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The viking image has changed dramatically over the centuries, romanticized in the 18th and 19 century, they are now alternatively portrayed as savage and violent heathens or adventurous explorers. Stereotypes and clichés are rampant in popular culture and vikings and their influence appear to various extents, from Wagner's Ring Cycle to the comic Hägar the Horrible, and J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings to Marvel's Thor. But what is actually true? Eleanor Barraclough lifts the lid on ten common viking myths.
This November Asa Maria Bradley releases the first in her exciting new Viking Warriors series, Viking Warrior Rising! To celebrate, Asa’s here to play a game of Marry, Kiss, Kill with three names we provided. For this round we gave her Captain Jack Sparrow, Han Solo, Tony Stark.
All of these three splendid specimens of the male species will offer great adventures. Pirate adventure? Space adventure? Modern day tech adventure? Those are hard choices. If I’m pressed for an answer, I’ll say yes to taking Tony Stark to the altar. Since I’m a physicist and a romance writer, I think we’ll have a lot in common when it comes to science and technology. (Plus, have you seen his biceps and his bank account? )
I’ve had a crush on Han Solo since I saw the original Star War movies. I was too young to see them when they first came out, but mom and dad finally allowed me access when I was 12. We’ll be smooching for a long, long time because I have a lot of pre-teen fantasies to make up for. Don’t worry, they’re all very innocent.
That leaves Captain Sparrow to kill, but I’m pretty sure he’ll survive all of my attempts. The British has tried just about everything to take his life and he always comes back to laugh another day.
An Excerpt:
Leif strode toward her, stopping a few paces away, concern on his face. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she croaked. The air between them crackled, making the hairs on her arms stand up. Was she the only one feeling this?
He took a step closer and cupped her cheek in his palm. “Are you sure? You look a little pale.”
She resisted the urge to rest her head in his hand. “No, I’m fine.” She took a step back.
He frowned.
“We found one more bug in the game room.” Her voice sounded rough.
“Ulf told me.” He stepped toward her, eyes blazing.
“We’re working on the computers tomorrow,” she whispered, taking another step back. He crowded her. His body heat confused her, making her want impossible things. She cleared her throat. “It shouldn’t take us long to improve your firewall and install a few security checks.”
Leif watched her silently.
“You want to sit down?” She gestured toward the arm chairs.
“Sure,” he said, but didn’t move.
Naya had to step around him. Her skin sizzled when her arm accidently brushed against his. Relieved, she sank down in one of the blue chairs. A small table created a barrier between her and Leif. “So,” she said. “You were going to explain what makes you different from regular humans.”
He sat down in the empty chair, elbows on knees, studying his clasped hands. After a few moments he tilted his head and looked at her. “I’ll try to answer all of your questions, but some of this may sound a little crazy.”
“I’ll keep an open mind.”
Leif’s eyes met hers. Whatever he saw in them seemed to satisfy him. “I died in 1050.” He paused, watching her reaction.
Naya kept her gasp from escaping and instead nodded encouragingly.
“In the Norse culture, warriors who die in battle or die a heroic violent death are sent to live with the gods in Asgard. The men spend their time training in Valhalla with Odin. The women are schooled by Freya.”
Naya’s mind reeled. What he described didn’t seem possible, but he was so sincere. Obviously he believed his story to be true. “I thought there were only male warriors in the Nordic tradition.”
“Most stories are based on the old Icelandic sagas. They describe Valkyries as leading the men to Valhalla.”
“And that’s not the way it is?”
Leif smiled. “The sagas were all written by men long after the Viking age ended. They didn’t know what happened in Freya’s meadow and took some poetic license.”
“So, typically male, instead of just saying ‘I don’t know,’ you make up shit instead.”
He smiled, his dimples stealing her breath. Again.
She looked away. “So, this place where the gods live, this is the Nordic heaven?”
“Not exactly. It’s the warriors’ reward for dying an honorable death. They are allowed to live on, to fight again.” He studied his hands. “I don’t remember much of Valhalla. Time flows differently there. All my memories run together as if they happened the same week.”
She looked up to find him watching her. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to follow what you’re saying. But—”
“It is a little crazy?” He smiled.
“A little.” A lot.
“Is it any crazier than being abducted and kept in a camp? Any crazier than enhancement injections?”
“Touché.”
Title: Viking Warrior Rising
Author: Asa Maria Bradley
Series: Viking Warriors, #1
Pubdate: October 6th, 2015
ISBN: 9781492601968
Immortal Vikings are among us
Leif Skarsganger and his elite band of immortal warriors have been charged to protect humanity from the evil Norse god Loki.
Under attack from Loki’s minions, Leif is shocked to encounter a dark-haired beauty who fights like a warrior herself. Wounded and feverish, the Viking kisses her, inadvertently triggering an ancient Norse bond. But when Naya Brisbane breaks away and disappears before the bond is completed, Leif’s warrior spirit goes berserk. If Leif doesn’t find her fast, he’s going to lose himself to permanent battle fury.
But Naya doesn’t want to be found…and he’ll do anything to find her. Because they’re both running out of time.
Asa Maria Bradley grew up in Sweden surrounded by archaeology and history steeped in Norse mythology, which inspired the immortal Viking and Valkyries in the Viking Warriors series. She came to the U.S. as a high school exchange student and liked it so much she never returned home. Asa holds an MFA in creative writing and an MS in Medical Physics. She lives on a lake deep in the pine forests of the Pacific Northwest with her British husband and a rescue dog of indeterminate breed. Visit her at www.AsaMariaBradley.com.
The famous marauders, explorers, traders, and colonists who transformed northern Europe between AD 750 and 1100 continue to hold our fascination. The Vikings are the subject of major new museum exhibitions now circulating in Europe and a popular dramatic television series airing on The History Channel.
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.
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.
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**some of these links are affiliate links
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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
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!
‘Keep still, wriggly little eel,’ I whispered angrily. ‘If the men see us, we’ll both be beaten.’
This quietened him, for he knew about beatings, and I settled to watch the members of the folk moot with a feeling of great bitterness in my heart.I was old enough to attend the meetings, to join their war talk, but there was no place for me.With my useless leg, they would never send me into the forest to kill my first wolf.They would never think of me as a man.
Many nights I dreamed I was searching for the wolf, only to wake sweating, shouting, and filled with sick fear.The creatures often hunted in packs, it would be dangerous work, but I longed for my chance to prove my worth.Boys of my age had slain the wolf; they sat by right at the meeting place and pitied me. Their pity did not upset me much, for it was kindly meant, but some like Oswold, uncle Heolstor’s son, threw stones at me and shouted insults that made me burn with anger.
At my birth, my kinsfolk saw my useless leg and voted to leave me on the hillside for the wild beasts to eat, but Father would not let them tear me from my mother’s arms.He followed the teachings of the good Saint Cuthbert, knowing it wrong to kill a helpless child, and I was thinking it was a blessing to have such a father, when a sudden shout made me jump.
‘Godwin, what use is your folk moot?’It was Heolstor, his face like thunder. Spitting angry words, he threatened my father with the ash spear. ‘There’s no king’s man to attend the meeting,’ he shouted, ‘there’s no one with the right to hold the spear, to judge what should be done!’ My father growled, wrenching the spear from his brother’s hand.An anxious cry went up, for only the king’s high reeve held the ash spear to decide right from wrong.Then clenching the spear in his fist, as tough as the hammers he used to beat the glowing iron on his anvil, my father gave so threatening a look that the men placed their weapons on the ground, squatting in the sand to listen to him speak.
0 Comments on O is of Oswold as of 4/17/2015 12:05:00 PM
Lindisfarne, an island off the coast of Northumberland, is also known as Holy Island, and it is where part of my children's book First Wolf is set...
from the book blurb:
It was Toland's twelfth year of life when his father hurled the wolf's head at the mighty Eorl Uhtred, bringing his childhood to a violent end. These were dangerous times, with people driven from their settlements, tribal wars, and bands of robbers on the roads, but Toland must keep his solemn promised to save the Lindisfarne Gospels from the Vikings, protect his family and find his father. With is faithful hound Bodo, he sets off on his quest through Anglo-Sazon Northumbria and his many adventures lead him into the fortress of Bamburgh, to the mysterious hermit on Inner Farne, the mystery of the stolen jewels, a blood debt, and a terrible discovery at the White Church...
Afraid to return to the road, I set off through the sand hills, but it was difficult with my feet sinking deep in the wind-swept dunes.Weary, and my leg aching, I was glad to reach the damp, hard-packed sand of the bay and see the island of Lindisfarne at last.
The crossing place was a long narrow road made from a pile of rocks, with stakes driven deep to show the way. Thinking I might soon be safe, I hurried towards it. It didn’t seem far, and I limped as fast as I could, but with growing alarm realised the tide was moving swift in silent ripples towards me. It was coming from many directions, each dark sheet of water criss-crossing another, creeping around my feet. I backed away, but the advancing tide surrounded me, rising above my ankles and filling my boots.
The speed of the water was frightening. It was already up to my waist, and I fought to escape its powerful tugging. I turned and found I was far out in the bay and visible from the road. I started to wade back towards the dunes as fast as I could, but the sea slowed me down, and I hadn’t gone far when I heard a shout.
A small group of horses had stopped on the road. One rider was galloping across the beach towards me, clumps of sand flying from his mount’s hooves. The sucking tide was almost up to my shoulders. Men were shouting and pointing in my direction. A rider urged his horse chest high into the water, but before he could reach me, a wave knocked me off my feet and carried me out to sea.
I let out a cry of fear, salt water slopped into my mouth, and powerful currents took me further down the coast. The sea soaked my woollen cloak and wrapped it around me. I thrashed about, desperate to find sand under my feet, but I was out of my depth and sinking. I kicked hard with my one good leg, fighting to keep my head above water. I’m a strong swimmer, but not strong enough to fight the weight of my wet clothes and the power of the tide. It was carrying me further along the coast. I struggled to free myself from my cloak, but my brooch pin bent, it wouldn’t open.
The light in the Orkneys is so clear, so bright, so lucid, it feels like you are on top of the world looking though thin clouds into heaven.
It doesn’t even feel part of the UK: when you sail off the edge of Scotland by the Scrabster to Stromness ferry, you feel you are departing the real world to land in a magical realm.
Nowhere else on earth can you go to a place and see eight thousand years of continuous history in such a tiny space.
Skara Brae is what remains of a neolithic village, older than Stonehenge and the pyramids, kept secret underground until uncovered by a severe storm in 1850. You can walk in and sit down, look around at the stone walls, stone beds, stone cupboards, dressers, seats, and storage boxes. Recognizably human people lived here, seeing this same landscape and coast, feeling the same wind on their faces that you do, their eyes resting on the doors, hearths and toilets (one in each dwelling).
This is ‘stone age’ but talking about such ages is a misnomer in the Orkneys where they had no appreciable bronze age nor iron age so proceeded from the non-use of one metal to the non-use of another in what is now the best preserved neolithic site in Europe.
The Orkneys have been so fascinating for so long that even the vandalism needs to be preserved. In Maeshowe burial mound you can see where Viking tourists who came to the monument, already ancient by their time, wrote graffiti about their girlfriends on the walls. They wrote in Norse runes.
The Orkney islands were the headquarters of the Viking invasion fleets, and to this day the Orkneys are the only place in the world besides Norway where the Norwegian national day is celebrated.
The islands are filled with Tolkeinesque place names like the Ring of Brodgar, the Brough of Birsay, the Standing Stones of Stenness. Sagas were born here, like that of the peaceable 12th century Earl of Orkney, treacherously assassinated and now known as St Magnus, after whom the cathedral is named.
Sagas were created here in living memory. This is where the British home fleet was at anchor and the German fleet still lies. The battle fleet of the German Imperial Navy transferred in its entirety to Scapa Flow in 1919 to await a decision on its future. The German sailors could not bring themselves to give up their ships; they opened the seacocks and scuttled them all. At low tide you can still see the rusting hulks of Wilhelmine ambitions to dominate Europe.
If the Orkneys sound bleak and rocky, that would be the wrong impression to leave. They have rich and fertile farming land with green plains rolling on under a pearl sky. People tell folk tales around the peat fires, drinking ginger-flavoured whiskey; an orange cat pads around the grain heaps in the Highland Park distillery, and the islands shimmer under the ‘simmer dim’ of nightless summer days. I should be there now.
Saxo, who lived in the latter part of the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, was probably a canon of Lund Cathedral (then Danish). He was secretary to Archbishop Abslon, who encouraged his gifted protégé to write a history of his own country to emulate those of other nations, such as Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Absalon was able to supply him with a large amount of material for the last few of the 16 books, since, as a warrior archbishop, he had taken a leading part in the Danish campaigns against the Wends of North Germany.
The work is a prosimetrum: in the prose text of six of the first nine books he inserts poems, some quite substantial. The poetry, he tells us, are meant to put into metrical Latin verse some of the narratives he had found in old Danish (and probably Icelandic) heroic poetry, such as the courageous last stand of Biarki and Hialti defending their lord after a Swedish ambush on the royal palace. He begins his work with the ancient myths and legends. Only in Book Nine does he start to introduce recognizable historical figures, after which he proceeds through the lives and activities of Viking kings, like Cnut the Great, ending in 1185 with the earlier exploits of Cnut Valdemarson.
Iconographie de l’historien danois Saxo Grammaticus par le dessinateur et peintre Louis Moe. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.
As the first major Danish historiographer, Saxo’s work is a valuable fund of material, even though, like many other medieval historians, his accuracy can be variable, sometimes to the extent of invented episodes. Nevertheless, he is the only source available for the period in places. Needless to say, he favours the Danes against neighbouring nations like the Swedes and Germans (we read a great deal about the treachery of the Holy Roman emperors), and he is keen to trace the rise and spread of Christianity in Scandinavia.
The Gesta Danorum is also the first outstanding work of Danish literature. Although his general style is elegant and complex, he is a consummate story-teller, and when he gets his teeth into a good yarn, he can relate it in a swift and lively manner. These narratives range from heroic tales like those told of the tough old warrior Starkath (who loathes German sausages), to the tender love stories in Book Seven, and the early books are full of dragons, witches, wizards, and tales of the supernatural, including one about a vampire. He often displays a wry sense of humour, as in the story about a drunkard who persistently defies the king’s edict forbidding the brewing and consumption of beer. One of Saxo’s claims to literary importance is his inclusion of the first-known version of the Hamlet story. The fortunes of his Amleth foreshadow those of Shakespeare’s hero in surprising detail.
Whatever his merits as a historian, and they are many, Saxo always provides a good read, and generations of Danish children have been entertained by his tales at their mother’s knee.
I love this series, and I can’t figure out why. It is violent and depressing, peopled with unlikeable characters. These guys are unrepentant killers. They cheerfully engage in murder and thievery, and most lack even the barest sense of honor. I hate Askeladd, and was really hoping Thorkell would bash his head in with his mighty axe, but no! The evil, self-serving marauder did not meet his end in the third volume of Vinland Saga.
This volume was over 400 pages of non-stop action. My wrist is sore from the rapid page turning, and this massive book was literally glued to my hands. Vinland Saga is one of the most exciting graphic novels that I’ve ever read, and the art is stunning in its brutality. Fans of Berserk really need to read this, because the two series have a lot in common. Tortured hero who lives by the blade. Check. Violent characters who don’t hesitate to make a deadly show of force. Check. One horrific bloodbath after another. Check! And worked into all of the glorious violence is the political wrangling for control of the Danish throne. Which brings me to the only character I really like – young Prince Canute, who has been sent to war by his father King Sweyn, in hopes that he’ll be killed in battle. Like I said, there aren’t a lot of people to look up to in the series. Everyone is out for their own gain, which makes everything they do suspect, even question a father’s love for his son.
The action gets thick and heavy when Thorkell discovers that Askeladd’s men are lying low in a small village after killing all of the inhabitants, save for the one woman who barely escaped with her life. Suddenly the chase is on. Can Thorkell catch Askeladd and reclaim the weak Canute for himself? Askeladd’s men grow more desperate as the terrifying Thorkell and his men march ever closer to their position. Askeladd’s men mutter darkly among themselves; Askeladd’s luck has turned, maybe it’s time to look to a new leader. Oh, dear! Will Askeladd keep control of his men, through the respect he’s earned with the blade of his sword? Or will they turn on him like a pack of dogs? More power to them, I wanted to yell. Take that bastard down! Not that any of the other warriors are much better, but wow! Askeladd has done some horrible things in just three volumes! Indiscriminate slaughter being just one of them. These guys do like to kill, and they don’t care who gets caught on the end of their blade.
Thorfinn and Thorkell have a fierce battle. The winner gets Askeladd. Do you think Thorfinn is going to let an opportunity like that go by? No freaking way! Who cares that Thorkell is a giant, towering over his much smaller opponent. What a great battle! The art really shone here, with convincing movement and incredibly emotional facial expressions. I’ll say it again – the illustrations are fantastic, driving the story forward at a frantic pace, catching your attention and refusing to let it go, or to give your poor eyes a break. Weapons clash, blood spills, body parts fly off the pages. It is so mind-numbingly intense!
While the battles were exhilarating, my favorite part of this volume was Canute. He finally found his voice. He found his resolve, and he found his power, and boy, oh, boy, his father had better watch out. From a quiet, weak boy, to a proud, determined leader, all in the span of a few chapters. Yes! I want to know what kind of man he becomes, to see if he, too, is shaped into a cold, heartless leader like all of the men around him.
I enjoyed Vinland Saga Volume 3 so much that when I finished, I hopped onto Amazon to see when the next volume comes out. Guess what! It’s already out! And at $5.49 for the Kindle, it is MINE!
Grade: A
Review copy provided by my local library
From Amazon:
A BLOODY COMING OF AGE In a gambit to become the power behind the Danish and English thrones, Askeladd has taken the prince, Canute, and plunged deep into a winter storm behind enemy lines. Canute’s father, King Sweyn, gives him up for dead in his haste to suppress English resistance. But Askeladd’s small band can’t outrun the tenacious maniac Thorkell forever, and when the warriors finally clash, a storm of sweat and gore ensues that will turn a boy into a man and a hostage into a ruler of men!
I have been interested in Vinland Saga since the license was announced for US publication. When it came out, however, I balked at the sticker price. $19.99 per volume! Instead, I requested the first two books from the library, and once I received them, I understood the price point. These are hardcovers, and they are 2 in 1 omnibus releases, clocking in at over 450 pages. After sitting down with the first volume, I find the price completely reasonable; the end product is beautiful, the pages are nice, thick paper, and the binding is rock solid. The translation rocks, too! All in all, Vinland Saga Book One is worth every penny!
This series will appeal to fans of Berserk, A Bride’s Story, and Claymore. The art is lush and breathtaking, with a realistic style. The actions panels are incredibly rendered, and all of the action, bloodshed, and flying body parts are easy to follow. Every single illustration is highly detailed from the ships to the weapons, and if you like knowing exactly what the characters are feeling, you’re in good hands here. Every nuanced emotion is clearly conveyed, from Thorfinn’s fierce determination to Thors’ reluctant reservation to put his people at risk in battle.
On the surface, Vinland Saga is an action tale about Vikings. It’s also the story of a man’s love for his family, and the ruin it brings him, and the rage burning in a young boy’s heart. After his father is murdered, Thorfinn vows vengeance for his death, and his every action from that moment is to make himself stronger so he can claim his revenge. This is A Game of Thrones set on the cold seas, in little boats that are skillfully navigated from one battle to the next. The politics are brutal, the sakes are high, and dying a warrior’s death, on the field of battle, bathed in the blood of your enemies, is the name of the game.
Book one sets the groundwork for Thorfinn’s quest for revenge. He’s six when he witnesses the treachery of men without honor, and it changes him forever. Raised by a kind and just man, he learns that his father was a Jomsviking deserter. Thorfinn enjoyed a carefree childhood, but after he learns the truth about his father, he wants nothing more than to be a fierce warrior, too. Little does he know that he will get his wish, only with consequences far greater than he could have ever anticipated. When we first meet him, he is surly and belligerent. He is also a killing machine, who fearlessly leaps (literally) into battle with his twin blades flying. He must earn his duels with Askeladd, the man responsible for his father’s death, by completing missions during the Viking clan’s frays.
I loved this book, and I’m excited to discover new manga series because of it. I haven’t been reading many graphic novels lately because I am burned out on the episodic publishing schedule (especially when I am invested in a series and it gets CANCELED!), but this series is presented in a nicely sized chunk so that didn’t bother me so much. Now I want to start catching up on some the series that I have allowed myself to fall behind in, and I can hardly wait to read more Vinland Saga!
Grade: A
Review copy provided by my local library
From Amazon:
The Viking invasion of London has reached a fever pitch, and Askeladd and Thorfinn rush to take part in the carnage! Their goal is the capture of Cnut, the son of King Sweyn Forkbeard and heir to the throne of Scandanavia and the Danelaw. But standing in their way is Thorkell, one of the Viking world’s most daring warriors. The defeat of a living legend will be a formidable test of Askeladd’s cunning and Thorfinn’s ruthlessness, and of their ability to set aside personal grudges and fell a common enemy!
The men crowded round the old man, snatching at the straws in his hand. It was hard to see what was happening. Then a gasp went up, the men fell silent, and I knew a man was chosen.
Those standing around the elder moved away and settled on the ground, and I went cold with fear, for my father was alone beside the cross with a wisp of straw between his large fingers and thumb.
‘I would rather fight beside you to the death than ride to Bamburgh,’ my father said, his voice loud and clear, ‘but you see I cannot, for I hold the short straw. I know you will defend the settlement with your lives, but there is little time before Uhtred returns. First the women and children must be sent to safety in the forest.’
‘There’s no safety in the forest,’ the carpenter sneered. ‘The wolves and bears–’
‘Bears? There are no bears left in the forest as well you know, carpenter. Better for the women and children to take a chance with wolves than face Uhtred’s mercenaries,’ my father exclaimed.
‘Godwin, it’s not for you to decide these things. You will be safe in Bamburgh,’ the carpenter mocked. ‘Let those who must stand at the gates decide what is right! I say we choose Heolstor for tythingman. He has the ash spear, let him decide.’
The men shouted so loudly it was impossible to hear what they said until the weaver, red-faced with anger, jumped to his feet and tore the ash spear from Heolstor’s hand.
‘Godwin is right!’ he yelled, poking Heolstor’s belly with the tip of the weapon. ‘Uhtred will be at our gates and we are fools, fighting over who shall be tythingman when our families are in great danger!’ Then throwing the spear to the ground, he picked up his double-edged axe, ran across the yard, and called to his wife to collect food and clothing and run with the children to the forest.
This seemed to decide things for the others, and one by one, they gathered up their weapons and followed him, though some were arguing still. My father strode towards our house, and I lurched forward on my good leg, pulling Rinan after me.
‘Let go, let go!’ he shouted and tried to punch me, and I was spinning him round by his cloak when Father heard us, called angrily for us to stop our fighting, and waited until we caught up with him.
6 Comments on First Wolf - Friday Book Excerpt, last added: 9/15/2013
I noticed a common feature in the comics I was reading this week, a feature that made them all compelling as stories: the role of the underdog pitted against overwhelming odds. Seeing the psychological reactions of the characters was an important part of the ride, but excellent artwork, particularly in executing fight scenes, left me more than impressed with each one. HELHEIM #1 (out March 6th), TRIGGER GIRL 6 (out March 13th), and SLEDGE-HAMMER 44 (out March 13th) strike a fluid balance between characterization and action, always a kind of brass ring for comics creation, though sometimes a little difficult for readers to come by.
[Spoilers for HELHEIM #1, TRIGGER GIRL #6, and SLEDGE-HAMMER 44 #1 below]
[HELHEIM #1]
HELHEIM, from Oni Press, kicks off a new series, and so has a great deal of storytelling to accomplish in a single issue. It does this with axes, axes, and more axes. Though it’s true there are plenty of axes, there’s also a lot more to HELHEIM, a tale “of the North” featuring what I’ll assume from the title are Vikings. Joelle Jones (FABLES) illustrates the issue, and her style is not only eye-catching but moody. Her characters in profile resemble figures from Viking-age artifacts but also have an angularity to their movement that really establishes the world of HELHEIM. I mentioned fight-scenes. These are equally unique and captivating. Though pseudo-medieval fight scenes are common enough in comics to keep you from really paying attention to the detail of their rendering, Jones breaks down that familiarity through unique panel layouts, occasionally rounded to depict landscape or full-page with overlaid panels to create emphasis. If she impresses with her Vikings, she’s even more at home with her artwork conjuring the undead, which sets up the forthcoming themes of the series well. There’s a kind of epic weight to some of her panels that simply stays with you, a sign of excellent art.
[HELHEIM #1]
Writer Cullen Bunn keeps up the pace of the story with driving action, and combines many of the tropes from medieval sagas without slowing things down. He establishes the role of kin relationships straight off the bat as central hero Rikard tries to save his wounded son, but ultimately has to leave the corpse behind, and then engages with both his father and other relatives at their timber fort under siege. Family relationships make for good drama, particularly in 580 AD. This forms a large part of the psychology of Rikard in his role as protector, but also as father and son. But it’s the supernatural elements Bunn includes that I particularly applaud, from Rikard seeing a vision of his own bleeding ghost predicting his imminent death (this happens in Irish Sagas of the period, and perhaps Viking too), to the rising corpses of his recently slain grotesque foes pursuing him. These are some of the elements that make Viking sagas great in their own right, including blue-faced undead who haunt houses and pound on the roof, calling the cowering inhabitants by name. Bunn brings the most evocative moments of Viking tales to new life, but isn’t afraid to introduce his own developments, like the series premise set up in #1, that Rikard can be resurrected by witchcraft to act as a vengeful Franken-Viking. If the rest of the series shows such careful consideration as this issue, the combination of powerful artwork and strong storytelling will be well worth the read.
[TRIGGER GIRL 6]
TRIGGER GIRL 6, the compilation volume of the series that appeared in the too soon cancelled magazine CREATOR OWNED HEROES, but thankfully presented as a whole by Image, already took fans by storm in 2012, but seeing the series in one unit was entirely worth the wait. Phil Noto’sartwork on the series is simply dazzling, from sleek line-work to color themes. Noto has the uncanny ability to present moments of stillness in the midst of action that creates a sense of vertigo for the reader. Since about two thirds of the story-line involves clone Trigger Girl 6’s attempt to assassinate the president of the USA, hang on tight. The plot calls for handling animals in a majestic, impressive role and Noto proves up to the challenge, too, making you wonder if there’s anything that’s not his forte when it comes to comic art. The pastel hues of the early stages of the story also merge into ethereal jungle settings within any jarring sense of transition. From near-future technology to talking animals, Noto knows the score.
[TRIGGER GIRL 6]
Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray bring us a story in TRIGGER GIRL 6 that defies you to doubt its central truths. In an included interview, the collected volume expresses Palmiotti and Gray’s concern about big corporations, and the increasingly “overpopulation and greed” in modern society that gives weight to the whole TRIGGER GIRL concept. It’s not just a beautifully drawn assassin story (though that would probably be enough to sell the book), but it’s also a commentary on social conscience. The character of Trigger Girl 6 also develops and expands for the reader, drawing us into her psychology. While TG 6 is silent and therefore mysterious in the early stages of the story, after her escape from government interrogation, Palmiotti and Gray also include inner monologue text boxes that emphasize her own internal questions and search for identity. Though this is often a common feature of sci-fi clone stories, it’s always compelling when it’s handled well, and Palmiotti and Gray manage to convey a great deal about her personality in such a brief story arc. What’s most impressive about the story, though, is that the writers bring out their big themes in what’s effectively a single-issue finale as TG 6 discovers the biological haven where she was born and the scientifically enabled talking animals who have created her. It’s a wild idea, but it doesn’t feel forced in the least, and engages with a long history of social commentary and sci-fi literature that reflects on human behavior and finds it lacking. To say the story has heart would be an understatement; it has compassion and concern. The fact that Palmiotti and Gray feel that they can reach comics readers with such a weighty message elevates the medium in all the right ways.
[SLEDGE-HAMMER 44]
SLEDGE-HAMMER 44 #1, from Dark Horse, introduces a character from Mike Mignolaand John Arcudi who has his own mysterious origins and motivations. Like a lot of intriguing Dark Horse comics set in the HELLBOY universe, WWII and the Nazi legacy feature, but this story focuses on the role of fighting men and establishes a skillful balance between the fantastic and the historically grounded. Jason Latour’s artwork has a lot to do with the success of this balance. His blend of stylized linework with military detail suggests 1940’s comic art dealing with war, and the fairly unusual (from Dark Horse) sepia and muted tones of Dave Stewart’s color palette set the comic apart as something a little different. It hints that the war, and its own epic aspects, are as important as the heroic figure that the comic introduces: Sledge-Hammer. But for steam-punk and technology fans, there’s also plenty to love in Latour’s artwork. Mike Mignola’s cover art set up the design of Sledge-Hammer’s mechanoid appearance in his characteristic wood-block imprint style, but Latour also brings a sense of the human to Sledgehammer’s anatomy and appearance, from the first panel where he’s introduced, looming large in his army jacket, to his explosive one-man operation fight scenes where he takes a beating from a Nazi robot. The comic has got atmosphere in spades thanks to the artistic team work involved.
[SLEDGE-HAMMER 44]
Mignola and Arcudi also craft a story with universal appeal through grounding the reader in the perspective of soldiers watching the mysterious Sledge-Hammer operation in action, as well as through giving Sledge-Hammer a speaking role even this early in the story-line. He may be a being of few words, but urging the soldiers to leave him behind and save themselves sets Sledge-Hammer up as a classic heroic being, capable of miscalculation (he seems not to have seen the Nazi robot coming), but also of personal sacrifice. It’s also a wise move that Mignola and Arcudi don’t give too much away about Sledge-Hammer’s mentality, leaving the reader to make assumptions and hang on for the next installment to learn more about whether this metal soldier has any other human characteristics, and what exactly motivates his driven actions against the Nazis. It’s a comic staged for a grand entrance of a unique character, and all the better for picking out the details of wartime experience in Europe through secondary characters. Like many projects that Mignola works on, the storytelling feels decompressed to allow the images to tell their own tale, often with only a few panels per page. The comic calls for more dialogue, actually, than many of Mignola’s works, to create a sense of experiencing conflict on the ground during WWII. The story feels particularly unencumbered by having to fit into any specific moment in a wider mythology, and for that reason it has an overpowering sense of being something new, brisk, and somewhat unpredictable. If you read issue #1, it’ll be almost impossible not to follow SLEDGE-HAMMER into its second issue whether due to its lavish homage artwork or its fresh storytelling, but most likely a combination thereof.
[SLEDGE-HAMMER 44]
These three comics display a strikingly high standard for comic artwork, really setting their artists loose to develop an aesthetic appropriate to the worlds they’re creating. It helps that the reader is following central characters into conflict and watching them battle it out against the odds within their own stories. This gives action scenes even more of an edge and also leads the reader deeper into the psychological layers of the storytelling involved. All three comics celebrate the role of the hero, taking traditional elements and redefining them according to the personal vision of their respective creative teams. HELHEIM #1, TRIGGER GIRL 6, and SLEDGE-HAMMER 44 #1 prove that you don’t have to choose between spectacular art or strong storytelling in comics: you can actually find them both in one package if you’re lucky.
Title: HELHEIM #1/Publisher: Oni Press/Creative Team: Cullen Bunn, Writer, Joelle Jones, Illustration, Nick Filardi, Colors, Ed Brisson, Letters
Title: TRIGGER GIRL 6/Publisher: Image Comics/Creative Team: Jimmy Palimiotti, Justin Gray, Writers, Phil Noto, Artwork, Bill Tortolini, Letters, Design
Title: SLEDGE HAMMER 44 #1/Publisher: Dark Horse Comics/ Creative Team: Mike Mignola, John Arcudi, Writers, Jason Latour, Artwork, Dave Stewart, Colors, Clem Robins, Letters
Hannah Means-Shannon writes and blogs about comics for TRIP CITY and Sequart.org and is currently working on books about Neil Gaiman and Alan Moore for Sequart. She is @hannahmenzies on Twitter and hannahmenziesblog on WordPress.
0 Comments on REVIEW: When the Going Gets Tough in HELHEIM #1, TRIGGER GIRL 6, SLEDGE-HAMMER 44 as of 3/15/2013 4:49:00 PM
“My instinct is to absolutely recoil when talking about writing in a mechanistic way,” says screenwriter and producer Michael Hirst. With a bunch of film credits under his belt, along with the award-winning series The Tudors, Hirst talks to Mediabistro for the latest installment of So What Do You Do? Though he writes for a different medium than most of you GalleyCat readers, his advice for research and crafting characters is useful for any writer.
“The key for me with historical characters is they’re interesting because they’re human beings,” he said. “A little bit of Hemingway goes a long way here, but journalists and writers should honestly look at their material and have a real interest, a real passion in what they want to write, and they should also have a lot of knowledge, as well. You don’t write police procedural stuff unless you really know that beat, but it’s ultimately not the procedure that makes the show work — it’s the people. The more real they are, the better.”
Last time I was writing my monthly gleanings in anticipation of the New Year. January 1 came and went, but good memories of many things remain. I would like to begin this set with saying how pleased and touched I was by our correspondents’ appreciation of my work, by their words of encouragement, and by their promise to go on reading the blog in the future. Writing weekly posts is a great pleasure. Knowing that one’s voice is not lost in the wilderness doubles and trebles this pleasure.
Week and Vikings.
After this introduction it is only natural to begin the first gleanings of 2013 with the noun week. Quite some time ago, I devoted a special post to it. Later the root of week turned up in the post on the origin of the word Viking, and it was Viking that made our correspondent return to week. My ideas on the etymology of week are not original. In the older Germanic languages, this noun did not mean “a succession of seven days.” The notion of such a unit goes back to the Romans and ultimately to the Jewish calendar. The Latin look-alike of Gothic wiko, Old Engl. wicu, and so forth was a feminine noun, whose nominative, if it existed, must have had the form vix. Since the phrase for “in the order of his course” (Luke I: 8) appears in Latin as in ordine vicis suae and in Gothic as in wikon kunjis seinis, some people (the great Icelandic scholar Guðbrandur Vigfússon among them) made the wrong conclusion that the Germanic word was borrowed from Latin. In English, the root of vix can be seen in vicar (an Anglo-French word derived from Latin vicarius “substitute, deputy”), vicarious, vicissitude, vice (as in Vice President), and others, while week is native. Its distant origin is disputed and need not delay us here. Rather probably, German Wechsel (from wehsal) “exchange” belongs here. Among the old cognates of week we find Old Icelandic vika, which also had the sense “sea mile,” and this is where Viking may come in. “Change, succession, recurrent period” and “sea mile” suggest that the oldest Vikings (in the beginning, far from being sea robbers and invaders) were called after “shift, a change of oarsmen.” But many other hypotheses pretend to explain the origin of Viking, and a few of them are not entirely implausible.
The present perfect.
More recently, while discussing suppletive forms, I mentioned in passing that the difference between tenses can become blurred and that for some people did you put the butter in the refrigerator? and haveyou put the butter in therefrigerator? mean practically the same. This remark inspired two predictable comments. The vagaries of the present perfect also turned up in one of my recent posts and also caused a ripple of excitement, especially among the native speakers of Swedish. As with week and Viking, I’ll repeat here only my basic explanation. In Germanic, the perfect tenses developed in the full light of history, and in British English a good deal seems to have changed since the days of Shakespeare, that is, the time when the first Europeans settled in the New World. To put it in a nutshell, there was much less of the present perfect in the sixteenth and the seventeenth century than in the nineteenth. In the use of this tense English, wherever it is spoken, went its own way. For instance, one can say in Icelandic (I’ll provide a verbatim translation): “We spent a delightful summer together in 1918, and at that time we have seen so many interesting places together!” The perfect foregrounds the event and makes it part of the present. In English, the present perfect cannot be used so. Only a vague reference to the days gone by will tolerate the present perfect, as in: “This has happened more than once in the past and is sure to happen again.” Therefore, I was surprised to see Cuthbert Bede (alias Edward Bradley) write in The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green: “Who knows? for dons are also mortals, and have been undergraduates once” (the beginning of Chapter 4). In my opinion, have been and once do not go together. If I am wrong, please correct me.
However, in my next pronouncement I am certainly right. British English has regularized the use of the present perfect: “I have just seen him,” “I have never read Fielding,” and so on. I mentioned in my original post that, when foreigners are taught the difference between the simple past (the so-called past indefinite) and the present perfect, they are usually shown a picture of a weeping or frightened child looking at the fragments on the floor and complaining to a grownup: “I have broken a plate!” American speakers are not bound by this usage: “I just saw him. He left,” “I never read Fielding and know no one who did,” while a child would cry: “Mother, I broke a plate!” A British mother may be really cross with the miscreant, whereas an American one may be mad at the child, but their reaction has nothing to do with grammar. Our British correspondent says that he makes a clear distinction between did you and have youput thebutter in the refrigerator, while his American wife does not and prefers did you. This is exactly what could be expected. My British colleague, who has not changed his accent the tiniest bit after decades of living in Minneapolis and being married to an American, must have unconsciously modified his usage. I have been preoccupied with the perfect for years, and once, when we were discussing these things, he said, with reference to the present perfect, that during his recent stay in England, his interlocutor remarked drily: “You have lived in America too long.”
Blessedly cursed? Tamara and Demon. Ill to Lermontov’s poem by Mikhail Vrubel’, 1890. (Tretiakov gallery.) Demon and Tamara are the protagonists in the poem by Mikhail Lermontov (1814-1841). The poem is famous in Russia; there is an opera on its plot; several translations into English, including one by Anatoly Liberman, exist; and Vrubel’ was obsessed by this work.
Suppletive girls and wives.
In discussing suppletive forms (go/went, be/am/is/are, and others), I wrote that, although we have pairs like actor/actress and lion/lioness, we are not surprised that boy and girl are not derived from the same root. I should have used a more cautious formulation. First, I was asked about man and woman. Yes, it is true that woman goes back to wif-man, but, in Old English, man meant “person,” while “male” was the result of later specialization, just as in Middle High German man had the senses “man, warrior, vassal,” and “lover.” Wifman meant “female person.” The situation is more complicated with boys and girls. Romance speakers will immediately remember (as did our correspondent, a native speaker of Portuguese) Italian fanciullo (masculine) ~ fanciulla (feminine) and the like. In Latin, such pairs also existed (puellus and puella). But I don’t think that fanciulla and puella were formed fromfunciullo and puellus: they are rather parallel forms. But I am grateful for being reminded of such pairs; they certainly share the same root.
Lewis Carroll’s name.
I think the information provided by Stephen Goranson is sufficient to conclude that the Dodgson family pronounced their family name as Dodson, and this confirms my limited experience with the people called Dodgson and Hodgson.
PS. At my recent talk show on Minnesota Public Radio, which was devoted to overused words, I received a long list of nouns, adjectives, and verbs that our listeners hate. I will discuss them and answer more questions next Wednesday. But one question has been sitting on my desk for two months, and I cannot find any information on it. Here is the question: “I was wondering if you knew what the Latin and Italian translations would be of the term blessedly cursed? I know this is not a common phrase, but I would think that there would be a translation for it.” Latin is tough, but our correspondents from Italy may know the equivalent. Their help will be greatly appreciated.
Mike Evers continues The Hopfield Tales with the second book in his Viking fantasy. It is available now on Kindle for $2.99, or FREE for Prime users! Follow this link to get it now: http://goo.gl/URV6v
Campaign of the Gods
About the story:When Norse god Týr suspects his friend Thor is cheating in the phenomenal board game ‘Campaign of the Gods’ he takes matters into his own hands and searches out the only being in Asgard who can help solve his problem. But things are not what they seem… And once the forces of Hel are unleashed, only legendary Viking berserker Ivar Ragnarsson and his men can possibly save the day. They just have to work out when in history they are first - and why are the local townspeople so strange? About the author:Mike often taps out stuff on his keyboard in the fantasy, urban fantasy and paranormal genres: a habit which his wife finds fairly amusing - and sometimes a little bit strange. So far he has published two novellas -The Spirit Archerand Campaign of the Gods - with GMTA Publishing. These form part of The Hopfield Tales. The third and final tale is due out in early 2013. Mike's debut novel,The Chaosifier, is also available on Amazon, where it is ambushing unsuspecting fans of contemporary fantasy with its general mischief and mayhem. Mike's educational background is in History, International Conflict Analysis and Education. He is qualified as a teacher in ESOL and Adult Literacy, and lives and works in West Yorkshire. He's married to a long-suffering wife, Joanne, and they have a young son called Joseph.
This article is really worth reading, it has too much details in it and yet it is so simple to understand, Thanks for sharing the picture it has great detail in it and i really appreciate your true artistic work!
I lived in Florida across from a jungle-like forest like I've described in Ghostly Liaisons, explored the swamps and as I traversed the vine thick vegetation, listened to the mosquitoes buzzing about, avoided walking into giant spiderwebs and watched for any signs of alligators, rattlesnakes or water moccasins. And made up tales as I ventured through the wilderness.
And finally, I wrote Emily Rundle's story.
Emily Rundle’s curious nature causes her big problems when she moves with her family to Florida.First of all, she’s different.Really different.Then the nightmares begin.The kind she can’t escape.Somehow she has to unravel the mystery of the ghosts who plague her before it’s too late.
Michael Shipley just moved to town, too, and realizes at once Emily is trouble with a big T.If he becomes involved with her, his life will change forever.Premonitions he has that Emily’s life will be in danger forces him to make a stand to protect the girl who’s gifted with extraordinary abilities like him.They instantly bond as the two weirdest kids in school.
0 Comments on Ghostly Liaisons and The Beast Within Coming Soon! as of 1/1/1900
Three of the four books I’ve written so far are set in the Viking Age, and when I visit schools, children often want to know why. Well, obviously Vikings are great material for exciting and bloodthirsty narratives. If I ask the children themselves to describe what Vikings mean to them, hands shoot up, and they say things like: ‘bloodthirsty’, ‘raiders’, ‘killing people with axes’. And I say, ‘That’s all true, but did you know they were also farmers, sailors, discoverers, poets, and adventurers?’
As a writer I’m fascinated by the paradoxes of the Viking age. Here are these hugely energetic, independent, self-reliant people, bursting out of Scandinavia and sailing all over the world, to Byzantium, to Russia – raiding the British coast, discovering and colonising Iceland and Greenland, crossing to North America. Yet their appetite for adventure is intensely practical; it’s all about things we can understand – obtaining goods, winning land for farms, settling down in a new place to raise families.
The whole period is one of colour, excitement, change. Norway and Iceland didn’t adopt Christianity until around 1000. That’s incredibly late for Europe as a whole, so you get this tension between pagan and Christian ideas, sometimes with members of the same family holding different beliefs – amulets with the cross on one side and Thor’s hammer on the other so that people could hedge their bets. We’re so entirely used to post-Christian Europe that it’s really intriguing to peer into this mirror where things were different. (And this may be the reason why so many people vaguely assume that the Vikings are, er, sort of prehistoric. A couple of years ago, Waterstones in Oxford had their Viking books shelved under ‘Prehistory’…) Christianity, it seems to me, expends a great deal of ingenuity attempting to reconcile the notion of a loving God with the world as we see it. The Vikings accepted that their world was a violent and unfair place. Even the gods were not immune from destruction. The best thing was to earn the respect of gods and men. “Cattle die, kindred die: every man is mortal. One thing never dies: a man's good name.”
And we can share their admiration of those who did their best to live up to that motto, often with grim humour:
“Bury me on that headland I thought so suitable for a home,” says Thorvald Eiriksson (mortally wounded by an arrow, in the Greenland Saga). “I seem to have hit on the truth when I said I would settle there.”
In modern terms, Thorvald richly deserved his fate, having just massacred several Native Americans as they lay asleep. Iceland’s great poet, Egil Skallagrimsson, was just six years old when he deliberately killed a playmate with his axe. Violent, ruthless, canny, yet capable of great sensitivity and author of a heartbreaking poem on the death of his son who drowned at sea, he typifies the Viking Age hero – not a man you would be happy to have for a next-door neighbour. I was thinking of Egil when I wrote the character of Harald Silkenhair for ‘Troll Blood’ – whether it’s a gun, or a sword, how do we stand up to the threat of violence? What is it to be a hero? What is true bravery? These are questions the Vikings were deeply concerned with, and so are we, however different our
7 Comments on "The Fury of the Norsemen" - The Appeal of the Vikings - by Katherine Langrish, last added: 1/18/2010
Great post. I love the idea that writers should think about bravery. I have never consciously done so, but now I think of it I see it is a theme in my work.
When I taught in a museum, I was always interested in the idea of progress. If you asked a regular adult (rather than a historian) put these 'ages' in the correct order: Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Norman, Roman, they would almost always think the right answer was 'Viking, Anglo-Saxon, Roman, Norman.' People hate the thought that there isn't linear progress.
How interesting! I'd never have thought people would get the Romans after the Anglo Saxons. But yes, I'm sure you're right: people like to think of civilization progressing in a smooth uphill line.
But how much of that is due to preconceptions of what 'civilised' actually means. I'd rather be a Viking woman than a Roman woman, any day!
Seriously? If I had the Tardis for a day or two, you would definitely find me circa 100AD wandering down the Via Appia. Olive oil and white bread for me, thanks!
Yes, but Roman women had few if any civil and legal rights. Viking women could inherit and own property, and were much more equal with men. (As the large number of very strong women in the Icelandic sagas may suggest!)
You're so right about how Christians expend a lot of energy on juggling God loves us with the awfulness of the world we see - constantly troubles me as there is no answer and I get fed up with my fellow Christians doing theological gymnastics about it! But I guess I stick with it partly because at least we're motivate to try to do something about it! Did the Vikings do charity at all? I know virtually nothing about them -just horrible history stuff like they used pee to bleach their hair!
Meg, I doubt if the Vikings did charity in the modern sense! They believed in fair dealing and neighbourliness, but often fell short! (See Njal's Saga... etc, etc.) Of course, I'm not suggesting we should all begin worshipping Odin. Just that even a religion/culture as unlike ours as the Vikings' does have elements we can respect and even learn from!
My recent book, 'Feasting The Wolf' was set against the background of the Great Danish Army's invasion of England in the 9th Century. I'd hardly finished it before a publisher who shall be nameless (until the contract's signed) asked if I'd write for them 'a book for boys, set in the Dark Ages, full of adventure and violence.'
I need the money, so at once set about constructing a book. Colleagues have blogged recently about the joys of beginning a new book. By contrast, this is about the graft of working up a commissioned book to a brief.
'The Dark Ages' could mean anything from the 6th Century and King Arthur to the 8th and the Vikings, but it was always going to be Vikings, because I already know a lot about them.
I needed an idea, so I dredged up the plot of a book I'd written years ago and which had never been published. And I used my partner as a sounding board because he was once a boy, and so might have a better idea than me about what boys enjoy. How about, I suggested, a Viking trying to win enough gold to persuade the father of his sweetheart to let him marry her?
Yuck! Anything to do with weddings or kissing or girls was not on!
Okay, so how about our hero sees a beautiful sword for sale, but the swordsmith won't sell it, so he steals it, and -
"That makes him a thief!" said my partner, shocked.
Yes, and? Vikings were known, occasionally, to take without permission.
But no, no, no, I didn't understand. Heroes of boys' adventures cannot be thieves. They must be honourable and clean-living and right-thinking. This hero sounded less like a Viking every second. I wasn't getting anywhere.
In the end it was my brother (also once a boy) who said during one of our pub conversations, "Base it around the Battle of Stamford Bridge."
Well, that battle was right at the end of the Viking Age - literally, as the Viking Age can be defined as 'from early 8th Century to 1066'. Also, I usually avoid pinning any of my historicals to a definite date as arguing with historians can be so tiresome, I find. And Stamford Bridge, like the Battle of Hastings, has 'the one memorable date in English history'.
Still, I thought it was worth looking into, and started researching the battle. Before long I was fascinated and committed. Stamford Bridge it was going to be.
It was the battle fought in Yorkshire about twenty days before the Battle of Hastings, and for a story-teller, it has lots to offer. An invading Viking army numbering thousands. Impossible, heroic forced marches. Five thousand Vikings fighting to the death under the hot Yorkshire sun (really) without armour. Hardship, courage, heartache. Thank you, bro.
I invented and named my heroes, sketched out the story, and e-mailed it to my agent, so she could flog it. Instead, she flung it back. Too much history, she said, and not enough story. And expunge all mention of the Saxon hero wanting to be a monk! Christianity was the biggest turn-off! And there was I, thinking I was reflecting the way of that age, when Christianity was still fresh and vital.
But the main thing, with a commissioned book, is to sell it - so back to the laptop. History and Christianity out, story in. And my agent was, as usual, right. The story is coming to life as I get closer to the characters and ruthlessly cut the history. Can't wait to get to those five thousand hot, sweaty, doomed Vikings...
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4 Comments on Susan Price: A Boy's Adventure Story..., last added: 8/15/2008
Away with the Vikings is better than away with the fairies, which is where I've been for the last few weeks (literally--am writing a commissioned Field Guide to the little people). I love being asked to do stuff (a novel? I wish!) as I find it triggers off all sorts of new pathways to wander down in my brain. And I find it comforting when publishers actually want to commission me. Ah, the fragility of the writer's ego!
And that is a good summary as to why most modern children's historical fiction is utter tripe.
Your book sounds brilliant, would have sold loads and would have had reviewers everywhere crying into their beer saying "But we *know* children dont like didactic fiction!"
I'd really like to see the book you wanted to write. The book that such "failures" as Geoffrey Trease, Ronald Welch, Henry Treese and Rosemary Sutcliff would have written.
If I know Sue, it will be a bloody good historical book anyway, as good as anything by Rosemary Sutcliff or Henry Treece or Geoffrey Trease. (All of whom I loved and admire.) Thank goodness we still have classic writers, and Sue is one of them!
A new show about the dark ages will be premiering on the History Channel this Sunday. As part of the promotion leading up to the premiere, they have an interactive game to create your own dark ages character. You get to choose things like gender, role, and clothing, and it generates a character name for you based, using some mysterious algorithm, on your name.
I chose "Viking" for my role, and my character is named Geira the Ash Tree. You can see her here:
And yes, that's really my face! It lets you upload a photo to use for the face.
I had a lot of fun playing with this, although the gender limitations frustrated me. After I selected female for my gender, I was presented with four options: Lady, Viking, Nun, or Peasant. Lady? Bo-oring. Nun? No way! Peasant? Too hard. So I opted for Viking, which sounded pretty exciting to me. Unfortunately, I should have remembered from reading Viking Warrior that the life of women in Viking culture was not very exciting. So Geira is stuck caring for the children and supervising the servants, when I'd much rather go out viking! Oh, well, it could be worse: at least I'm not one of the servants! And while I wish it could be otherwise, the gender-based roles made sense in a game which is meant to teach you about the dark ages.
Edited to add:
My son David also created his own dark ages character: he opted to be a monk. He also cracked the name code and figured out how to pick his own name rather than being stuck with a randomly selected one.
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How nice that you're posting chapters of your book. So many will love reading it.
I'm so enjoying this story.
Thank you, Carole Anne for sharing.
Best wishes, always.
Margie
x
Great story! Thanks for sharing with us. :)
Thanks for sharing, I never read snippets or sample chapters now. I used to but I prefer to have the whole thing now and go at it.
Lainy www.alwaysreading.net
Wonderful scene, Carol. So intense. Reminds me of the Hunger Games. Really powerful writing.
Wonderful scene, Carol. So intense. Reminds me of the Hunger Games. Really powerful writing.