Stone Will Answer: A Journey Guided by Craft, Myth and Geology

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Beatrice has recently become a stone mason and after finding out about the myths of footprint stones - stones carved with foot prints on them, which are said to have magical properties to transport saints and kings - she decides to carve her own. The stone she divines is hers weighs 40 kilos. Once done, she then takes it from Orkney where it was found and carved, across the sea and on a 500 km pilgrim trail across Norway. Stone does answer, in its own irregular ways and through its unlikely combination of oppositions. It is both the purpose of travel as well as anchor. It is both weight and lightness, surface and depth, stillness and motion. It is sometimes said that stonemasons have a ‘feel’ for stone. This is something that comes from practice, hours spent working it into specific useful shapes. What is less well known is that this is a two-way street: the stone works on you. Searle has taken this relationship out into the wild, tested it in extreme conditions and come to know, unknow and re-learn her stone, which has forced similar processes upon herself. As she concludes, ‘I had thought it was an act of generosity to bring the stone; in the end it was our encounters with those on the path that revealed that I had been seeking and making real my own foundation myths’.

Stone is the most awkward of materials. As any stonemason will tell you, it is heavy and difficult to move but also fragile and easily chipped. It can be ubiquitous but often differs in quality within one postcode, within one quarry, within even one section of one quarry. It is the byword for longevity but if incorrectly chosen and placed weathering beyond useful capacity within short decades. It demands a polymath knowledge of everything from art and architecture to chemistry, geology, geometry and more, for those of us drawn to it. Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t for such reasons that the characters attracted to stone are as uncompromising and hard to define as it is — read Fred Bower’s Rolling Stonemason (1936) or Seamus Murphy’s Stone Mad (1949), two of the foundational works of literary stonemasonry, and you’ll see what I mean. In recent years this slender tradition of stonemasons writing about stone has experienced a quiet revival of sorts with my own King of Dust (2019) and Andrew Ziminski’s The Stonemason (2020) to which is now added Beatrice Searle’s extraordinary Stone Will Answer. She visits Orkney, chooses a stone, carves footprints on it and sets off for Trondheim in Norway dragging it behind her, inviting people she meets along the way on the ancient Gudbrandsdalen pilgrim path to stand in the footprints and experience what they will. Esme Young Interviewed by Sophie Ratcliffe Behind the Seams: My Life in Creativity, Friendship and Adventure SOLD OUT Weston Lecture Theatre 12:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event

I say that we are taking this stone to Trondheim. I continue to tell her the story of Magnus and ancient Kings. Searle is as much artist-adventurer as she is stonemason and it is the journey she undertakes from Orkney to Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, that forms the basis of the book. This is no ordinary journey, however, as not only does she walk (and travel by boat) but takes a forty-kilogram stone with her which she pulls upon a custom-built trolley. This is no ordinary stone either but a ‘stippled, leopard-surfaced lozenge’ of Orcadian siltstone, ‘beamy in the hips like a true Yole, Orkney’s traditional clinker-built fishing boat’. The analogy with boats runs deep throughout the book, for the stone itself, into which she cuts two footprint depressions, is itself a kind of boat, the Orkney Boat. Stone Will Answer is not only a brilliant contemplation of the spiritual and historical power of stone, but a riveting travelogue through Norway's wilderness. Fans of Raynor Winn, like myself, will love Searle's lengthy and challenging journey through a semi-isolated natural world.

A story of determination and soul-searching... Compellingly narrated, entertaining and thought-provoking... treat yourself to a copy of this book and enjoy the journey Natural Stone Specialist Fascinated with the mysterious footprint stones of the ancient world, Beatrice follows pathways forged by travellers, saints and kings in an astonishing feat of human endurance. Ruth Clarke and Annie McDermott Chaired by Polly Barton Translation Slam Oxford Martin School: Lecture Theatre 4:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this eventI loved the whole atmosphere of the Oxford Literary Festival. From breakfast, alongside some of the attendees, who were talking books with each other a mile a minute, to the public event at The Sheldonian where everyone was lively and engaged – I felt I had arrived in a kind of literary heaven. It may sound a bit unlikely, but it is a story everyone can relate to because it unfolds as a metaphor for life, in which the hardest journeys can be the most rewarding. It was a privilege for me to visit the festival to receive the Bodley Medal. As an incidental blessing I saw Oxford at its most mysterious and atmospheric. It was a day of piercing cold and as I walked through the twilight from the Sheldonian to Christ Church, the streets were empty and the whole city was shutting itself away. Christ Church was silent except for the footfall of unseen persons around corners and the sounds of evensong creeping from behind closed doors. For the first time I understood thoroughly the power of college ghost stories. At the age of twenty-six, stonemason and artist Beatrice Searle embarked on an expedition like no other. Pulling along a 40-kilo stone from the West coast of Orkney, she crossed the North sea and walked 500-miles on a mediaeval pilgrim path to Nidaros Cathedral in Norway.

Ian Bostridge Interviewed by Suzi Feay Song and Self: A Singer’s Reflections on Music and Performance Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 2:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event It is also a treatise on human relationships, to places and to other people; and the meaning these relationships will always hold in a person's life, even when severed. I cannot recommend this book enough, and encourage anyone with a love for art, nature, history, and philosophy to give it a read. Our servers are getting hit pretty hard right now. To continue shopping, enter the characters as they are shown How can a stone be a boat? The chance discovery in a book, given to her by a stonemasonry tutor, of ‘a monochrome photograph of a knobbly and scratched stone boulder, containing two carved footprints’ spurs her on to investigate the phenomena of ‘footprint stones’. These are typically associated with saints and kings. The one in the photograph was the one that St Magnus, the former Magnus Erlendsson, twelfth-century Earl of Orkney, reputedly sailed across the Pentland Firth, his footprints magically remaining on its surface. If surfing saints seem slightly more interesting and relatable than the ones traditionally associated with gruesome endings then you are in good company as they are too for Searle, who sets out to find it, uncovering a treasure trove of folklore, as well as connections between boats and stones, as she does so.

That, at least, was the theory. Shortly after disembarking in Bergen, Searle experienced the first of many episodes of self-doubt that would dog her journey. None of the passing tourists seemed remotely interested in her stone and suddenly she found herself standing alone in the pouring rain, wondering what on earth she was doing there. It was a dispiriting moment yet oddly, it was at this point that Searle’s story came alive. A stimulating and rewarding on-stage conversation; a lively informed and tolerant audience; privileged access to the great treasures of the Bodleian, and finally, wonderfully interesting dinner companions to help me conclude the best day I have enjoyed at any festival – anywhere.

Searle wanted to learn the “lessons” stone had to teach her but it’s the human spirit that emerges triumphant in this sparky blend of memoir and travelogue. There is the kindness of strangers she meets on the pilgrim path: fellow travellers who share food, mend trolley-wheels and add their footsteps to the Orkney Boat’s story. There is wisdom to be gleaned from the stories Searle tells about her fellow stonemasons: highly skilled craftspeople who repair and preserve the fabric of ancient buildings using techniques that have remained unchanged for 800 years. Tom Fletcher Interviewed by Peter Guttridge The Ambassador Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 12:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event Dennis Grube Why Governments Get It Wrong And How They Can Get It Right Weston Lecture Theatre 6:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this eventWriter, artist and stonemason Beatrice Searle and artist and designer Ellie Orrell reflect on their work and the transformative and healing power of art and craft. Adam Brookes Interviewed by Rana Mitter Fragile Cargo: China’s Wartime Race to Save the Treasures of the Forbidden City Lincoln College: Oakeshott Room 4:00pm Mon 27 Monday, 27 March 2023 See this event Some of this left me scratching my head. Yet Searle is an excellent storyteller and when she simply describes the highs and lows of her journey, her narrative sings.