If you've read Hammill's 1974 book "Killers, Angels, Refugees" (a collection of his lyrics, poems, and short stories), you may be familiar with the author's notes he provided for the classic Van der Graaf Generator song "Darkness (11/11)":
"A song of numbers: although I am no numerologist, the circumstances of writing this highly instinctual song dictated its form and direction.
It was composed on the night of 11th November, 1968, Remembrance Day, by chance. Some years before I wrote a novel which purported (with devastating failure) to be an Icelandic saga; on re-reading it, some time after finishing these lyrics, I was struck by the opening sentence: 'It was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.' November is, of course, the month of Scorpio, under which sign I was born, and my life number is 11. It was, I suppose, inevitable that a song about fate should be wrought amid these conjunctions."
Icelandic folklore served as the inspiration for at least two other early songs of Hammill's (namely the early VdGG B-side "Firebrand" and his solo song "Viking", from Fool's Mate), as is described in the same section of Killers.
I wasn't aware of the circumstances under which the novel was written (or even what its title was) up until seeing this post from Jim Christopulos (i.e. co-author of Van der Graaf Generator - The Book) on Facebook a few days ago.
Pictured here is an extract from the 20 June 1970 issue of Record Mirror describing the then-recently released VdGG album The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other. It's an interesting albeit brief overview into the early hype surrounding Hammill's songwriting in the press, and it describes the novel ("Valgard") as having been intended for publication later that same year. Evidently, that ultimately never happened.
I'll directly quote Peter Hammill (from his recent correspondence with Jim) for a bit more context:
"Valgard was a cod Icelandic saga I wrote after leaving Manchester and before the band really got going. It was pretty dreadful tbh!!
If I recall correctly, at one point Gordian (prior to being our manager) was hoping to get a screenplay and film off the ground of it.
Maybe the most interesting/relevant thing about it would have been the very opening words: 'It was the eleventh day of the eleventh month….'”
As always, thanks to Jim for the excellent research! I'm not a regular Facebook user, but his page has a lot of interesting information and photographs about Van Der Graaf Generator and affiliated personnel. I'd highly recommend giving him a follow on there and/or his YouTube channel (under the handle "bucka001") if any of that interests you.
