Courtesy Department of Tourism & Leisure

Norse origins

“What is history if not the story that men tell? Here you can still hear their echoes between the stones. Listen, and walk where they walked.” Thus spoke Manannan, the mystical figure that personifies what is the Isle of Man, not human, not god, but the essence of the spirit of an island that has withstood the waves and the winds for millennia, in a powerful attempt to keep its culture alive, albeit ever-changing.

Neither Anglo-Saxons nor Romans left permanent traces between the meadows and cliffs, nor does any Norman element of English history inspire the story of Man. Manannan is a Celtic Magician-King, broad-shouldered and bearded in his human appearance, revered in pagan rituals.

In the 9th century, Manannan’s life was disturbed forever when the longboats arrived, carrying in their hulls the Norse warriors who laid claim to the Scottish Isles to create stepping stones between their Viking lands and the riches of Europe. The sons and daughters of Man fought the Norse with the sword – in vain. Then they brought them into their huts, married them and created a new spirit of Manannan. The Isle had been changed by the winds from afar, but it had not been blown away, nor has it sunk in the Viking storm.

The Vikings created a parliament, Tynwald, modeled after the oldest such place in the world – the Icelandic Althing. Tynwald is said to be the oldest continuous parliament in the world today, and even if for years “elected” office was practically hereditary, it impresses with its millennium-old rituals; its mix of British governmental splendor of robes and wigs paired with the modesty of a people used to decide affairs of state on a grassy knoll in the drizzling rain.

After 400 years, the Viking kings departed to make way for the English, but the Norse stayed forever. They live on in a people who have Nordic blood in their veins and Nordic genes in their blood, an English system of governance symbolized by a Viking parliament, a queen as Lord of Man and a vigorously independent constitution, a broad political and economic connection to Great Britain and a deep Nordic sense of self-reliance. They survived the centuries in constant search for independence, although as a small island in an ever-growing, integrating, outreaching world, their independence depended on the ways in which they understood to engage without being absorbed.

After the Norse kings, the Stanleys, an English noble family, became Lords of Man. Manannan could have become the spirit of a kingdom then, had the Lords of Man not preferred to be “great lords rather than petty kings.”

The Isle of Man began its offshore activities in the 18th century, when Manx traders – or smugglers, as the British saw it – imported goods from overseas to reload them onto smaller vessels for shipment to England and Scotland – duty-free, of course. Westminster, the British parliament, did not take kindly to this erosion of its tax base and bought the Isle of Man. Manannan – if a Manannan still existed in this modern world – became British.

The Isle of Man continued to live through the storms of the times. No longer did the winds bring longboats from afar; now the island was involved in the revolutions and intrigues of British politics.

Manannan still tried to leave an imprint by setting milestones into history’s path. In 1880, Manx women were the first to obtain the right to vote in national elections (in local elections, New Zealand beat the Isle to the record).

Aware of its past and confident of its future, the island sought – and obtained – gradually more independence from London. Today, Tynwald passes all laws, often observing British example but not bound to follow London on any matter. The Manx flag with its three-legged symbol that indicates that “whichever way you may throw it, it will stand” flies on hundreds of international ships. Satellites will soon be launched under the Isle’s patronage, and the Manx have passed the British in average income for the first time.

Having weathered, through adaptation and absorption of those who came with the winds, the early storms of a world that no longer recognized the sanctity of the boundaries of islands, the Manx are uniquely well prepared to thrive in the winds of change of our times. They adapt what new is good, they adopt what is necessary to prosper, and they allow themselves to mix with those who come from afar, not to give up their identity, but to benefit from what they need yet lack at home. If history is a guide, the island will stand tall through the storms to come.