12,000 years ago around the end of the last major ice age, the North Sea which now lies between Great Britain, Norway, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France was an area of land full of sloping hills and wooded valleys, inland streams, rivers and marshes with a coastline of beaches and lagoons, saltmarshes and mudflats. Connecting Britain to continental Europe by way of the Netherlands, the west coast of Germany and the Danish peninsula of Jutland with a watershed which stretched between East Anglia and the Hook of Holland, this area of land was one of the richest hunting, fowling and fishing grounds in Europe before it was flooded by rising sea levels around 6,500 BC.
Named after the Dutch fishing boats which once trawled the North Sea and the large sandbank which serves as a remnant of where the waters closed in, today the landmass is remembered as Doggerland, with modern fishing vessels gathering a steady stream of antler points, animal and Neanderthal skulls, flint flakes and other artefacts as archaeologists and climate scientists continue to search for signs which might illuminate the present.
Embarking on another epic adventure in the form of a year-long series of extended plays, this week Laura Cannell trawls the depths and traces the wispy contours of Doggerland, taking us beneath the sea and its lost layers of ice and with a big gasping breath giving voice to the uncanny and the unseen. Supporting her signature overbow violin and array of recorders with the octave violin and cello, for SEALORE she constructs the soundtrack to an imagined film, where a wild girl caught between two worlds whittles practice harpoons out of wood and deer antlers, a conceit which might sound coy or far-flung if it wasn’t for the profound resonances and transportive qualities of tracks like ‘Down and Down We Go’, ‘Wood Silt Water’ and ‘The Earth Under the Sea’.
