Researching a World That Never Was
The author describes how she used ethnography and folklore to build the imaginary world of Llwddawanden.
Book Two of The Druid Chronicles expands on the premise that the remnants of a once powerful pagan cult have survived into the last years of the eighth century, a time when the conversion to Christianity is all but complete throughout the rest of the British Isles.
While the other four books of the series are set in fictional but historically- based Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, Llwddawanden, the valley of the book’s title, is entirely hypothetical—a place I conceived of as a lost world where its inhabitants live according to a system of beliefs dating back to the Iron Age. That said, it was always my intention to make this part of my characters’ story at least plausible, and I began my research with a broad review of the relevant academic and popular literature.
Llwddawanden, the valley of the book’s title, is entirely hypothetical—a place I conceived of as a lost world where its inhabitants live according to a system of beliefs dating back to the Iron Age.
Although Druids do not appear in the historical record after the Roman conquest of the Gauls on the European continent, and the Celts in what is now England, they are described by Julius Caesar and others as members of a priestly class of polytheistic Celts that performed functions as bards, oracles, and healers as well as serving as judges and political advisors. Caesar further reported that becoming a Druid required a training period as long as twenty years. With that to go on, I turned to ethnographic studies of societies with comparable social roles and to the works of folklorists who have recorded and studied epics and folktales from around the world—focusing on creation stories, epic poetry, and folktales conveying cultural mores
(Druids are) described by Julius Caesar and others as members of a priestly class of polytheistic Celts that performed functions as bards, oracles, and healers as well as serving as judges and political advisors.
By then I knew that one of The Valley’s underlying issues was to be the internal tensions within a persecuted minority struggling to survive and to pass on deeply held beliefs, and I had settled on the three main protagonists—Herrwn, the shrine’s master bard, Ossiam, their oracle, and Olyrrwd, their physician—who shared a collective responsibility as advisors to the shrine’s chief priestess and as judges on its councils. Herrwn, the novel’s viewpoint character, had his origins in what I’ve learned about bards as the keepers and transmitters of cultural traditions through oral sagas and poetry, Ossiam is more of a mix, part-shaman, part-trickster, while Olyrrwd has his counterparts in non-western healers as well as in pre-nineteenth-century medical practitioners
Herrwn, the novel’s viewpoint character, had his origins in what I’ve learned about bards as the keepers and transmitters of cultural traditions through oral sagas and poetry, Ossiam is more of a mix, part-shaman, part-trickster, while Olyrrwd has his counterparts in non-western healers as well as in pre-nineteenth-century medical practitioners.
From the first, I intended the series’ major conflict to be between my Druid cult’s devotion to the worship of a supreme mother goddess and the paternalistic monotheism of the Christian world outside their secluded sanctuary. There is documentation of goddesses having a significant role in pre-Christian Celtic religions but, to me at least, their function was not as dominant as I had in mind, so again I looked at the larger literature—ranging from speculation about the paleolithic “Venus” figurines found across the Eurasian continent to the views of modern-day Wiccans—blending what I learned into the theology that would govern life in the imaginary valley of Llwddawanden1.
*Originally posted in Reading the Past June 30, 2022 by A. M, Linden
1. Pronunciation of Celtic names in this series is loosely based on modern Welsh. When used as a vowel, w is intended to be pronounced like the oo in book and the dd is pronounced like the English th. The ll represents a sound approximating the English l but requires that the speaker breathe out around the sides of his or her tongue to add a hissing effect. Should readers who do not speak Welsh opt to use the English l, Llwddawanden can be pronounced Loothawanden. (see welshcheat.pdf )
Author’s Note: While the books in The Druid Chronicles are available at all major book sellers, I encourage readers to patronize their local book store or, if unavailable there, to consider purchase through Bookshop.org.
Thank you for sharing your process! I will check these books out. I'm a historian of the 16th century Atlantic world wishing there was more evidence to explain some of the projections on to native Americans of Iron Age survivals. Perhaps this is because of the Renaissance rediscovery of classic texts describing the Gauls and Druids... I look forward to reading your take on how it would look/ feel to be a colonized Druid.
There should be a "loved it" to check.
The characters feel so real and the situations kept me totally engrossed and waiting to learn what next.