The Welsh have always had an air of mystery about them. Perhaps it is their homeland, with its strange and varied landscapes: from rolling hills shrouded in mist, to craggy promontories hiding all manner of caverns and grottos, to its dark and forbidding moorlands. Or it could be their Gaelic tongue, with its hint of the ancient and the magical, full of unpronounceable words that sound like incantations to the netherworld. Legend and folklore have done their bit to add to this mystique, with stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, myths and tales of hauntings, and sightings of strange and bizarre events. The Welsh, by their own admission, live in “one of the most haunted countries in the world,” one that is “overflowing with mystery.”
Small wonder then, that Wales has its share of historical and archeological enigmas, to embellish this general reputation for the peculiar. While other parts of the world have their crop circles and their Stonehenges, Wales has its hillforts — strange man-made Bronze Age constructions that are as inexplicable in their design as in their density. A mere 150 square mile area in northern Wales, for example, has no less than 30 of these formations, whose size and shape continue to baffle present day archeologists. At first blush, they seem to be conventional fortifications, situated on hilltops to provide the advantage of higher ground against the enemy. But their size begs the question of how they would have been defended — and the type of crude weaponry available in those times equally raises the question of why they would have needed much defending in the first place. Perhaps these hillforts were settlements intended to provide clans and tribes with a secure place to live and store grain for parts of the year. Or perhaps their locations (vantage points over the valley) were emblematic of a power structure within those tribes and clans — the occupation of a hillfort being a status symbol in the hierarchy of those groups. Many of these Welsh hillforts are yet to be thoroughly excavated — so perhaps with more archeological activity over the next number of years, we may start to get some answers to these questions.
In the meantime (as we wait for these questions to be answered), it turns out that there is a considerable body of writing to keep us occupied, featuring Welsh mysteries of the fictional kind. Given Wales’ reputation for everything from the merely puzzling to the ghostly to the downright sinister, writers of historical mysteries have not lacked for enthusiasm in setting their thrillers in uniquely Welsh locales. Sharon Kay Penman‘s series on Welsh princes is set here, as are some of the stories in Ellis Peters’ Cadfael chronicles. Mary Stewart‘s series on Merlin and the Arthurian saga is, of course, set in Wales as well. Candace Robb‘s historical sleuth, Owen Archer, is a Welsh spy who plies his trade in medieval York. Sara Woodbury‘s medieval mysteries (featuring her protagonists, Gareth and Gwen) are set in northern Wales. In fact, the first book in the series, The Good Knight, is currently available free on Amazon.
So Wales, in short, has much to offer to those of us who congregate at the crossroads of history, mystery and writing. Given what a difference backdrop and atmosphere can make to mystery fiction, it’s not difficult to see how Welsh locales can add a touch of the creepy and the ominous to the historical page-turners we love to read. Check out some of the recommended readings in this post, and let us know what you think!