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The World Tree |
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Kveldulf Ravn Born Peter Shields
Peter Shields was born in the suburbs of Sydney on the 7th August 1960, his mother Myrtle Shields (maiden name Ambergris), arrived in Australia in the late 1940s, as one of the many children from childrens homes who were forcible émigrés to Australia. Myrtle has been separated from her mother as a result of Technocracy inspired action by social services in the late 1940s, and as a six year old orphan was settled in Australia to give her a 'better life;. Kveldulfs grandmother, a member of a northern English Verbenna circle, was recovering from a severe quiet, following her role in fighting against the Nephandic outbreaks across Europe at the sites of many of the Nazi concentration camps. Rosemary Ambergriss betrayal by the Technocracy was just one of many following the short lived alliance of the Traditions and Technocracy to deal with the nephandic threat. Myrtle never awoke into her magical inheritance, and was married by the age of 18 to David Shields, a young mechanic working in the Shields family owned garage in the suburbs of Sydney.
Peter was an angry young man, feeling somehow estranged from those around him, but without a clear idea of why. By his late teens he and a bunch of mates had formed a band playing music based on the punk bands of the mid-late 1970s. A talented vocalist, with a misdirected anger, Peter ended up in a skinhead band, the Prophets of Honour which began making a name for themselves in the underground music culture of racist white youth.
In the early 1980s Peter got itchy feet, and persuaded the band that they should go to Europe, and try their luck there. Like many thousands of young Australians they left to do a tour of Europe, but the Prophets of Honour had the potential to make at least some money gigging to the skinhead scene in Britain. Peter got the band some dates in a skinhead pub on the outskirts of Leeds and the Prophets of Honour merged into the violent skinhead culture of Northern England. One Wednesday night The Wheatsheaf where the Prophets of Honour were playing the night before a NF rally in Leeds was attacked by militant anti facists. The skinheads were heavily outnumbered and as the Prophets tried to escape they found themselves in a series of running fights. Peter lost track of his bandmates in violence and confusion, and ended up unconscious on the roadside, under an old ash tree.
He dreamt of ravens, ravens plucking out eyeballs, ravens searching for knowledge, ravens playing tricks on others. Peter awoke in a travellers camp, with an old man, who later he would call Uncle Magnus, although exactly what relation he was to Peter was never clear. Magnus told Peter who still felt like he was concussed, stories, stories about what the true inheritance of the Nordic tradition meant. With time Magnus introduced Peter to a women apparently in her forties, who Magnus claimed was his grandmother Rosemary, she told him stories about his British inheritance.
Peter travelled with the travellers, sometimes with Magnus, sometimes with Rosemary, but often just as a traveller amongst travellers. They did the festival tour, and Peter occasionally sang with other crusties and folk singers, learning about the land, and getting drunk in some of the most symbolic sites across England and Wales.
After five years of this life Peters dreams were full of ravens and Magnus told him it was almost time for him to embrace his heritage fully, and that he was to go with Magnus on a trip to a small village in Norway that winter. Rosemary gave him an staff made of Ash as a present for the journeys ahead. On the winter solstice, after much feasting and drinking of mead, a group that Magnus called the Circle of the North, hung him down from an ash tree. During the nine days he was there Munin taught Kveldulf what it meant to be a priest of Odin. The lessons were hard but eventually Kveldulf learnt them and after much scolding, cajoling Munin declared himself satisfied. During Kveldulf's ritual Magnus and the other members of the circle sought for the a spirit of a raven, to bind into a raven, and were satisfied with one who called itself Hugin.
Kveldulf spent most of the last 10 or so years travelling between festival sites, sometimes in the guise of traveller, or raver, but always with the purpose of celebrating pagan rites with fellow Verbenna. During that time Munin was insistent on Kveldulf learning to become a shapeshifter, for only then would Munin accept that Kveldulf was mature enough to start on his next quest.
At the heart of the Verbena tradition is the one tree, which Kveldulf knows as Yggdrasil. The Verbena unification of the Norse pagan, and the Celtic pagan was consummated by Nightshade and William Groth in the great rite on Beltane 1440. While many modern Verbenna draw more heavily on their Celtic roots Kveldulf draws at least equally on the Nordic roots.
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