliant exhibition at the Natural History Museum. I think it was called Ice Age Giants.
00:32:55
Speaker
and they had the wonderful frozen baby mammoth, Luber, which borrowed from Russia. And there it said that they had survived on Wrangel Island, and I think also on the Pribilov Islands, until about three and a half thousand years ago. All skeletons had been carbon dated, so I thought, oh, I missed a trick.
00:33:12
Speaker
But actually I hadn't missed a trick. I'm really glad I didn't include mammoths in the first six Wolf Brother books. It wouldn't have felt right. They're so important and they're such a strange, you know, even in Torak's time, they are anachronistic in the sense that, you know, that they have outlived their time in his world. Well, that's the feeling. So I wanted, you know, a whole book really to do justice to them. So it was perfect timing.
00:33:39
Speaker
I'm glad, but I'm also relieved to hear that even you hadn't, you know, an archaeologist hadn't hadn't sort of realised that they'd survived so long, but yeah. No, you see, I'd come across elephants and possible pygmy mammoths in Mediterranean islands. I've come across that research. Yes, Crete and other ones. But not, I hadn't, I hadn't heard about that, which is really very remiss of me.
00:34:07
Speaker
And you can't know everything, there's so much work going on everywhere. And one of the things that I find when I do do that Wolf Brother session at the Chilton Open Air Museum and or any other Stone Age workshop is that mammoths are the thing that come up, but when I'm usually doing the Mesolithic, and then you have to kind of let the kids down and say, I'm sorry, they just weren't around. And they don't like that.
00:34:30
Speaker
I think it's true that they wouldn't have been for most people. I think I'm right that there's no evidence of human habitation on wrangle. I'm pretty sure I'm right about that. That's why the mammoths were there. They'd probably been over-hunted elsewhere.
00:34:50
Speaker
Yeah, surviving to the same height as well, because usually with island species, there is this move towards miniaturisation because that's better for the animal, but they don't seem to have done that on wrangle. They don't seem to have done that on wrangle. I mean, they were smaller. I think they were a bit smaller. I'm not sure about that. I think the primitive ones were full size. I think the ones on wrangle, they were not technically dwarf. I know I had to sort of run this to ground because I wanted big mammoths, obviously.
00:35:16
Speaker
Yes, of course. So I'm not sure if they were completely full size on wrangle, but they weren't technically, you know, there was no dwarfism in them. But enough for novelist purposes, let's put it that way. And as I say, you know, three and a half thousand years ago, whereas Torek is 6000 years, so fine.
00:35:35
Speaker
Yeah, plenty, plenty of time there. That's fantastic. So as I say, I have my daughter with me, and I'm going to just let her ask you maybe a couple of questions. Sure. What was Torak's father's real name?
00:35:51
Speaker
I am never going to tell you. You are not the only one or the first one to have asked that question. I do know, but I haven't written it down. And you know why I'm not going to tell you, I sort of feel it would be an anticlimax now. And I like to leave a little bit of mystery there. So I'm sorry to refuse, but you're in good company because a few people have asked that question.
00:36:17
Speaker
That reminds me of one of the interesting aspects of the books is that people's names cannot be mentioned when they die. That's something that has come up in a few different cultures as well, hasn't it? It has, and I wish I could remember which culture I got that from.
00:36:34
Speaker
And this is what happens sometimes, because in my early notes, I tended not to bother with attributing them, I just sort of took it, whether it's in it, or whether it's another one, I think it's quite widespread. Often for a prescribed amount of time after the death, because the idea is that the spirit will still be around. And if you mention them, they'll hang around. And what you want them to do is go away. And I find that a very powerful idea.
00:37:02
Speaker
It is very powerful. And in a way, that's why we can't know Torek's father's real name. That's right. Although it is well after the five winters, which is in his culture. That's true.
00:37:14
Speaker
So, one more question from Catherine. What does Torek look like? What does he look like? Well, he's, in Viper's Daughter, he's about 17, so he's a young man in hunter-gatherer terms, and he's quite tall and quite thin because he's a hunter-gatherer. He moves around a lot, and he's dark. He's got long dark hair, which he dies back when he's hot or when he's hunting, and he's got light grey eyes like a wolf.
00:37:42
Speaker
and sort of the same color skin as Native American. So he's a little bit darker than Wren, who is pale and freckled. I can see him. And he's also got his clan tattoos, of course, which are sort of two dotted lines on each cheek.
00:37:59
Speaker
with a scar cutting across, I think it's the left cheek, which means is as important in the story. And then of course, in later books, he has a tattoo, sort of a ring, a quartered circle on his forehead. So I think that's pretty much it. Yes, I don't want to give away why but
00:38:21
Speaker
I love how you've incorporated the latest alkyo DNA research into that as well. Which bit? Well, in his appearance, a lot of the DNA studies of methylithic remains have shown that people remained dark skin, dark head with light eyes.
00:38:48
Speaker
I have to say I was I was quite pleased because a lot of that research has come out after some of the stuff that was published. So I kind of heeded a sigh of relief on that one, actually. I thought, yeah, yeah, that was that was quite fun. Yeah, there probably was more diversity than than is currently seen in because it's based on obviously only a few samples. But yeah, I love that. That was that was the way you went with with the groups.
00:39:15
Speaker
Thank you very much for answering Catherine's questions. As I mentioned before, you're so proactive, engaging with your fans.
Podcast Format and Listener Engagement
00:39:23
Speaker
We listen to your weekly live chat. Is it a weekly live chat that you do? It tends to be monthly, but in the current situation, when people are at home, we may well be doing them a little bit more often.
00:39:36
Speaker
Yes, and I think everybody really enjoyed it, especially because this Monday, there was a little and now well quite large announcement. I mean, obviously, first of all, there are going to be two more books after Viper's Daughter and Viper's Daughter is available on by the time this podcast comes out, it'll be it'll be readily available in the shops. But they're really exciting news that your fans have been waiting for for 15 years or more. Yeah.
00:40:04
Speaker
Can you tell us? Yes, well I have done a deal for not a film but a television series with Kindle Entertainment and Lionsgate and it's
00:40:16
Speaker
I'm really, really pleased with it. It's going to be a very high-end television series. They've got a fabulous screenwriter. And what really attracted me to the production team is just how committed they are to making it an authentic, mytholithic world. So that's really exciting. It's so exciting.
00:40:37
Speaker
We are, I'm just, I can't wait. I know it's still going to be a couple of years, probably before it's on our TV screens, but that is so exciting. It just deserves to be brought to life on the screen. And I can just, yeah, obviously it sounds like that's a great team that will do it justice. Yes, I think so. But yeah, we're very, very excited about that. But also, of course, for the new books, because the books are always the best.
00:41:06
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. We are very much looking forward to continuing reading about Ren and Torek and Wolf, particularly. I think Wolf is Catherine's favourite. She's nodding at me and smiling. Excellent. Mine too, Catherine. Yep.
00:41:23
Speaker
So thank you so much for coming on the podcast, Michelle. It's been brilliant to talk to you. We will hopefully get some comments from some of the listeners about, and they will go away and read the book and then be able to tell us what they think. So I will send those on to you as well.
00:41:41
Speaker
Will do, please. Yeah, thank you. It's been really brilliant to talk to you. I'm really glad we managed to do it. Well, thank you so much, Kim. It's been a great pleasure after a few years to be back and thanks so much. Thank you. Well, what a nice way to come back.
00:42:01
Speaker
Now, now I'm back. I wanted to rejig the show a bit. I'd like to have a bit more input from you, the listeners. At the end of each show, I'll let you know what we'll be reading or watching next, and then you can send me your questions and comments in advance.
00:42:19
Speaker
I want to put your voice into the beginning and the end of each show. And hey, maybe sometimes in the middle as well. Do get hold of Viper's Daughter if you haven't already. It can be read as a standalone book. The backstory is well explained, but I would say it's best if you do read the whole series of Chronicles of Ancient Darkness, if you can get hold of them all. So, next month.
00:42:43
Speaker
Next month we're going to be talking Thalesen with Erin Kavanagh. Get hold of The Book of Thalesen. If you can get it, it's by Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams. Yes, Rowan Williams, who was the former Archbishop of Canterbury. The Book of Thalesen is not exactly fiction. It's notionally by a poet called Thalesen in the sixth century AD, but they were written down later and many of the poems seem to have been added by anonymous scribes in later centuries.
00:43:14
Speaker
The original is in ancient Welsh, and this is a translation, so it's in English so we can read it, but obviously probably loses something by translating it. So it's in ancient Welsh, but the oldest poems are about what is now northern England.
00:43:31
Speaker
So, it's full of contradictions. I'm quite interested now in the period, just the Sub-Roman and early Saxon period, and how that all happened, and what happened to the Britons, and what did they think of themselves. The telesin goes into that. We may also talk a little bit Mabinogion as well.
00:43:51
Speaker
So, if you know that one or can even find it online, then it might be useful to go into both of those Welsh sources. It's not exactly prehistory, is it? But, you know, that's another one of the changes I'm making. I'm willing to read some historical fiction as well as prehistorical, and the process in kind of researching and, indeed, critiquing prehistorical and historical fiction is very similar.
00:44:21
Speaker
If I'm not an expert on the time period, which, you know, let's face it, who could be for all the time periods and all the places, I'll try to get a guess to it. I'm going to draw the line, I think, probably at the post-medieval period though. It's just too modern, you know?
00:44:39
Speaker
So, after today, let us know what you thought of this book, if you got hold of it, what you thought of the podcast, what you thought of what Michelle said, or if you're able to get hold of Talizin or the Mabinogion, tell us about that as well. What are your thoughts as you start to read that? Is it good? Is it bad?
00:45:04
Speaker
is it difficult to actually get into, you know, then let us know. You can send us your comments by leaving them on the show page on archaeologypodcastnetwork.com forward slash prehistories.
00:45:20
Speaker
or to us on Twitter. The podcast handle is at prehistpod or of course you can always let us know at at arcpodnet. All of these places to contact us and all of the details about the book that we talked about today, Viper's Daughter by Michelle Paver and The Book of Talizin by Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams
00:45:45
Speaker
will be in the show notes. So take a look at those. Okay, so hopefully I will be in contact with some of you and we can include you in the podcast from now on. It's so good to be back.
00:46:16
Speaker
This show is produced by Chris Webster and Tristan Boyle and was edited by Chris Webster.