I grew up in the nineteen forties in a village at the edge of the New Forest in England, on the other side of the road from the bungalow in which I was born there were two massive oak trees, beneath and beside the oak tree on the left was a holly bush, we would cut berried twigs from the bush to decorate our home at Christmas. When I was five or six I crawled into the space under the holly bush and there I found a small round tin that rattled when I shook it.
“Treasure!” I thought. The tin was rusted shut, it had obviously been lying there for quite a while. I did, after some considerable effort with a screwdriver, get the tin open and inside was … a set of false teeth!
The Execution of Earl Magnus of Orkney An Audio Drama, 1993. Loosely based upon chapters 46 to 51 of the Hermann Palsson and Paul Edwards translation of Orkneyinga Saga (Penguin 1981).
(31:41, stereo audio, 78.5 mb)
Cast: Liesbet Summers-Ewalts..(Maastricht)..Helga (Hakon’s concubine); Marshall Anderson..(Dundee)..Hakon (An Earl of Orkney); Magnús Pálsson..(London)..Egmond (The Narrator); Rod Summers..(Maastricht)..Magnus (Another Earl of Orkney); Sigurd (A trouble maker and sound poem); Tom Winter..(Hamburg)..God; Hubert Cuijpers..(Lyon)..Sighvat Sock (Sigurd’s brother); Lincoln Martine..(Maastricht)..Holdbodi (Awitness on Magnus’ side); Alan Doyle..(Maastricht)..Ofeig (Hakon’s standard bearer); Raven..(Hamburg)..Hlifolf (Hakon’s cook); Guest appearance by Josef Günther Kaspers
Recorded in Maastricht, London, Dundee, Hamburg, Lyon, and on location at Tentsmuir, Fife.
The master recordings were made with a portable DAT recorder and stereo one-point microphone on loan to VEC Audio from Hubert Cuijpers.
VEC Audio CD 0001 Two Audio DramasVEC Audio CD 0001 Two Audio Dramas
Two Audio Dramas
Track 01 – Helgi Saga Part One
(28.05, stereo audio, 67.4 mb)
Track 02 – Helgi Saga Part Two
(18:16, stereo audio, 43.8 mb)
The audio-drama scriptHelgi Saga was written and recorded from May to November 1985. Inspiration sources for the original story were many and various but the main ones were my Viking friends Helgi ‘The Turtle’ Fridjonsson and Þor Elis Pálsson, the Icelandic sagas; especially Burnt Njall’s Saga, and the Bible, book of Ezekiel, chapter one from verse four.
The story itself is a black comedy about the progress of a noble Viking who, whilst at battle on behalf of a Norwegian king, has a close encounter of the third kind with robot representatives from Cosmic Control. Helgi Saga is a sequel to the Fallowfield stories previously published on V.E.C. Audio.
The play has 34 characters voiced by 24 readers. Of these 24 readers 7 were Dutch, 4 Icelandic, 4 English, 3 American, 2 Irish, 1 Scot, 1 Pole, 1 German and a computer.
Each characters part was recorded individually, the pieces were then spliced together and sound effects added to create the whole.
Dedicated to Mother Computer.
Rod Summers. Maastricht November 1985, revised March 1993.
Track 03 – Sagara
(10:05, stereo audio, 24.2 mb)
Track 04 – The Saga of Brjan the Raud & The Scoring Technique in Cribbage
