Forty years after the epic Odin’s Raven voyage from Norway to the Isle of Man, Julie Blackburn talks to Robin Bigland as he recalls meeting a king, training naked and discovering that the Viking spirit was still very much aliveâ?¦

We are going back to the late 70s as Tynwald’s millennium was approaching.

Robin, who had come to live in the island with his wife, Dandy, a few years earlier was surprised to discover that no major event had been planned to commemorate the occasion.

He says: ’The island was going to celebrate 1,000 years of its parliamentary history in 1979. This was quite something and I thought: "What would the Americans do with this? They’d have something terrific".’

Robin had a bit of a vested interest here. His own family came from Norway and he had grown up fascinated with the Vikings and the voyages they made to distant lands, including the Isle of Man.

He says: ’The fact that my own family had done that in the dim and distant past made me realise that here was a marvellous opportunity to recreate such an event which is what I decided to do.’

Then came an interesting conversation with Dandy as he announced one day: ’Well, the logical thing to do is to build a boat.’

She took it well, he recalls: ’She was a bit nonplussed but, being a very sporting lady, she said: "OK then - whatever".’

Having found a boat building firm in Norway capable to taking on the task of constructing a full size, 50ft by 11ft longship, Robin set about finding a crew. It was a process that nowadays might easily have been made into a reality TV show, as he explains.

’The original advert I put in said: "Does the Viking spirit still live?" and I got 483 replies!’

’We restricted it to people who were either Manx-born or from Norway or, in my case, living in the Isle of Man. They had to have a strong Manx connection,

’Out of all that lot we selected 25 and they trained and then, when it came to it, certain people were selected for their skills and the remainder had to draw lots.’

The final 16 who were chosen had to be fit to operate a not-very-manoeuvrable vessel that travelled well under sail in the right wind conditions but otherwise had to be rowed along.

Robin recalls: ’I was very lucky because a friend of mine was commodore of the special boat service (SBS). I got in touch with him and he said: "Oh lovely, yes - that’s straight up our street."’

He sent a experienced officer to the island to train the men.

Robin says: ’We were trained in what they call "water fitness", which was pretty arduous but did manage to raise our fitness levels very significantly.

’We had to do a lot of training while we were naked and the reason for that is quite simple, as the officer said to me: "You’ve got to live together, you’ve got to live in an open boat, all your bodily functions will have to be done in front of each other because there’s no choice, so we find that the best thing to very quickly people get over this is being naked."

’If you’re doing exercises and arduous stuff you don’t notice the fact that you’re naked, you just get on with the job but it cures people of shyness.’

One of the aspects of the training brought home to them the reality of making a journey of nearly 2,000 miles across the open sea.

Robin says: ’When we first started we swam across the Castletown harbour entrance in swimming trunks in November and it was very cold, obviously. There was a rubber dinghy alongside us and you got about halfway across, about four minutes into the water, when you realised that your muscles were beginning not to work and they pulled you out.

’That was because you had hypothermia and the core temperature drops so the body shuts down and reserves the inner core but the extremities are not served. Your limbs aren’t working. You can’t swim any more because you can’t move your arms and legs and you can’t do anything about it.

’But the water fitness training they did with us meant that we were able to endure that water for up to 12 minutes by the time we’d finished which made the possibility of getting rescued if we did fall overboard much greater.’

(As it turned out this came in very useful later in the trip but more of that later.)

None of the crew wore lifejackets on the voyage, they had only a compass to navigate by and a shortwave radio for communication and, in the interests of keeping it as authentic as possible, there was no support vessel.

For Robin, as the leader of the expedition, there was the ever-present worry that someone might get badly injured, or even killed.

He says: ’What would have happened was that, inevitably, the wiseacres and detractors would have said oh well it was a foolhardy thing to do. What was a triumph would have been a tragedy: the possibility of that happening was very much present and it would have been all too easy for it to happen.’

There was also the effect that taking off for five or six weeks on a risky venture might have on Dandy and their young family.

’Dandy was unquestionably very supportive but, as with everybody who’s left behind, they worry, of course they do, and it’s not something that you can take for granted.’

When the boat was completed they all set off for Norway to do some more training and get used to sailing her. They had run a competition among schoolchildren in the island to name the vessel and one of them had come up with the name Odin’s Raven.

They had planned the route they were to take, setting sail from Trondheim in Norway across a stretch of the North Sea to Shetland then on to Orkney and the Western Isles, then to Portree and home. If they left on May 28 they reckoned they would be arriving in Peel just in time for the millennial Tynwald Day.

But before they set sail they had one important appointment to keep. King Olaf of Norway had asked to see them.

Robin recalls: ’He had been a very keen sailor in his youth and he took a very keen interest [in our voyage].

’He couldn’t have been nicer. We had an audience at 11am and we stayed so long he gave us lunch.’

While they were there the king asked Robin if there was still a Norwegian consulate in the Isle of Man. When Robin told him there wasn’t, the king immediately offered him the job as consul, a role he accepted and carried out for many years.

Apart from having to shelter from a big storm shortly after they set off, the voyage went quite smoothly.

There was huge interest in what they were doing, especially among the schoolchildren, in the islands they were to visit and plans were made to greet them along the way, so they planned accordingly, as Robin explains: ’We sailed at night and then we very often had to hole up in a little creek or bay round the corner and the next morning we’d nip round for the official arrival at each place.’

And, as he points out, sailing at night was not as dangerous as it sounds.

’We were very far north and, at that time of the year, you don’t really get any night time, and it’s not so dark that you can’t have a good idea where you’re going and it’s not a problem per se as long as the weather’s good.’

The only major blip on the voyage occurred in Skye where they were being filmed for a documentary by the BBC who had hired a yacht to film them from.

Robin recalls: ’They wanted us to go out but the weather wasn’t particularly nice. We had the sail up a bit and suddenly a gust of wind hit us and she heeled.

’You couldn’t right her. We got a tow line from the yacht and towed her into Portree and then at 3am the fire brigade came down and popped her up. She was pumped out but a lot of stuff had been floated away and everyone was incredibly helpful. They went out in boats and picked up gear and so on and returned a fair bit to us.

’Local carpenters helped with the repair work and we got going again, sadder and wiser.’

On the final leg of the voyage after a ’fairly riotous last lap dinner’ in Portree, they set off on a lovely, calm day towards the Isle of Man. A number of other vessels had come from the island to meet them and sail in with them, including the frigate, HMS Mohawk.

Robin says: ’Dandy rang the police and said to them: "I’m going to meet my husband, where do you think would be the best place to park in Peel?"

’They said: "Don’t worry Mrs Bigland, it’ll be tea time, won’t it? There won’t be very many people".’

In fact, 23,000 turned out to greet Odin’s Raven and her crew, gathered on the quayside, the beach and the headland.

Robin recalls: ’The place was absolutely full. The Bishop and the Governor, Sir John Paul, were going to greet us and I’d brought back a piece of Trondheim cathedral, which had been standing in 979, to present to the Bishop.

’By some amazing circumstance it had survived the capsize and I was going up the beach with this piece of stone and the crowd just closed in. So this simple but moving ceremony was pretty much forgotten in the euphoria.’

For Robin the overwhelming feeling was one of relief at having brought his crew home safely.

Looking back now, he says: ’It was a very good experience in many ways and it taught me quite a lot about myself.’

And he adds with a smile: ’One of my godfathers is an admiral and I asked him: "How do you think I’d have done in the war?"

’He said: "You’d have done all right."’