Wyndreth Berginsdottir’s Savage Daughter
Wyndreth Berginsdottir performing her iconic "Savage Daughter" outside the hall at Haire Affaire of the Heart. Recorded on March 28, 2009 using a Flip Video camcorder. Karen L U Kahan/Wyndreth Berginsdottir "My Mother's Savage Daughter" c. 1990 Karen L. Unrein (Kahan)
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Some of us here at Women of the Water have been singing this song around our kitchen tables and in circles of women online for the past year. It’s become a bit of an anthem at times swelling our hearts with inspiration to keep going forward with our ancestors in mind, for the freedom of all, and the wildness within. As many of us working with water are also song keepers (or aspiring to be!) we wanted to share the beauty of this raw performance and the singer’s message below which was posted to the video on line this fall.
You can download Wyndreth’s layered and textured studio version for $1 on bandcamp, or just go and make a donation to the artist.
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Hi, folks! Just stopped by and want to thank every one of you for your support and your kind words.
1) As most of my writing in the SCA is based upon viking age cultures and the style of recreated oral traditions, I do a lot of that, yes. <3 I study and work hard to represent what was lost to us.
2) THIS song, however, has a will and a meaning of its very own. In 1990, I woke up with the chorus in my head, and as soon as I found a pen, the rest of it poured out. The tune came the same day. It was clear to me that this was a song that wanted to be sung by anyone who found their own voice within it.
3) It is an anthem of empowerment--not a song meant to serve a specific blood or people or skin. If you find strength and power and your own voice in it, this is your song and i hope you sing it with the strength and rage and beauty and power that is within you--whoever you are. Women are not ever Less Than. We are the singers of storms, the fire made flesh, the inexorable power of the mountains, the kind warmth and the cutting lash of the wind. We are half of the world and we have been taught to speak softly and behave mildly because we are easier to control that way. ;) I am honored that daughters of The First Peoples find a voice here. And daughters of the Sea Wolves. And the daughters of great-grandmothers, grandmothers, and mothers, wherever they lived and and sang and died. All of you are their living legacies and they hear you singing; be assured they are proud of you. Whoever you are, you have a voice that cannot be silenced. Together, our voices cannot be unheard.
<3 <3 <3 Thank you. SING.
c. 10/30/2020; klukahan
Lyrics for Learning:
My Mother’s Savage Daughter
Chorus:
I am my mother's savage daughter,
the one who runs barefoot cursing sharp stones.
I am my mother's savage daughter,
I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice.
My mother's child is a savage,
She looks for her omens in the colors of stones,
In the faces of cats, in the fall of feathers,
In the dancing of fire and the curve of old bones.
(Chorus)
My mother's child dances in darkness,
And sings heathen songs by the light of the moon,
And watches the stars and renames the planets,
And dreams she can reach them with a song and a broom.
(Chorus)
My mother's child curses too loud and too often,
My mother's child laughs too hard and too long,
And howls at the moon and sleeps in ditches,
And clumsily raises her voice in this song.
(Chorus)
Now we all are brought forth out of darkness and water,
Brought into this world through blood and through pain,
And deep in our bones, the old songs are wakening,
So sing them with voices of thunder and rain.
(Chorus x3)
We are our mother's savage daughters,
The ones who run barefoot cursing sharp stones.
We are our mother's savage daughters,
We will not cut our hair, We will not lower our voice
My Mother's Savage Daughter words/music c.1990 k.l. u. kahan
