Legends and Landscape 1- Stroma Swelkie Whirlpool

Some video footage of the Swelkie(O.N.  "Swallower" ), a tidal whirlpool located off the Northern tip of the island of Stroma.  Stroma is a fascinating wee island lying off the coast of Caithness just off John O'Groats - it remained inhabited until the 1950s, and is now home to many sheep and a few shipwrecks;indeed Robert Louis Stevenson referred to the firth as "the grave of mariners". George Gunn's prose work, The Province of the Cat, (see Reading List and References) details the island's history and folklore in some detail, including the wrecking in 1888 of the steamer Copeland, containing the author of King Solomon's Mines, H. Rider Haggard, and his cargo of hundreds of Icelandic ponies. The author thought Stroma "a pleasant place" - the passengers were rescued by the local inhabitants and around 500 of the ponies survived by swimming ashore from the stricken ship.(https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=D94ZAgAAQBAJ&lpg=PT12597&ots=MCNSaBFkWt&dq=h%20rider%20haggard%20shipwreck%20stroma&pg=PT12597#v=onepage&q=h%20rider%20haggard%20shipwreck%20stroma&f=false)

Another Stroma tale uses a legend drawn from the Norse heritage of the North coast landscape:
The Legend of the creation of the Swelkie tells of two Giant handmaidens, Fenia and Menia, who were bonded to a Danish king named Frodi. The pair were obliged to turn a giant quernstone, the Grotti, which possessed the power to grind out whatever its operator wished to create. Fenia and Menia rebelled against Frodi by using the stone to grind out an army to free them, and kill Frodi. Whilst making their escape across the Pentland Firth, the captain of their craft asked the pair to grind out salt, but the stone created so much that the ship sank off the coast of Stroma, continuing to grind out salt into the sea for eternity.(www.orkneyjar.com)
The Grotti story is a recurring theme in the Norse Eddic tradition : in the Song of the Grotti from the Prose Edda (see Reading List and References, Larrington, p252), the journey takes place between Denmark and Sweden- the theme of "why the sea is salty" makes its way into folklore and fairytales throughout Europe. The specific location of the Pentland Firth is more sporadic, although it may be alluded to in the Orkneyinga Saga- Judith Jesch's paper Norse Myth in Medieval Orkney (see Reading List and References page) explores the Grotti's links to the Earldom of Orkney further.

Here is a piece for viola inspired by the legend : the dark tone of the instrument seemed suited to the depiction of the swirling waters, and I've further enhanced this by using a dark key (C minor) and continual changes of time signature. The cycling of the piece through simple and compound time before settling back where it started (in 4/4) is designed both to illustrate the circling of the pool and the conflict in the narrative. The piece ends with a sparse, sul ponticello, reprise of the opening theme, as the quernstone quietly continues to grind beneath the waves.

https://soundcloud.com/morag-currie-342215588/the-swelkie-viola-solo-m4a
I have reworked this piece a few times, and it continues to evolve (or revolve, like its subject....); the next stage is to arrange it as a lower-string quartet of 2 violas and 2 cellos to reflect the twin protagonists of the tale.