The story of the legendary voyage of the Odin’s Raven, as written by one of the original crew members, has been recorded and released as an audio book in time for Tynwald Day.

George Kneale, who crewed the Odin’s Raven as it made its way from Norway to the Isle of Man to mark the 1979 millennium, originally wrote and recorded his memories of the voyage in Manx Gaelic and English and published them in the pages of Manx newspapers, before releasing them as a book for Manx speakers in the early 1980s.

After developing a fascination with George’s story of the journey, local designer and illustrator Alice Quayle has produced a new version of the story and rerecorded the passages in Manx and English.

The story is narrated by David Fisher and it provides an atmospheric and vivid account of the voyage and the months of training beforehand which saw 16 men, who answered an advert bearing the heading ’Does the Viking spirit lives on?’, crew the specially-built replica Viking ship and sail 1,500 miles across the North Sea.

’What really attracted me to George’s story in particular, when I first heard it, was that it was written as if you were sat talking to George in a pub,’ said Alice.

’His account basically reads as a thoroughly cracking yarn about a group of people, who didn’t really know what they were getting into, going for an adventure.

’It is amazing to hear about what they got up to, what dangers they faced and the reception they received when they went from island to island.

Alice broke the original story down into 24 individual chapters, which is heard first in Manx and then in English, and also added in archive radio footage and music, such as a Faroese song which children sang to the crew and a version of the Manx rowing song ’Gorree Chrovan’. The project has been nearly five years in the making for Alice, who has also created a range of imagery for the piece (inset).

The project has been backed by Culture Vannin and the Isle of Man Arts Council.