Mother's Blood, Sister Songs, Episode 2 'Sister Songs'.

Broadcast RTÉ Lyric fm Jan 5th 6-7pm.

In Episode 2 of this music led arts documentary composer Linda Buckley meets women composers and musicians in Iceland, exploring how the genetics of Iceland reveals its Irish motherhood. What is the root of Iceland's extraordinary creativity? 

Linda talks to harpist Katie Buckley, flautist Melkorka Olafsdottir, and hears how Björk creates a collaborative and creative environment drawing on the rich legacy of Iceland's musical tradition.

The music played in this episode includes, in this order:

Linda Buckley - Fall Approaches

Linda Buckley - Numarimur

Björk - Mother Heroic 

Linda Buckley - Siúil A Rún

Sigur Ros - Odins' Raven Magic

Melkorka Olafsdottir playing Telemann Fantasia 6 Dolce

Móðir mín í kví kví - Icelandic folk song

Bara Grimsdottir - Æskustöðvarnar

Medieval Icelandic folk singing - Tvísöngur

Kristín Lárusdóttir (Selló Stína) - Haustið nálgast 

Kristin Larusdottir Sello Stina - Fold  ( vox Steindor Anderson)

Kristín Lárusdóttir (Selló-Stína) - Von

Bara Grimsdottir - Blíðviðri

Sigur Ros - Glósóli

JFDR - White Sun

Björk - The Anchor Song

Lara Bryndis Eggertsdottir - I heard the Sound of their Wings

Vox Feminae - Móðir mín í kví, kví

Anna Thorvaldsdottir (Iceland Symphony Orchestra & Ilan Volkov) - Aeriality

Björk - Utopia

Katie Buckley - Snowy February

Bjork - Violently happy

Vox Feminae - Visur Vatnsenda Rosu

Björk - Tabula Rasa

Björk - Blissing Me

Anna Thorvaldsdottir - Heyr þú oss himnum á

Linda Buckley & Irene Buckley- Song of the Siren (vox Annette Buckley)

Linda Buckley - Fall Approaches

Linda Buckley - Numarimur

Find out more on www.mothersbloodsistersongs.com

Mother's Blood, Sister Songs is an Athena Media production for RTÉ lyric fm made with the support of the TV licence fee and the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland. The presenter is Linda Buckley, producer is Helen Shaw, the documentary audio editor is Pearse O Caoimh and the production digital editor is John Howard. 

The RTÉ lyric fm commissioning editor is Olga Buckley.

Mother's Blood, Sister Songs : Episode 1 'Mother's Blood'

The music heard in this episode includes:

You can find some of the music here in a Soundcloud playlist

For more go to www.mothersbloodsistersongs.com

In this final look back on her exploration from Ireland to Iceland, composer Linda Buckley gives an insight into what she discovered and what she feels it tells us about creativity and music making in Iceland. 

The story of Melkorka, the Irish princess slave of the Icelandic Sagas, has haunted the journey. But her life and story has been given more substance by the genetic research showing the majority of women in the settlement period of Iceland were indeed gaelic and presumed, like her, to be slaves. The genetics has given reality to the theory that Irish and Scottish teenage girls and women were the first mothers of Iceland. Our project has been obsessed with not just giving voice to those often silenced lives but to a sense of what their impact and legacy has been, through the stories, the songs and the language they gave their children. How has that influenced and inspired the literary, musical traditions and creativity of Iceland from then to today?

Music includes

Check out www.mothersbloodsistersongs.com for the full podcast series and transmedia content.

Melkorka Ólafsdóttir is a flautist in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and takes her name from the Melkorka of the Icelandic Sagas. She traces her lineage back to that Melkorka, who is said to have been an Irish Princess taken into slave and bought by an Icelandic chieftain and brought to Iceland.

Melkorka is a poet, as well as a flautist, and she has written a poem for her name sake and she shares it with us in Icelandic and English.

You can find out more about her music here

Los Angeles based visual artist Joan Perlman came to Iceland through dreams, and has been going back regularly for 20 years. In her most recent project she focusses on The Drowning Pool in Iceland's old open valley parliament, Thingvellir, where, around a open neck of water, women were once executed by drowning for crimes often of sexuality and moral behaviour like incest, adultery and infanticide.

For this project she connected with the Irish composer Linda Buckley who wrote a piece of music to score Joan's visual representation of "Drowning Pool".

In this conversation Linda unpacks Joan's work, finds out what brought her to Iceland, what inspires her, and how they are both, as artists, drawn to Iceland's story of landscape and people for their work.

Linda's exploration of the female voice in 'Mother's Blood, Sisters Songs' resonates with Joan's work and her witness with places that speak of hidden stories, voices and lives, particularly women's lives and stories.

Music is Linda Buckley's composition for "Drowning Pool' and also

If you want to find out more about Iceland's history and Thingvellir check out

Vilborg Davíðsdóttir is an acclaimed Icelandic writer who draws on the women of the Icelandic Sagas for inspiration in her work. She has written a trilogy on the story of Auður the Deep Minded, who was married to Olaf the White, the Irish born Viking King of Dublin and a novel Korka drawing on the story of Melkorka the supposedly mute Irish princess slave who has been such a focus of our own series, Mother's Blood, Sister Songs.

In this podcast, composer Linda Buckley and producer Helen Shaw sit down with Vilborg, in her Reykjavik home, and she talks about her self confessed obsession with the Scottish and Irish gaelic connections to the settlement of Iceland and the Icelandic Sagas.

She shares why she made the birth of a red haired child to Auður the breaking point of her marriage to Olaf the White (who thinks the red hair is a sign of infidelity with an Irishman!) and why the slave narrative in the Icelandic Sagas remains a difficult one for Icelandic people who naturally want their origin story to be one of heroes, not slaves.

You can find out more about Vilborg's writing and her work here

Éilís Ní Dhuibhne is an acclaimed writer in both Irish and English. She often references folklore and folktales in her work of contemporary fiction and she is deeply immersed in both Irish and Icelandic folktales through both her own extensive academic research and also through that of her late husband the Swedish folklorist Bo Almqvist.

Éilís first visited Iceland in the late 1970s, a time when few Irish people had the opportunity to go there, and when Iceland was quite a remote and isolated country. She returns often and has many Icelandic friends and colleagues including Professor Gísli Sigurðsson (who we talked to in an earlier episode). 

Gísli was a student of Bo Almqvist at University College Dublin and it was during his time studying under Almqvist that he wrote his master thesis on the gaelic influences in the Icelandic Sagas. At the time his mentor and friend thought Gísli was overstating the Irish influences in both the settlement of Iceland and its literature but as Gísli himself told us the genetic research from DeCode Genetics, showing that over 65% of the women in the first generation of Iceland were gaelic, has proven his theory. 

You can find out more about Éilís Ní Dhuibhne's work here

Éilís has been involved in UCD's Ireland-Iceland project and you can hear a seminar she participated in last year about cultural connections between the two places called 'cultural dialogues and parallel histories' 

Music : Linda Buckley - Numarimur

Arnhildur Valgarðsdóttir or 'Adda' (the name she performs under) is an extraordinary women of song and music. Linda Buckley and producer Helen Shaw met up with her at a church in Iceland where she plays organ, piano and leads the choir. 

She is a multi-instrumentalist, a composer and a performer. She took her musical show inspired by the Icelandic Sagas to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this year and as she says herself she always has half a dozen projects on the go at the one time. 

Adda talks about the power of choirs in Iceland and how the church in Iceland is not so much about religion as community. 

She talks about folk music and the influence of singer and folklorist Bára Grímsdóttir who we talked to in a previous episode.

Jón Páll Björnsson on the Settlement of Iceland

The curator of the Settlement Exhibition Jón Páll Björnsson takes producer Helen Shaw on a tour of the exhibition to find out more about the settlement and what it tells us about the people who first made Iceland their home. 

He explains the way the Viking society was structured and how he thinks women slaves might have supported both the agricultural and sail weaving work of the community.

You can visit the Exhibition here

Katie Buckley is a classical harpist who hails from Atlanta in the United States but who has found a home in Iceland and a life with Iceland Symphony Orchestra. She began studying harp when she was 8 with Susan Bennett Brady, and started with an Irish harp, then classical harp and continued her studies in San Francisco with opera harpist Ann Adams.

In 2006 she became principal harpist with Iceland Symphony Orchestra and she is a founding member of the ensemble Duo Harpverk. Duo Harpverk is a harp and percussion duo with percussionist Frank Aarnink. The Duo has released two CDs, The Greenhouse Sessions and Offshoots, and performs around Iceland and has embarked on several international tours.

For the Mother's Blood Sister Songs series Linda Buckley (we've not found their genetic link yet!) and producer Helen Shaw sat down with Katie in Iceland's beautiful concert hall Harpa to talk music, Iceland and the phenomenal influence of Björk

You can find out more about the series on www.mothersbloodsistersongs.com

Music Featured:

Katie Buckley - 'SnowyFebruary2nd'