Cynthia Reeves’s The Last Whaler is a richly told novel that explores the power of storytelling.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
“A dramatic tale of survival at a frigid whaling station in 1937 Norway….This emotionally rich historical will keep readers turning the pages”
In her own words, here is Cynthia Reeves’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel The Last Whaler:
The Last Whaler alternates between two voices, those of the married couple Tor and Astrid Handeland. Each tells a story—Tor through his retrospective narration in which he seeks understanding and forgiveness, and Astrid through writing letters to her dead son, Birk, as a way to keep the boy alive. At first by chance and then by design, songs became embedded in The Last Whaler to counterpoint the couple’s more disquieting passages with uplifting or simply tranquil interludes. The songs are often “stories within stories” that augment the novel’s action. Songs undergird one of novel’s themes—the solace of storytelling. In part, the novel asks: How can stories help us understand ourselves and the world? Why do we sing even in our deepest grief?
I’ve organized my playlist roughly in the order in which the songs appear or influenced the writing:
“Summertime” by Billie Holiday
One of the novel’s undercurrents is the human striving to find equilibrium, a perfect balance between joy and sorrow, remembering and forgetting (as Tor wonders) “as if on the point of a pin.” I thought of “Summertime” as the encapsulation of that tension between hope and resilience on one hand, and the inevitability of loss and its attendant sorrow on the other. Billie Holiday’s sultry and poignant rendition is haunting, encompassing these conflicting emotions.
Early in the novel, Astrid becomes pregnant. She sings “Summertime” to the new life, promising the baby a happy future despite her experiencing the most traumatic of losses—her son’s death. She knows, in fact, that harm can come to a child even with Mamma and Pappa standin’ by. Nevertheless, she sustains the spark of hope. When Tor sings “Summertime” toward the novel’s end, the song recalls that early moment, but it takes on an entirely different air.
The joik
I knew little about the Saami until I visited Norway for the first time. By chance, I was in Oslo during a Saami craft fair and heard someone singing this joik. The fair demonstrated handicrafts unique to Saami culture—the komse and its good-luck braid, the leather-and-silver bracelets, the colorful costumes, and the traditional woolen blanket called grener in shades of gray, white, and black. These crafts all became part of the novel. But it was the a capella song that drew me in. The words meant nothing, but the clear, forthright singing gave me a sense of the Saami’s resilience.
Tor’s view of non-Western cultures evolves over the course of the novel. In the beginning, he looks down upon those who rely on myth and superstition—which is apparent in his first scene with the Saami woman Verá who chants this joik. By the end, he embraces the idea that all cultures not only deserve equal respect but can also teach us much about our capacity for belief in something beyond this mortal earth.
“Heave Away” by Nathan Carter
While writing The Last Whaler, I played on repeat an obscure CD called “Storms, Shipwrecks, and Sailcloth” by the Canadian musician Mike Pendergast. Pendergast’s music draws me to the age of sail, to windswept shores and the ache of longing. I discovered this CD over twenty years ago when my then twelve-year-old daughter, obsessed with Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, insisted we visit the fictional Avonlea on Prince Edward Island. Entertainment there included a concert of sea chanties performed by Pendergast. It was hard not to be drawn into the foot-stomping, hand-clapping happiness of his music. The joy of that family vacation and the exuberance of his performance are forever entwined in my mind.
Sea shanties were traditionally a way to pace the labor and relieve the tedium aboard ship. Of all the shanties, “Heave Away” is by far my favorite. The earliest versions of “Heave Away” date back to the 1850s, and like many of these songs, this one has no known original authorship. To locate the song more specifically in Norway and on Svalbard, I modified the lyrics that the whaling crew sings while trying out whale blubber as Tor and Astrid look on.
It wasn’t until the umpteenth playing of the song, however, that I understood, despite its upbeat melody, the lyrics reveal a betrayal—the sailor’s fiancée has left him for another while he is away at sea. As with “Summertime,” there’s an irony implicit in the contrast between the cheerful tune and the lyrics. A too-deep interpretation of this contrast might be that the sailor covers his heartbreak with a rollicking melody.
“Farewell to Tarwathie” by Noel McLoughlin
What is home? What provokes the longing called homesickness? McLouglin’s voice, combined with the song’s evocative flute, echoes that emotion. It’s one that the novel explores: Astrid wonders how she can ever feel her farm in southern Norway will ever be home again after her son’s death.
“The Cruel Ship’s Captain” by Dave Van Ronk
The sea ballad “The Cruel Ship’s Captain” is also part of the oral tradition of songs passed down through generations. It’s based on events that occurred in 1857 involving the murder of a ship’s apprentice and the subsequent hanging of the ship’s captain guilty of the murder. I wasn’t familiar with the song but found it through my research on sea songs as I was searching for lyrics that could be construed as threatening to Tor. It’s the last of the songs that the whaling crew sings as Tor and Astrid look on. Should Tor be worried? Astrid wonders. Van Ronk’s raspy rendition is edgy with that potential.
Swing Music/“In the Mood” by Glenn Miller
Growing up, I was surrounded by an eclectic mix of music, as this playlist reveals. My father earned his way through college playing trumpet in a swing band. Some of my fondest childhood memories are weekend afternoons when he taught me to dance the fox trot and the jitterbug and the waltz, guiding my feet on his. He had a five-LP set called “Hootenanny” that contained a wealth of classic 1930s and 40s tunes. The opening bars of Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” always bring me back to those days.
I was listening to swing music when I wrote the dance scene that follows the wedding of the Handelands’ friends Hilmar and Helfrid Nøis, the famous Norwegian hunter and his wife. They couldn’t be dancing to Miller’s famous tune, however, since it wasn’t released until 1938. But for nostalgia’s sake, I’ve included it here.
“Morning Has Broken” by Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens)
“Morning has broken” were the words I typed without thinking in the scene where Tor awakens on the fourth day of his journey. Of course, I immediately thought of Yusuf Islam’s version of “Morning Has Broken,” which was originally a Christian hymn written by Eleanor Farjeon in 1931. As a teenager of the 1970s, I was particularly drawn to the folk and soft rock of James Taylor and Cat Stevens (as he was then known), and their songs still bring me back to that time in my life.
The hymn’s lyrics are clearly meant as a thanksgiving for each day, but the song is also used in funeral services. That paradox always seemed strange to me. Was one supposed to celebrate the dawn after a loved one’s death? Of course, in Christian faiths, death isn’t an ending but a beginning, with a promise of salvation and eternal life. Tor wrestles with his faith, and especially with the notion that the dead live on. I like to think he was thinking of this as he wrote the words morning has broken on that morning of the fourth day.
“I know that my redeemer liveth” from Handel’s Messiah by the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Choir
The Messiah is the soundtrack of our family’s Christmas preparations, so it was natural for me to include it in the novel’s Christmas repertoire. This song plays a part in Tor’s journey back to a belief in God as he tries to reconcile himself to the losses he’s suffered. It’s fitting that this song is followed in the Messiah by the “Hallelujah” chorus—the joyful highlight of the oratorio.
“Santa Lucia” by Luciano Pavarotti (Italian) and “Svart senker natten seg” (Norwegian)
The Italian and Norwegian versions of “Santa Lucia” share the same melody, but the lyrics are very different. The Neapolitan song pays homage to the sea and the songwriter’s beloved Naples, while the Norwegian “Svart senker natten seg” is, like its Scandinavian cousins, a song meant to promise light during one of the darkest nights of the year. I grew up listening to Pavarotti, so naturally his was the rendition that I turned to when researching the Italian song.
Scandinavians celebrate Santa Lucia on December 13. Young girls wear crowns made of woven lingonberry branches festooned with candles and process singing this song. Tor and Astrid celebrate the night in the traditional way, culminating with my translated version of the Norwegian lyrics. Like the song, their happiness is tinged with melancholy because they are separated from their loved ones back home in southern Norway. Overlaying their celebration, too, is the persistent sadness of missing Birk, another holiday passing without him. As Tor observes recalling that night, “I can understand that such moments of pure joy are joyful because we have the sorrows to compare them to, just as, without darkness, we wouldn’t understand the light.”
“Silent Night” by Sinéad O’Connor
Stranded on Svalbard with Tor in the polar night and trying to forget what was once the joyful Christmas holidays with her son Birk, Astrid sings the opening verse of “Silent Night.” Her voice wavers on “holy infant so tender and mild”—unable to push thoughts of Birk away. Tor joins her in the chorus “sleep in heavenly peace,” which seems a comforting line. But Astrid suddenly realizes a different meaning: “How is it that the songs we’ve repeated for years suddenly seem to speak to us? It’s as if we mindlessly sing and recite until one day, we finally listen.”
There are many versions of this classic song, but Sinéad O’Connor’s rendition is the one that speaks most to the way I hear the song as Astrid sings it. Hers has the delicate quality of a mother singing a lullaby to her child, but also the haunting quality of a child “sleeping in heavenly peace.”
“Solveig’s Song” from Peer Gynt sung by Anna Netrebko
My Italian-American mother loved opera. I must confess, however, that I never appreciated opera until my daughter chose to study classical vocal performance, and I watched her master this difficult art. The turning point in understanding the beauty of opera came when I saw Renée Fleming as the dying Violetta sing “Gran Dio!…morir sì giovane” (“Great God!…to die so young”) in the final scene of La Traviata at the Met. Her singing, and the music itself, made my heart beat erratically, as if all of the grief I’d ever suffered welled up inside me.
Anna Netrebko’s rendition of “Solveig’s Song” conjures similar feelings. Her voice, Edvard Grieg’s music, and Ibsen’s lyrics combine to express our longing to see dead loved ones again. That idea weaves throughout the novel, explicitly revealed when Astrid recalls a line from this song: “Her skal jeg vente til du kommer igjen; og venter du hist oppe, vi træffes der, min sonn!” Roughly translated: “Here I will wait until we meet again in heaven, my son!”
Mozart’s Requiem—“Confutatis” by the Choir of King’s College, Cambridge
Ah, Mozart! The novel’s working title was Requiem for the Last Whaler. To reveal more about how this song—and indeed the whole Requiem—informed the story would give too much away. Suffice it to say that Mozart’s version of a Mass for the Dead literally chills. The music embodies the tension between the fear of damnation and the promise of eternal life.
A writer and poet for almost thirty years, Cynthia Reeves was honored with Miami University Press’ s novella prize, residencies at Hawthornden Castle, Vermont Studio Center, Galleri Svalbard, and the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition. She is the author of BADLANDS (2007).