THE CALL OF THE CORMORANT

Donald S. Murray

(Saraband, £9.99)

 

On a cold night in the early 20th Century, Karl Einarsson’s father, Magnus, reads Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth aloud to his young son Karl, his daughter Christianna and two local men. The unsophisticated fishermen are astounded by Verne’s descriptions of gigantic subterranean mushrooms, mastodons and plesiosaurs, believing it to be a genuine account of an expedition beneath the Earth’s surface. Karl and his father share a smug grin. “I remember smiling to myself ... aware for the first time how gullible and innocent people could be, how easily they could be tricked and fooled,” the grown-up Karl remembers. It was a lesson he took to heart, and one that wasn’t without consequences.

Donald S. Murray’s fictionalised biography of Karl Einarsson (1897—1972) shines some light on an obscure, idiosyncratic artist who adopted the surname Dunganon and whose nom de plumes included the Count of St Kilda, despite his never having set foot in Scotland. Born in Iceland, he grew up in the Faroese capital of Torshavn, raised on his autodidact father’s endless stream of stories and fanciful notions. In particular, Magnus Einarsson was obsessed with the theory that St Kilda was once the outer edge of Atlantis, whose survivors migrated from the doomed continent to populate the lands of the North Atlantic.

A talented artist and cruelly accurate mimic with a fertile imagination, Karl is not popular in Torshavn, where he’s considered, like his father, to be a little too pleased with his himself and his intellect. Knowing he doesn’t fit in, Karl wants to spread his wings and travel to places where he can find others on his wavelength. Murray contrasts Karl with his sister Christianna, who also feels the tug of the outside world, but, just as Karl is being sent away to school in the more populous and cosmopolitan Copenhagen, decides that staying where she is and exploring her inner world is the better path for her – a choice she has many years to mull over as she settles into a long, passionless marriage.

In Copenhagen, and then in 1930s Berlin, Karl puts his “Count of St Kilda” persona to good use (other aliases include King Cormorant XII of Atlantis, Carolus Africanus Dunganon and Professor Valentinus), using it to rub shoulders with landed gentry and running a succession of scams alongside his day job designing film posters. When the Nazis come to power, he tries to keep his head down and go with the flow, hoping his Danish passport will protect him. But however much he tries to ignore the Nazis, they don’t ignore him, and to his horror he is recruited to be the Faroese equivalent of Lord Haw-Haw, broadcasting propaganda to his old homeland. His father’s theories about Aryans being the descendants of the people of Atlantis, and all the homilies he’s endured about the innate decency of island folk, are twisted and weaponised for the Nazi cause.

As fascinated as he is by both Karl and his bumptious father – a powerful presence whose charisma and intellectual energy continue to drive the narrative long after his death – Murray himself takes more after the grounded Christianna, mindful of how cutting oneself from one’s roots can result in the loss of one’s bearings. But, as much as we can mock his delusions, his denial and his pretentions, such as devising an Atlantean language and proceeding to recite poetry in it to the bemusement of his listeners, this engagingly-written portrait of a fascinatingly odd individual ensures that he never quite loses our sympathy.

ALASTAIR MABBOTT