What does it sound like when one of Northern Europes most epic and famous bird mountains loses its voice?
To all of our discontent and shock; Vedøya (Røst) became silent in the summer of 2020,
I recently composed the first verse or episodes you could say, in a series of sound works lamenting the loss of Vedøya as a sea bird mountain.
The work wishes to speak to Vedøyas origins and life until this day, from a variety of voices.
The work’s narrative is based on a script I have been writing using many years of research into archives, my own deepening friendship with – and getting to know the island as well as conversations with local people and neighbors, bird scientists, and ornithologists who have been working on Vedøya throughout time.
I am sharing with you the newly translated script. The translation was done by the poet and writer Annabelle Despard.
////o v o////
I’m lying here resting
with my mountain sisters
the sun warms me
the winds and rain
wash
us
lichen and moss-skin
protect us
we listen to
eternity
the waves
waves
clumps of seaweed
on the shore
are stirred
by cycles
below us
we feel
the power
magma
the origin of Utrøstryggen
we are the elders
born in the world’s infancy
yet still rising
through millennia
under heavy massed ice
the ice
melting
the winds
the water
the currents
insisting
shaping and honing
landslides at times
shapes changing
new spaces made
cliff faces
are open invitations
I call them my winged. children
one springwinter they came flying
in over the hills
different voices
have
come
gone
come
gone
long gone
every spring
we are woken
and we no longer crave for company
in the long summer nights
eggs
are laid
lain on
fed
hatched
squeaking
chattering
squabbling
calling
answering
then they fly off
in August
in twilight days
It’s light tonight
but all I want is to sleep
everything is changed
I don’t know where I am
without
the screeching
the blare
the sheen of the silver mantel
a pair of ravens
are searching in vain
for life
their shrieks echo in Visheller´n
////
One springwinter long long ago
our forebirds came flying
Our time is old
it is hard to say when we came
but we remember
an ancient mineral giant
born from Utrøstryggens
300 million years
Were you expecting company?
we found rocky ledges
for white and turquoise eggs
rock nests
and hollows
such lovely song
in the steep rock face
///
I look at you
from different angles
daily
try to store
your outline
your
shape
in me
changing
with the wind
the weather
kinds of light
you are stoical today
seen from the north
I cannot see the sea
between you and Røst
you rise straight up out of the ground
a support
supporting
here we stand
glaring at each other
///
Today I came back to Vedøya
I walked up the sheep track along Bunes Bay
to the old Swiss hut for bird research
Two people
sitting on the step
tying their shoelaces
ready to investigate the auk
It is the summer of 1965
harvest
shouting and children’s laughter
sheep and lambs bleating
coffeepots rattling
a pipe is lit
But where are the kittiwakes?
///////
Nothing is as it was
we get used to the land
all over again
but everything feels strange
the choir no longer sings in unison
few or nobody
is at home
as they were
not very long ago
one auk
or a single
guillemot
dives off the cliff face
lonely arrows
vibrating in the air
In the light time
the wren sings
her solo
Birds are at home
floating weightlessly
strangely eternal
if only the sea was not so empty
birds, sheep, people, guano
plants proliferating
under the mountain’s towering
being
asleep
hunting island
gathering fodder
summer pastures
Photo by EMØV
Archival image, Vedøya, 1.6.1963 by Paul Andreas Røstad
