Ohhhh, I have such wonderful Norse God and Viking-related book goodness going on this week! For those just tuning in, this week I have spent much time revisiting my Valli-the-Viking history with glorious books from assorted female authors. On Monday I jumped into the amazing book Runemarks from Joanne Harris and also a robust Book-Jumper Summer Reading: A Norse God and Viking Booklist!
Now it’s time to delve into another family favorite 
The Sea of Trolls is the first volume of a fantasy trilogy by three-time Newbery Honors winning author, Nancy Farmer.
Jack was eleven when the Berserkers loomed out of the fog and nabbed him. “It seems that things are stirring across the water,” the Bard had warned. “Ships are being built, swords are being forged.”
“Is that bad?” Jack had asked, for his Saxon village had never before seen Berserkers.
“Of course. People don’t make ships and swords unless they intend to use them.”
The year is A.D. 793. In the next months, Jack and his little sister, Lucy, are enslaved by Olaf One-Brow and his fierce young shipmate, Thorgil. With a crow named Bold Heart for mysterious company, they are swept up into an adventure-quest in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings.
Award-winner Nancy Farmer has never told a richer, funnier tale, nor offered more timeless encouragement to young seekers than “Just say no to pillaging.”-Amazon
My View:
My family is made up of hearty Swedish Americans who come from solid Viking stock. We have always been fascinated by Viking lore and love studying and learning about the Vikings.
Reading The Sea of Trolls left us wanting to become Skalds, which is just another name for bard….which (in case you were wondering!) was a professional poet employed by a patron, such as a monarch or nobleman, to commemorate the patron’s ancestors and to praise the patron’s own activities. In a nutshell, we wanted to tell our stories through song and poems, learn to be one with nature, and who wouldn’t want to include a dragon or two?
Even though this book does deal with thought-provoking subject matter such as death, slavery, pillaging and magic. There are not gross or morbid details. This story wonderfully weaves the interactions of three very different cultures. It does so with a seamless blend of history, humor, and suspense.
In The Seas of Trolls the main character Jack is thrilled when the Bard takes notice of him. It’s a highly sought after opportunity to be the old man’s apprentice and learn the magic that this particular Bard possesses. But Jack’s life is suddenly thrown into chaos when a nightmare sends the Bard into insanity and a band a Berserkers attacks his village. Jack is captured along with his beloved sister Lucy. Jack knows he is now at the mercy of Olaf One-Brow.
This fantasy has such a rich texture and weaves history (Viking Berserkers, and the destruction of the Holy Isle) with legends (Jotunheim, trolls, Norse gods and Yggdrasil), and never makes you leave your belief that it could have happened just like this. The Bard has wonderful insight into nature and happiness which alone is worth reading this book. Jack himself also evolves wonderfully throughout the story and turns from an ordinary farm boy into a sensitive, intelligent bard.
Something To Do
Many times throughout the story Jack would play a game called “Wolf and Sheep” with Thorgil or others that they were spending time with. This is a very old Viking game originating in Iceland. It can be found throughout Scandinavia but also in England,Scotland, and Ireland.
Playing boards are either made out of clay,or cloth. We made a salt dough version which is fun and easy.
Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup salt
1 cup cold water
In a large bowl, mix the salt and flour together. Add the 1/2 cup of water and stir until you have a dough. You might need to get your hands in there to complete making it into a round ball.
To make the board: Place a little flour on a cutting board. Take 2/3 rds of the dough and roll it out into a circle a 1/2 inch thick. With a marble or glass stone make marks in the dough for the game board. Three circles across and 7 circles down. For the horizontal rows do the same thing intersecting with the vertical lines.
Heat oven 200 degrees Fahrenheit. Place on parchment paper in the oven for two hours or until the dough is hard.
Any leftover dough place in plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to be used later.
The Game:
- First we need to decide who will be the sheep and who will be the ram. The one whose first name is closest to the letter Z is the one who gets to pick which they would like to be Sheep or Wolf.
- The Sheep person always goes first. They move one step at a time. They can move forward,diagonally forward or sideways but never backwards.
-
The wolf can go in any direction. If there is an empty hole in any direction around the lamb the wolf may skip over the lamb and take that playing piece off of the board. If the wolf can skip over many sheep in the same move it may do so, removing the lamb pieces off of the board.
-
The lambs win by encircling the wolf so that he cannot move anywhere to take away the sheep pieces.
-
The wolf wins if he has taken away all of the sheep pieces, or if he can get to one of the holes in the bottom row.
ONE MORE THING! Don’t forget to enter Jump Into a Book’s GIVEAWAY of Joanne Harris’ Runemark Trilogy series that includes:
- Runemarks
- Runelight
- The Gospel of Loki
****
End of Summer Audrey Press Book Sale!!
Summer is slowly winding down and thoughts are turning to the upcoming school year and reads that will take us into (and through) the colder months ahead. Instead of being sad to see summer go, I choose to Celebrate! And what better way to do it than with an End of Summer Audrey Press Book Sale. For two weeks only readers can get a great deal on two of my most popular books. But don’t delay; this super special sale ends August 14, 2015.!
First up The Waldorf Homeschool Handbook: The Simple Step-by-Step guide to creating a Waldorf-inspired #homeschool. And for a limited time, this best-selling book by Donna Ashton, The Waldorf #Homeschool Handbook is now only $17.95 until August 14th, 2015 ! http://amzn.to/1OhTfoT
Enjoy more month-by-month activities based on the classic children’s tale, The Secret Garden! A Year in the Secret Garden is a delightful children’s book with over 120 pages, with 150 original color illustrations and 48 activities for your family and friends to enjoy, learn, discover and play with together. AND, it’s on sale until August 14th ! Grab your copy ASAP and “meet me in the garden!” http://amzn.to/1DTVnuX
Two great children’s books-Your choice, $17.95 each!
The post Book-Jumper Summer Reading Series: Sea of Trolls Book Review appeared first on Jump Into A Book.
We’re continuing on our Book-Jumper Summer Reading series path with Norse God/Viking Week here on Jump into a Book!
I feel as if I know Joanne. She is with us everywhere we go. We simply can’t leave home without one of her books. I’ve enjoyed her adult fiction for years and only read her in the summer while on vacation. She is my little treat to myself. My son loves her Runemark series and we have either one or two of those books with us whenever we travel. They are big books and quite heavy. Last year I said, “I put them on the Kindle, we’ll read them from there.” After the first chapter, Wonder Son said, “It’s not the same. I need to see the book…” and he refused to listen any further. This year as he went off to see family in various countries, he had his little suitcase of Joanne Harris with him. All three books this time.
So in honor of our friend Joann Harris, the friend we’ve never met, we are dedicating this weeks give away to her
Runemark trilogy. We are giving away
Runemark, Runelight, and
The Gospel of Loki to one lucky winner. There’s part of me that wants to donate a little suitcase to go along with because you will be transporting these books everywhere with you. But alas, it’s just the books we are giving away this week.
Also for your reading pleasure I’ve created this Norse God/ Viking middle age reading booklist. Through the year’s we’ve found some great series that fill this need of ours to live with Norse Gods while being Vikings.
Norse God/Viking Middle Grade Fiction Booklist
Joanne Harris Runemark Trilogy
Seven o’clock on a Monday morning, five hundred years after the end of the world, and goblins had been at the cellar again. . . . Not that anyone would admit it was goblins. In Maddy Smith’s world, order rules. Chaos, old gods, fairies, goblins, magic, glamours–all of these were supposedly vanquished centuries ago. But Maddy knows that a small bit of magic has survived. The “ruinmark” she was born with on her palm proves it–and makes the other villagers fearful that she is a witch (though helpful in dealing with the goblins-in-the-cellar problem). But the mysterious traveler One-Eye sees Maddy’s mark not as a defect, but as a destiny. And Maddy will need every scrap of forbidden magic One-Eye can teach her if she is to survive that destiny.
The squabbling Norse gods and goddesses of Runemarks are back! And there’s a feisty new heroine on the scene: Maggie, a girl the same age as Maddy but brought up a world apart – literally, in World’s End, the focus of the Order in which Maddy was raised. Now the Order is destroyed, Chaos is filling the vacuum left behind… and is breaching the everyday world.
This novel is a brilliant first-person narrative of the rise and fall of the Norse gods—retold from the point of view of the world’s ultimate trickster, Loki. A #1 bestseller in the UK, The Gospel of Loki tells the story of Loki’s recruitment from the underworld of Chaos, his many exploits on behalf of his one-eyed master, Odin, through to his eventual betrayal of the gods and the fall of Asgard itself.
K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr Blackwell Pages Trilogy
“The runes have spoken. We have our champion…Matthew Thorsen.”
Matt hears the words, but he can’t believe them. He’s Thor’s representative? Destined to fight trolls, monstrous wolves and giant serpents…or the world ends? He’s only thirteen.While Matt knew he was a modern-day descendent of Thor, he’s always lived a normal kid’s life. In fact, most people in the small town of Blackwell, South Dakota, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt’s classmates Fen and Laurie Brekke. No big deal.
When thirteen-year-old Matt Thorsen and Fen and Laurie Brekke, modern-day descendants of Thor and Loki, discovered they were fated to take the places of the Norse Gods in a battle against the apocalypse, they thought they knew how things would play out. Gather the other descendants, defeat a giant serpent, and save the world. No problem, right? Wrong. The descendants’ journey grinds to a halt when their friend Baldwin is poisoned and Matt, Fen, and Laurie must travel to the Underworld in hopes of saving him. From there, they’ll have to reunite…
Thirteen-year-olds Matt, Laurie, and Fen have beaten near-impossible odds to assemble their fellow descendants of the Norse Gods and complete epic quests. Their biggest challenge lies ahead: battling the fierce monsters working to bring about the apocalypse. But when they learn that Matt must fight the Midgard Serpent alone and Fen and Laurie are pulled in other directions, the friends realize they can’t take every step of this journey together.
An award -winning exceptionally great series by Nancy Farmer-The Sea of Trolls trilogy
The year is A.D. 793. In the next months, Jack and his little sister, Lucy, are enslaved by Olaf One-Brow and his fierce young shipmate, Thorgil. With a crow named Bold Heart for mysterious company, they are swept up into an adventure-quest in the spirit of The Lord of the Rings.
The fields of Jack’s home village are devastated, the winter ahead looks bleak, and a monster—a draugr—has invaded the forest outside of town. But in the hands of bestselling author Nancy Farmer, the direst of prospects becomes any reader’s reward. Soon, Jack, Thorgil, and the Bard are off on a quest to right the wrong of a death caused by Father Severus. Their destination is Notland, realm of the fin folk, though they will face plenty of challenges and enemies before get they get there. Impeccably researched and blending the lore of Christian, Pagan, and Norse traditions, this expertly woven tale is beguilingly suspenseful and, ultimately, a testament to love.
“Like the druidic life force Jack taps, this hearty adventure, as personal as it is epic, will cradle readers in the ‘hollow of its hand’ (Booklist, starred review). Jack has caused an earthquake. He was trying to save his sister Lucy from being thrown down a well, but sometimes the magic doesn’t quite work out. Not only does Jack demolish a monastery, but Lucy is carried off by the Lady of the Lake, and Jack has to follow her through the Hollow Road, which lies underground.
****
**some of these links are affiliate links
****
GIVEAWAY TIME! One lucky winner will score Joanne Harris’ Runemark Trilogy series that includes:
- Runemark
- Runelight
- The Gospel of Loki
Giveaway begins August 5, 2015 and ends August 13, 2015
- Prizing & samples courtesy of Authors of the above books
- Giveaway open to US addresses only
- ONE lucky winner will win one copy of each of the above books.
- Residents of USA only please.
- Must be 18 years or older to enter
- One entry per household.
- Staff and family members of Audrey Press are not eligible.
- Grand Prize winner has 48 hours to claim prize
- Winner will be chosen via Rafflecopter on August 14th
a Rafflecopter giveaway
End of Summer Audrey Press Book Sale!!
Summer is slowly winding down and thoughts are turning to the upcoming school year and reads that will take us into (and through) the colder months ahead. Instead of being sad to see summer go, I choose to Celebrate! And what better way to do it than with an End of Summer Audrey Press Book Sale. For two weeks only readers can get a great deal on two of my most popular books. But don’t delay; this super special sale ends August 14, 2015!
First up The Waldorf Homeschool Handbook: The Simple Step-by-Step guide to creating a Waldorf-inspired #homeschool. And for a limited time, this best-selling book by Donna Ashton, The Waldorf #Homeschool Handbook is now only $17.95 until August 14th, 2015 ! http://amzn.to/1OhTfoT
Enjoy more month-by-month activities based on the classic children’s tale, The Secret Garden! A Year in the Secret Garden is a delightful children’s book with over 120 pages, with 150 original color illustrations and 48 activities for your family and friends to enjoy, learn, discover and play with together. AND, it’s on sale until August 14th ! Grab your copy ASAP and “meet me in the garden!” http://amzn.to/1DTVnuX
Two great children’s books-Your choice, $17.95 each!
The post Book-Jumper Summer Reading: A Norse God and Viking Booklist! appeared first on Jump Into A Book.
