Tonight, Tom Muir and his wife Rhonda have a cozy winter storytelling session, with readings from Tom's books published with The History Press ... including his new Scottish Folk Tales of Love, gorgeously illustrated by artist Hester Aspland.

If you're inspired to do so, you can buy us a dram on Ko-fi, with our hearty thanks: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Winter is for stories. As we round the bend of a new year, Tom will tell us some stories in their entirety, as well as sharing selected readings from his History Press books. So snuggle in and draw closer to the fire, even if it's an imaginary one. Happy New Year to you all, friends.

Along with readings from stories of sea witches, second sight, doomed lovers, the devil, lovers returned from the dead and runaway princesses ... full stories Tom will tell are:

• The Three Questions
• The Selkie's Revenge
• The Three Gifts

Mentioned in the episode:

Hjorliefur Helgi Steffanson: podcast episode 10; Ailsa Dixon: podcast episode 9 - https://www.orkneyology.com/orkneyology-podcast.html

The Green Man of Knowledge, told by Tom: https://www.orkneyology.com/tales-from-tom5.html

Tales for Troubled Times folktale storytelling archive: https://www.orkneyology.com/tales-from-tom.html

History Press books by Tom: https://thehistorypress.co.uk/contributor/tom-muir/

Anthologies: https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/the-anthology-of-scottish-folk-tales/

https://thehistorypress.co.uk/publication/the-anthology-of-scottish-folk-tales-volume-ii/

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On this December "cold"full moon we have a visit from a new friend, who recently visited us in Stromness: the creator of Morph, Creature Comforts, Wallace and Gromit and many more animation favorites. Please do forgive the less-than-perfect sound quality in the first half hour. We did our best, recording from a distance on a dreich night with interference from the rumbling ferry across the street. Such is life on a northerly island, but this chat was worth persisting with. We hope you agree!

If you're inspired to do so, you can buy us a dram on Ko-fi, with our hearty thanks: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Tonight, Tom Muir and Peter Lord have a talk about these things and much more:

• Early days with good friend David Sproxton, and a fondness for plasticine - schoolboys on a kitchen table
• Ray Harryhausen inspirations
• Morph in Orkney and elsewhere: almost 50 years, and forever young
• A new career in advertising: fun and lucrative!
• Enter Nick Park, "brilliant and stubborn" genius
• The return of the evil penguin
• Academy Awards
• War Story
• Filming Peter Gabriel's Sledgehammer video ... amongst decaying fish and chickens
• Chicken Run, plasticine on the big screen: The Great Escape ... with chickens
• Wallace and Gromit - when Gromit had a mouth!
• Curse of the Warerabbit
• Handmade, human animation in a world of AI
• And last but not least, Shaun the Sheep, who has "many more stories to tell".

Aardman's website: https://www.aardman.com/about/

Our deep thanks go to Fionn McArthur for permission to use the musical interludes between dropped calls to Peter. Fionn recorded these lovely peedie musical bits for us a few years ago to use in a story app set in the Orkney West Mainland landscape. You can find out more about the Orkney Foklore Trail app on Orkneyology.com: https://www.orkneyology.com/orkney-folklore-trail.html

Fionn has many more talents other than music. His professionalwebsite for his photography and film work is here:https://www.startpointmedia.co.uk/about-us

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We have a visit on this full November frost moon from BBC presenter and author Sally Magnusson, who gives us a few readings from her writings, including her newest book The Shapeshifter's Daughter. Join Tom Muir and Sally Magnusson for a fascinating blether on the eve of the Stromness launch of her latest novel, set in Orkney. "Before she was a hideous monster, the Queen of the Underworld was simply Hel ..."

If you're inspired to do so, you can buy us a dram on Ko-fi, with our hearty thanks: https://ko-fi.com/orkneyology

Tonight, Tom and Sally have a talk about these things and much more:

• Sally's father, the "proudest Icelander"- Magnus Magnusson - journalist, translator of sagas, writer and television presenter
• About Sally's journalism work and being a presenter on Scottish TV since the 1980s
• Icelandic sagas and the Icelandic landscape
• Sagas as "extremely good historical fiction"
• Are small communities isolated, or are big cities isolated - who is more remote?
• The importance of knowing your kin
• The literature of Iceland: was it the adition of Celtic dna that brought it to flower?
• The tendency to romanticize the Viking era
• Viking women - strong and scary!
• The Flying Scotsman: The Eric Liddell Story - Sally's first biography
• Dreaming of Iceland - a personal account of the geography, history and legends of Iceland, written by Sally and her father
• Other books of fiction, non-fiction and children's books
• Marketing books and making choices about how to spend one's creative time
• Writing as a way to work out what we think about things
• Sally's mother's dementia
• Sally Magnusson's charity, Playlist for Life - music as positive therapy for dementia
• About inhabiting the characters you're creating
• Have we lost the more fleshed-out female characters from old Norse mythology?
• "When everything is lost to us, the stories in our heads allow us to continue."

Sally Magnusson's website: https://sallymagnusson.com/about/

Playlist for Life: https://www.playlistforlife.org.uk/

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