Joanna Nicholson

A chamber opera for soprano Clíona Cassidy, horn Andy Saunders, clarinet Joanna Nicholson, electronics Alistair MacDonald with projection art by Kirsty Anderson.

“This is not just one of the best shows at the Fringe this year—it’s one of the most original and affecting pieces of music-theatre in recent memory.”     Sinners Review

Made in Scotland showcase performances at the Edinburgh International Fringe 2025  - read the full reviews here.  

Aud the Deep Minded is a psychological drama imagining the inner world of a Christian Viking and conflicted yet brilliant leader in 9th century Scotland.  Inspired by fragments of unreliably documented history, and reframed in the present, this one act work explores Aud's transformatory journey from oppressed to oppressor to liberator.  

The history  The woman known as Aud the Deep Minded was a real person, documented in the Icelandic Sagas (and in the TV drama Vikings!), however different historical accounts conflict over the details of her life.  We can be fairly sure she was the daughter of Ketil Flatnose, a Norwegian military commander who oversaw areas we now know as the Scottish Western Isles and Orkneys on behalf of King Harald Fairhair, and that after her husband King Olaf the White of Dublin and her son Thorstein the Red were killed she commissioned a boat to be built in secret in the Caithness woods.  She then captained this boat to Iceland, crewed by members of her family and high ranking thralls.  On settling new territories in the west, she gave the thralls their freedom and parcels of land to farm, forming a community where she lived until her natural death as an old woman.   Aud was a Christian at a time when most Vikings were still worshipping pagan gods.  

The real Aud is so far back in time she’s blurred by storytelling, embellishment and omission, and I wondered, what if she were reincarnated, if perhaps she was a supernatural being present throughout time?  This is my imagining of her story, or what might be her story, and how she might tell it.

The plot  Scene 1:  Dublin, Ireland.   Aud has just learned that her husband Olaf the White, King of Dublin, is dead.  However, she is on her way to a night out.  She makes plans to seek protection for her son Thorstein by visiting her father, Ketil Flatnose, in Orkney.  

Scene 2:  A burial ground in the Caithness forest, Scotland.   Aud is talking to a corpse we at first think is her husband, then learn is her son Thorstein.  She makes an incantation in a strange form of Gaelic, then sings Christian funeral rites and a keening song that blends influences from Ireland and her Viking heritage.  She experiences a strange episode, which might be psychosis, or might reveal that she is in fact the Morrigan, a tripartite phantom queen and seer of Irish folklore, linked by the image of a crow or raven to her Norse roots.  In an intense surge of grief and revenge, she commands the thralls to build her boat.

Scene 3:  On the boat, towards Iceland, a storm at sea.  Aud prays, and comes to understand that she has become what she despises, an oppressor.  She appeals to God to help her transcend this state, and offers the thralls their freedom. “I liberate you, I liberate myself.”

Source material  The musical material is derived from two existing melodies which represent the ancient nature of the story, and its mix of cultures – the responsorium Media Vita (In the midst of life we are in death - click here for the text in Latin and English) attributed to the Benedictine monk Notker the Stammerer, and a Norwegian folk song. 

During early workshopping sessions, the performers struggled to pronounce the name ‘Aud’ – our instinctive English-speaker handling of the vowel became a source of distress to our Norwegian language coach, as we couldn’t get it in the right place on the palate.   And that’s just the Norwegian pronunciation, what about the Icelandic, and Gaelic (Irish and Scots versions), and wouldn’t it have been in Old Norse anyway…….?  I have used different ways of pronouncing Aud’s name to reflect on her multifaceted identity as an immigrant,  as well as her dual Christian and Viking religious and spiritual influences.  She speaks to us in English, to God in Latin, is possessed by her ancient, mystic self in a fantasy Gaelic, and swears in Norwegian.  

Her use of the assertion ‘I am’ has echoes in a range of religious and philospohical texts.

All of the electronic material is generated from live and recorded samples of the musicians – with the exception of the birdsong.

The three instruments – voice, horn and clarinet – represent Aud’s tripartite nature as the Morrigan.  In folklore, the Morrigan can be represented as three sisters, or as a beautiful young woman, an old crone and a crow.  She is a prophetess, queen, and seer.