Leisure, Popular Culture and Memory: The Invention of Dark Age Britain, Wales, England, and Middle-earth in the songs of Led Zeppelin

In the period of high modernity, and in the process of establishing the imperial nation-state of Great Britain, historians, archaeologists and enthusiastic amateurs searched high and low for material evidence and primary sources from what was called the Dark Ages. There is a gap in knowledge about this past, and all discussion rests on finding meaning in fading inscriptions, or dark earth, or trusting completely the writings of Bede and Gildas. The search for an identity and history for the nation for Great Britain was based on nationalist beliefs about Englishness, Britishness or Welshness. In the twentieth-century, the problem of Englishness, place and myth led Tolkien to write his Middle-earth stories in his leisure time. At the same time, the problem of Welshness or Britishness saw a growth in interest – in film and books - in Arthurian traditions, and a tourist interest in the Celtic fringe of Britain. In this paper, I show how the songs and album covers of Led Zeppelin, and their film The Song Remains the Same, draw upon both the work of Tolkien and the Arthurian traditions to construct ideas of masculine belonging in some mythological medieval time and place. While this constriction is idiosyncratic to the artists, they are drawing on and justifying the wider problem of England, Wales and Britain in leisure and culture

Dendograms from a hierarchical cluster analysis of 17 fatty acids from northern fur seal blubber (a) and milk (b) samples.

<p>Red, green, and blue labels indicate animals categorized as on-, off-, or mixed-shelf foragers, respectively.</p

Location of northern fur seal rookeries where blood and scat samples were collected: Reef, Gorbatch, Morjovi and Vostochni rookeries on St. Paul Island and Bogoslof Island.

<p>The oceanographic domains in the Bering Sea are shown.</p

Predicted and actual proportion of hours (a) and dives (b) individual northern fur seals spent on the shelf with 95% CI (from generalized linear mixed model) for red blood cells & plasma).

<p>Red, green and blue lines indicate animals categorized as on-, off-, or in mixed-shelf foragers, respectively.</p

Percent frequency of occurrence (%FO > 5.0%) of prey taxa retrieved from northern fur seal fecal samples collected at rookeries from 2006–2008.

<p><i>n</i> indicates the number of samples that had identifiable prey remains. Bold numbers indicate prey taxa with %FO > 10.0%.</p><p>Percent frequency of occurrence (%FO > 5.0%) of prey taxa retrieved from northern fur seal fecal samples collected at rookeries from 2006–2008.</p

Percentage of hours and dives made on the continental shelf by northern fur seals characterized as having on-, mixed-, and off-shelf foraging strategies.

<p>Sample sizes include number of animals with location and dive data.</p><p>Percentage of hours and dives made on the continental shelf by northern fur seals characterized as having on-, mixed-, and off-shelf foraging strategies.</p

Mean (±SD) δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C values for plasma and red blood cell (RBC) tissues collected from adult female northern fur seals in 2006 and 2008.

<p>On-shelf foragers (ON) exclusively utilized < 200m depth and off-shelf foragers (OFF) traveled beyond the 200m isobaths to forage.</p

Individual δ¹⁵N and δ¹³C values for plasma and red blood cell tisues collected from adult female northern fur seals at Bogoslof and St. Paul Island rookeries during 2006 and 2008.

<p>On-shelf foragers (ON) exclusively utilized < 200m depth, off-shelf foragers (OFF) traveled beyond the 200m isobaths to forage and mixed-shelf foragers (MIX) made foraging trips to both on- and off-shelf habitat.</p