Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1029093 in Books
• Published on: 1999-12-19
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 332 pages

Customer Reviews

Heroic
My grandfather had a copy of this, and it took me years to track down my own copy (and one for my Gudruda of the time :-)

If you can say this about a single book and genre - and I will - it's the best book ever written. Pretty much every sentence still gives me goosebumps.

Superhuman deeds and daring; blood, voyages, witchcraft, treachery and some great tenth century face-offs. Yet this is a love story. And although fictional and set a thousand years ago, you can still hear the echoes of Eric and Gudruda's lives in our remoter places - if only you listen hard enough.

I've read that when Haggard was in Iceland locating various places mentioned in the original sagas, a raven flew up croaking from the bleached grass and snow. "That is the answer," he wrote, "the only answer given to those who seek what has been in what is."'

Be warned: after reading it, today's life will seem dull by comparison. Oh, and don't take your axe into work.

An Historical Romance Par Excellence
The author of numerous romance-adventures in the 19th century tradition, Haggard turned his hand, at least once, to the older saga tradition of the northern peoples. The result may well have been his best work. Skillfully crafted, this tale proceeds at breakneck pace to unfold the saga-like adventures of the stout Icelandic yeoman, Eric Thorgrimurs' son (surnamed 'Brighteyes' for his most notable trait), as he struggles to win the hand of his beloved, Gudruda the Fair, despite the vigorous opposition of her half-sister, Swanhild the Fatherless (who seeks Eric for her own). Caught between these two beautiful women and faced with the need to overcome the opposition of Gudruda's father, Asmund the Priest (not the Christian sort) and his son, the greedy Bjorn (who would prefer to marry his sister off to a wealthy chieftain in lieu of a liaison with the farmer's son Eric), our hero must prove himself worthy of his destined bride while dodging the snares of those who would unman him. Conspiring with her mysterious mother, Groa the witchwife, Swanhild arranges to have Ospakar Blacktooth, a northern chieftain from Swinefells, pay Asmund's household a visit in order to see and woo Gudruda for himself. This Ospakar and Eric become immediate foes for Ospakar is as ugly and vile as Eric is handsome and honorable. And the tale only accelerates from here. From death-defying feats of derring-do to duels between deadly foemen to treachery and mayhem in blinding blizzards and on the high seas, this is an adventure which, once having grabbed you, will not let you go. Written in an archaic prose, mirroring the old nineteenth century translations of the original Icelandic sagas, and intended to simulate the voice of the old sagas themselves, the power of this narrative is compelling and unrelenting. And yet it is less exhausting than exhilarating as it unfolds the tale of Eric and the two women who loved him -- no matter what the cost. If the tale has a flaw at all it is that the characters are not real in any sense of that word but only larger-than-life actors who strut about upon the stage which Haggard has drawn for us here. At the same time the sensibility offered is one of pure and unmitigated adventure. But it's great fun and marvelous escapist fare. A must for lovers of Norse and viking times.

If you like the saga as novel, I'd also suggest some of the following: THE GOLDEN WARRIOR by Hope Muntz (the finest novel ever written in saga form); STYRBIORN THE STRONG by E. R. Eddison (out-poeticizes Haggard); TWO RAVENS by Cecilia Holland (a look inside the steamy goings-on of a medieval Icelandic farm); THE GREENLANDERS by Jane Smiley (a tale of the decline and obliteration of the Norse settlement in Greenland, circa the late 1400's); and THE KING OF VINLAND'S SAGA by Stuart W. Mirsky (that's me, in case you're interested; this one's the saga which might have been concerning the Norse explorations in the New World). Also try THE LONG SHIPS by Frans Bengtsson (a realistic and humorous "romp" through the viking age).