Solefald
Red For Fire: An Icelandic Odyssey, Part 1

Have you ever woken up - perhaps in the middle of the night -, after a dreamlike interlude, thinking: "what the hell kind of dream did I have? Does my subconscious really produce such a high and complex level of subplots, hidden reading keys, etc.; or are they all elements thrown there at random, and however they land, that's how they stay?". Dream and reality, quite a mess. So let’s suppose someone, or something, even just for a moment, sheds light from the outside, and thus allows everything to be illuminated, to give the right order, the correct position to things. The time to tell you, involve you in their dream, a brief apprenticeship so that, next time, you can manage on your own, nothing more.

That of Bragi the Poet - Icelandic for “poet” or “singer” - is, it's worth stating up front, not just any "dream" (if such things exist). The first reference that comes to my mind is certainly Samuel Coleridge and his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (yes, the one set to music by Iron Maiden in Powerslave). I consciously run the risk of possible mystifications - centered and focused on Christian morality in the Englishman’s work, inextricably linked to Norse mythology in the Norwegians’ -, since the narrative and thematic path between the two works is specular, following standards - well defined to this day. And so, as the unaware mariner kills the albatross, and with it the paradigm of divine creation, so the Poet, attracted and seduced by Disa, the "White Queen of the Ice", attracts upon himself the ire and impetuous jealousy of Loki, a fact that will cost him - through a stratagem of the God himself - expulsion from the community by King Haukur. Thus begins the epic, Homeric journey, among revenge, despair, redemption, mystery, and myth, in a purely Icelandic sauce, of the unfortunate Bragi, a subject ultimately - like every man according to the great Greek tragedians before Euripides -, sometimes abusively, to the "will of the gods", with no possibility of appeal.

Bragi's role in the society of the time is particularly fascinating: he, as a poet, is accustomed to - it is "his task" - assign names to those convoluted shades of human knowledge that we call events. "Sun I Call" introduces, as a sad and melancholic intro in which intertwine, in full avant-garde style, saxophone, linear vocals (male, female), and growl, this social function, painting picturesque landscapes of the vast Nordic wonders, which so fascinated great minds - like "our" Alfieri -: "I call the Sun the fiery wheel, [...] I call the Sea the flock of waves, [...] I call Death the end of all". An insightful preface, inspired almost as if a Muse provided the necessary incipit to set sail.

An ephemeral beginning, in truth: it is in fact the rhythmic contrasts that dominate the following minutes, now sharp and swirling, driven by Lazare's hellish double bass drum and Cornelius's scream, now clear, melodic, voices and choirs become almost theatrical, keyboards and strings (in Borknagar style) suggest calm, and it all folds back on itself cyclically, without references, like a spontaneous, Nordic summer storm.

The instrumental “Bragi” is heart-wrenching, one minute, only one, to enter the soul and deepest sensations of the protagonist; and, by chance, placed almost to introduce the lulling "White Frost Queen", a pearl of interpretative pathos thanks to the vocal qualities of Aggie Frost Peterson, gentle and "warm" fair queen, breaking a sense of isolation and vast progressive desertification in the background, where once again violins and cellos indicate the path to take, once again tortuous, extended. The two characters thus stand almost side by side, metaphorically, even though they must forcefully be distant in reality, and perhaps this key to understanding should be sought in her ambiguity, which will lead the Poet to exile from the city. For the occasion return, overwhelming, growls and blast beats, fantastic in their meta-significance (see Ayreon, Arjen Lucassen’s project that, in full rock-opera style, assigns a role to each individual singer, and corresponding vocal modulation), beyond the textual treatment, to suggest contrast, inner torture, humiliation, exacerbated by the unequivocal mocking words of the King. The poet, the one who names things, the one who defines reality, is unjustly cast out from his own world: and it is precisely reality - by Loki's hand - that is inverted and cast away from truth.

Folk and avant-garde become predominant in the prelude to the grand finale, with "Crater of the Valkyries", where fate, runes, the gods, decide the Poet's future. And in the dramatic nature of the moment, an infinite vortex mixes feelings, sensations, voices, instruments, and cards, drawing the decisive one, that of inevitable destiny. Remarkable are the timbral alternation, the varied drumming, the epic, Viking, solemn sound that underscores the plot. The time for a melancholic and visionary reprise - to the past - of the debut with "Sea I Called" - returns the theme of cyclicality, which dominates this chapter and the next -, and the journey is interrupted, with the minimalist closure of "Lokasenna" (the theme of which will later be reworked into two further parts), a skaldic poem extracted from the medieval manuscript "Codex Regius", and related "Poetic Edda", in which Loki points the finger at the gods, focusing accusations on incest. Entirely spoken, thanks to the external contribution of Jormundur Ingi, it is the right appendix to the main corpus of the work, to what it seeks to convey, in terms of emotional and literary impact.

But the journey has just begun. Ithaca is not yet in sight. Not even sea serpents. The road to perdition is still fully such, the directions towards redemption are blurred. Red for the fire...