Category Archives: Non-fiction

Non-fiction, Reading, The Press

Five books on the Vikings, from Neil Price

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The ever-vigilant Dave Lull, good friend of this blog, sent me the following article from the Wall Street Journal: Five Best Books on the Vikings, by Neil Price. Aside from the obvious defect of overlooking my own work, it’s an interesting list from a man who is no mean author himself.

Just to divert the income stream to our blog, I’ll list the list here:

The Viking Achievement, by Foote and Wilson

Valkyrie, by Friðriksdóttir

The Poetic Edda, translated by Larrington

The Road to Hel, by Ellis

Egil’s Saga, translated by Scudder

“But what do you think of the list?” you must surely be wondering.

Well, it’s not bad. The Viking Achievement is a book I’ve treasured for many years. It’s quite an old work now, and when I first read it long ago (while I was writing The Year of the Warrior), I assumed it would be just another historical/cultural guide. I found an excellently researched book, full of stuff I didn’t know already. We’ve had a lot of new discoveries since it was written, of course, and a new book along its lines is badly needed. In fact, I was pretty sure I found one a few years back and reviewed it here, but I can’t find it in our archives.

Valkyrie is a book I do not know. It may be very good. But I’ll tell you the truth – I avoid the whole topic of Viking women nowadays, since feminist scholars have gone all agog over the discovery of a couple women’s graves containing armor. I don’t think anyone can discuss women’s role in Viking society rationally at this point in history. (Myself included.)

I’ve read a couple translations of The Poetic Edda, but I don’t think Larrington’s is one of them. Anyone interested in the Vikings should certainly read one.

I haven’t read The Road to Hel, either. Hilda Ellis (also known as Hilda Ellis Davidson) was a foremost Viking scholar, so I really ought to correct this omission. However, the book appears to be out of print, and used copies are expensive.

Egil’s Saga, of course, I’ve read numerous times and in various translations, including this one. I’ve even read it in the scholarly Complete Sagas of Icelanders, but Scudder is, imho, more readable for the non-specialist

Bottom line: Neil Price knows his business, and this is a worthwhile list. I should probably compile one of my own, though my library is in such disarray right now that it would probably involve a lot of work.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Viking Saint: Olaf II of Norway,’ by John Carr

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John Carr is primarily a historian of the Mediterranean region. He has taken it upon himself, for some reason, to write a hagiography of Saint Olaf of Norway. His book, The Viking Saint, in my view, provides a cautionary example for anyone who decides to write in a field where they don’t know their way around.

The Viking Saint is a genuine hagiography, a book openly intended to glorify its subject and promote his veneration in the church. (I don’t know that Carr is a Catholic, but he gives that impression). As a result, it’s rather credulous, even for a Christian reader like me. Olaf’s deeds (often autocratic and bloody) are always given the most positive interpretation.

The main source is Snorri Sturlusson’s Heimskringla. That’s an approach I generally approve of, while recognizing that it requires supporting research from other sources. I think Carr uses the wrong supporting material, and not nearly enough of it. On top of that, he frequently misunderstands Snorri.

The book opens immediately with a big historical howler – he claims that it’s plausible that Olaf Haraldsson’s destruction of London Bridge, during his service with King Ethelred the Unready, was the origin of the “London Bridge is falling down” nursery rhyme. It is not plausible. (I explain this in the Afterword to my novel, The Elder King.)

The errors go on and on. He thinks that Olaf’s father, King Harald of Grenland, was raised in Greenland (Grenland is in fact a farm). He takes it for granted that Olaf was a direct descendant of King Harald Fairhair (that’s disputed) and the sole legitimate claimant to the throne of Norway (he wasn’t). He thinks King Halfdan the Black ruled from Trondheim (not true). He thinks Viking slave hunting among the Slavic tribes resulted in the coinage of the word “slave” (it came later). He confuses King Harald Greycloak of Norway with King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark. He thinks Queen Gunhild, wife of Erik Bloodaxe, was killed in the St. Brice’s Day Massacre (it was another woman, possibly fictional). He thinks the Norwegian name for a free farmer, “bonder,” means bondsman.

Carr errs again when he tells us that astronomy has confirmed that an eclipse occurred, as the saga says, on July 29, 1030, the date of Olaf’s death at the Battle of Stiklestad. This is not true – the eclipse came about a month later (I discuss this in the Afterword to The Baldur Game).

In more subjective matters affecting my own area of interest, I disagree sharply with Carr’s assessment of Erling Skjalgsson of Sola. He considers Erling a mere opportunist, a rebellious vassal. He fails utterly to recognize the serious constitutional questions on which Olaf and Erling clashed.

One of the most startling statements I found in The Viking Saint was author Carr’s contention that there were “no political overtones” to the rise of St. Olaf’s cult. It takes a pretty narrow pair of blinders not to notice how the Olaf legend served the political purposes of Norwegians eager to throw off Danish control.

A good biography (even a good hagiography) of Saint Olaf would be welcome. And it’s perfectly legitimate to take a different position than mine on the issue of Viking democracy, as opposed to monarchy. Let a thousand flowers bloom.

But a biography ought to be properly vetted. Actual historians of the period should go over the manuscript to weed out errors that even an amateur like me can find so easily.

The Viking Saint, sadly, is not a book I can honestly recommend.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Crockett,’ by Buddy Levy

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Patience and compromise were two necessities for political success at the highest levels, and Crockett would never possess either.

I am, and will always be, I expect, fascinated by the American legend of “Davy” Crockett. The “Crockett Craze,” sparked by a three-episode series on Walt Disney’s television show, exploded on the scene just at the time when I was becoming aware of the world around me. The image of actor Fess Parker in his coonskin cap and buckskins remains etched on my mind. This memory I share with many other Baby Boomers. I think each of the several books I’ve read previously about Crockett’s life have been presented in the form of a sort of dialogue with my generation’s memories of that cultural moment.

But we Boomers are passing from the scene, and it’s time for a book that handles the life of Col. David Crockett, bear hunter and Tennessee congressman, more or less from scratch. Which is what Buddy Levy’s Crockett: The Real-Life Adventures of the Frontier Legend does. Disney does not appear on stage until the mop-up chapters at the end.

Viewed historically, the 1950s Crockett Craze was a second act. Crockett was America’s (perhaps the world’s) first celebrity in the modern sense – a person made famous by the media. A rising population of literate common people was hungry for a hero with whom they could identify. And Crockett, an unpolished, definitely not wealthy congressman from the ragged western edge of the republic, filled the bill perfectly. He had sufficient credentials as a wilderness hunter and army scout to provide the bare bones for a legend, and his rustic wit and braggadocio always made him good newspaper copy.

Author Levy has organized sometimes meager documentary evidence, presenting it along with Crockett’s own (generally pretty reliable) autobiography to recount the man’s story in a fascinating and sympathetic way. He believes (as some historians doubt) that Crockett was sincere in his opposition to Pres. Jackson’s removal of the Native American tribes – certainly prejudice (which sprang from cruel warfare on both sides) caused most of his fellow settlers to hate the tribes generally, but it’s also true that Crockett had fought alongside friendly Indians during the Creek War, and some of their race had saved his life on at least one occasion. (He does gloss over Crockett’s slave-holding, though). He affirms the traditional account of Crockett’s execution at the Alamo, though a footnote mentions that there are contrary views.

All in all, I found Crockett a very readable and fascinating account of a remarkable American life. I do recommend it.

Authors, Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough,’ by John J. Ross, M.D.

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Those who claim that Shakespeare did not write his plays often argue that only some wealthy, privileged, and highly educated person would have been capable of writing them. The premise of this argument is fundamentally mistaken. Literary genius more often arises from disappointment and chagrin than comfort and complacency; the rich and content have no need of imagination.

The Duke of Wellington is supposed to have remarked that no man is a hero to his valet. No doubt there’s some truth to that – familiarity, especially regarding a person’s phobias, thoughtlessness, and hemorrhoids, has to take the shine off their glamor, however eminent they might be. Nevertheless, there’s another way to look at it.

Years ago, I read a book called Napoleon’s Glands, by Arno Karlen (unfortunately out of print now). I found it fascinating, and learning about famous people’s physical frailties did not generally lower my opinion of them (even if, as in the case of Napoleon, I disliked them from the onset). I had a similar experience with John J. Ross’s Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough, which applies very much the same analysis to great English-language authors.

The book deals with William Shakespeare, John Milton, Jonathan Swift, The Brontë sisters, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, William Butler Yeats, Jack London, and George Orwell. We learn that Shakespeare might have contracted syphilis (which was endemic in England in his time), though it’s not certain, and the author describes the harrowing medical treatment (surprisingly not worthless) he might have undergone for it. More solidly, the Bard’s deteriorating handwriting indicates essential tremor, a common malady in aging people (we have it in my own family).

Milton suffered detached retinas; Jonathan Swift probably had Ménière’s Disease and certainly died of dementia. Tuberculosis, probably contracted in a horrific private school, plagued the Brontës. Nathaniel Hawthorne may have had Asperger’s Syndrome, and probably died of stomach cancer. Melville looks like Bipolar Disorder. Yeats seems to have suffered from brucellosis; Jack London had scurvy and yaws, and probably died of an accidental drug overdose. James Joyce looks like a case of reactive arthritis, a condition related to venereal disease, and suffered greatly from deteriorating eyesight. Orwell was (probably) another victim of tuberculosis, aggravated by bad lifestyle choices.

Shakespeare’s Tremor and Orwell’s Cough may be an unpleasant read for sensitive readers (I myself grew up on a farm and am son and brother to nurses, so my threshold of nausea is pretty high). But I found the book absolutely riveting. And rather than inspiring contempt for these remarkable artists, my admiration for their achievement, in the face of such suffering, only rose.

The book did make me wonder, though, whether my lack of literary success might be due to insufficient craziness in my makeup.

Authors, Non-fiction, Religion, Uncategorized

Surprised by A.I.

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I found this video on YouTube. It seems to me both wonderful and troubling.

First of all, Jack Lewis is using “my” microphone. It’s a Blue Yeti, and I have one exactly like it, even unto the color. (Or “colour,” as he would have spelled it.)

Secondly, it’s pretty well done, except for a couple glitches. The voice appears to be cloned from Lewis’ well-known The Four Loves recordings. (On the downside, I’ve read a statement from one of Lewis’s friends, who says that that was not his normal speaking style.)

The troubling aspect is – of course – just that this is A.I. I’m almost obligated to hate A.I., which took a much-needed job away from me.

The very idea of resurrecting actual humans through A.I. is just disturbing to many of us, whether it’s affected our bottom lines or not. It seems creepy, like necromancy. However, I’m not sure that creepy feeling is to be trusted. When radio was a new technology, there was a fair number of sincere Christians who denounced it as demonic – voices coming through the air; that has to come from the domain of the Prince of the Powers of the Air! (For our young readers, that’s a biblical reference to the devil (Ephesians 2:2 in the King James Version).

But the bottom line, for me, is that I found it kind of fun.

I’d like to see more of this sort of stuff, and no doubt I will. Maybe somebody can recreate Moody preaching, or Jonathan Edwards declaiming “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” (contemporaries reported that he read it from a manuscript, in a very rote voice).

The best thing about A.I. might be that it could kill Hollywood. We can bring back the great actors of the past and cast them in new movies, bypassing Wokeness. I’d love to see a young Clint Eastwood playing Travis McGee, for instance. Authors could have total control of film adaptations. Who wants to do an A.I. production of The Year of the Warrior for 50 bucks? I might be able to spring for half of that.

Fiction, Non-fiction

New Culture Commentary from Klavans

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There’s a new show on movies, games, books, and other cultural artifacts, and it’s hosted by Andrew and Spencer Klavan. Episode two Klavans on the Culture dropped yesterday on a subtle horror movie based on a small, popular game, Exit 8.

The movie doesn’t have much to talk about. Like the game, it’s more of a feeling than a story. The hosts spend half of this episode talking about ghost stories and recommending a couples recent books.

Non-fiction, Reviews

’24 Hours in the Viking World,’ by Kirsten Wolf

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I run into many people who are looking for books to introduce them to the Vikings. Kirsten Wolf’s 24 Hours in the Viking World isn’t a bad book for the purpose, in spite of some weaknesses.

The plan of the book is a little strange, but it’s part of a series of similar books set in various historical periods and places, so readers must appreciate it. Each chapter is devoted to a single hour of the day. For each hour, we focus on one Viking Age character. These characters’ locations and historical dates are not coordinated – the reader is shuttled back and forth in time and space.

We see men commit murders, build ships, and compose poems. We see women give birth, prepare feasts, and take up unaccustomed weapons in defense. Each situation is described in detail, so that some aspect of Viking life is illuminated. New Viking enthusiasts will learn much here.

The weakness of the book is in the dramatizations The author, an academic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, knows her material but is not gifted in scene-setting or dialogue. The dialogue is too modern (in my view), with characters delivering lines like “Hang in there.” And the characters – especially the men – are generally more sensitive in their conversations with their wives than I suspect real Viking men were. The characters, in short, talk like modern people dressed up in Viking clothes.

On the plus side, author Wolf is not a partisan of the “Lagertha Party” in Viking studies. When she recounts the famous Vinland episode where Leif Eriksson’s sister Freydis brandishes a sword to scare off the “scraelings,” we’re told she has no idea how to use a sword. I’m not sure I’d have gone that far myself, sexist though I am. Ditto for her statement that Icelandic women had “no legal rights.”

One chapter involves a baker at Hedeby in Denmark. Oddly, his name is given as Hans Jensson. That’s a bizarre name choice for a Viking, as both “Hans” and “Jens” are colloquial versions of the Christian “John.” And it took time for those adaptations to evolve. I don’t think those names existed as such in the Viking Age.

Still, 24 Hours in the Viking Age isn’t a bad introduction to Viking everyday life. I recommend it moderately.

Non-fiction, Religion, Reviews

‘The Early Lives of St Dunstan’

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I don’t expect this review will sell many copies of The Early Lives of St Dunstan, edited and translated by Michael Winterbottom and Michael Lapidge. The book is expensive (I got it as a gift from a generous friend), and it’s pretty specialist stuff. Invaluable for me, though, as I am thinking out my coming book on King Haakon the Good of Norway.

The calculation goes like this: Haakon was raised at the court of King Athelstan of England. Athelstan was a patron of Glastonbury Abbey, a major center of learning at the time. So it makes sense that he would have sent Haakon, along with several other princes he fostered, to Glastonbury for training (I’m assuming Haakon was literate). Dunstan was known to have been trained at Glastonbury around the same time. Ergo, it’s artistically plausible that they were schoolmates. Glastonbury’s reputation as a center of spiritual power and mystery adds a numinous atmosphere, irresistible to the fantasy writer.

The Early Lives of St Dunstan consists of two translations of Latin hagiographies (saints’ lives) of Dunstan, from the late 10th and early 11th centuries, along with extensive notes and explanatory information. Such books were commonly written in the Middle Ages, for liturgical use in church during the saints’ festivals.

Being early hagiographies, written within living memory of the subject himself, these two “Lives” are surprisingly prosaic compared to what one might expect. There are many legends about St. Dunstan, but the miracles in these accounts are relatively prosaic. Both describe what sounds like an incident of somnambulism during his boyhood, in which he left his bed and climbed onto the church roof, then came down unhurt, without any memory of what he’d done. There are stories of his harp (he was a noted musician) playing by itself as it hung on a wall. Various accounts of prophetic dreams and visions and answered prayers. Falling stones that just missed him. Not a lot of healings.

Later on, his legend grew. Traditionally, he’s been remembered as the bishop who caught the devil’s nose in a pair of tongs (he was a blacksmith too). The poem (which I lift from Wikipedia) runs:

St Dunstan, as the story goes, 
Once pull'd the devil by the nose 
With red-hot tongs, which made him roar,
That he was heard three miles or more.

Another legend says that the devil once came to his smithy to have his cloven hoof re-shod. Dunstan nailed on a plain horse’s shoe, which hurt the devil badly. He only agreed to remove the shoe when the devil promised to never again enter a building with a horseshoe nailed over the door – which is, supposedly, the origin of the lucky horseshoe superstition.

I cannot say the two lives of Dunstan were great entertainment. You know how annoying it can be in Christian books, when the writer lapses into preaching? These authors had no storytelling purpose at all; preaching was their sole purpose. It gets pretty sanctimonious.

But useful for my purposes. For instance, Dunstan seems to have had a lot of trouble with slanderous enemies throughout his lifetime, which got him repeatedly expelled from bishoprics. I think I can assume from this that the man may have had a small problem with tact. I can use that.

Below is a famous picture from an old manuscript, believed by many to have been painted by Dunstan himself, as a book illustration. The large figure is Christ, but the kneeling monk in the lower right-hand corner appears to be Dunstan. A self-portrait. All the stories say he could draw.

Non-fiction, Writing

Taking a stand for Athelstan

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The YouTube video above concerns my current study, King Athelstan of England, who is described in the Icelandic sagas as “the Mighty,” though he never attained the popular status of “the Great” in his own country. Today he’s generally acknowledged to have been the first monarch of all England – of all the English. This is because he unified Wessex with Mercia, and the other little kingdoms the Vikings had left tottering had little choice but to tag along.

I’m re-reading Paul Hill’s book, The Age of Athelstan, in preparation for my Haakon the Good book. Haakon is one of those saga characters whose very existence is frequently questioned by historians. Scholars these days tend to be so skeptical of saga accounts that they actually treat a saga mention as evidence against a person’s existence – as if people are more likely to tell stories about people they made up than ones who actually existed. As if nothing ever happened in prehistory, so all the stories had to be invented.

Haakon is not mentioned in any contemporary document we possess. Although we’re told he was raised in Athelstan’s court, no record of his presence has survived. We know of several exiled princes who were raised by Athelstan, but Haakon gets no ink.

I need hardly say that I do believe he existed, and what I read about Athelstan’s court seems to me an excellent place for a king like him to be educated. Athelstan was interested in writing and education (despite the fact that not much record of his rule survives). Young Haakon may or may not have been interested in reading and writing Latin himself (though I figure I’ll make him literate). But there was also much to be learned there about running a kingdom, and (especially) organizing national defense – a field in which the sagas say Haakon made innovations in Norway. Athelstan carried out legal reforms – for instance, he raised the minimum age for capital punishment to fifteen, which was pretty soft by the standards of the time. Haakon also took an interest in revising the law.

There is also reason to connect him with Glastonbury Abbey, and with Saint Dunstan. The sagas say Egil Skallagrimsson fought for Athelstan as a mercenary at the Battle of Brunanburh, though Haakon doesn’t take to him.

Also not implausible. Egil was an easy guy to dislike.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Sociopath Next Door,’ by Martha Stout, Ph.D.

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The prevalence rate for anorexic eating disorders is estimated at 3.43 percent, deemed to be nearly epidemic, and yet this figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality.

I’m thinking of incorporating a sociopathy (how do you pronounce that word, anyway? Emphasis on the third or fourth syllables?) theme in my next novel. So I bought a book on the topic. I read The Sociopath Next Door, by Martha Stout, Ph.D., during my Minot sojourn.

It was not comforting reading.

According to psychologists, about four out of every 100 people around us are entirely without conscience. Possess no empathy. They walk among us, they look an act no differently (or not very differently) from anyone else. And yet there’s something important missing there.

Fortunately, they’re not all Charles Mansons or Hannibal Lectors. Most of them are just annoying – they may be the overbearing neighbor who’s always calling the homeowners’ association on you, or the cellar dwelling son who just sponges off his parents, never looking for work. Many of them are extremely charming, having mastered techniques for manipulating others to get what they want. They may be serial seducers or con men or politicians. Several fictional case studies are offered in illustration here.

The bad news is that sociopaths are hard to identify. Author Stout devotes a chapter to methods of recognizing them, but – sadly – the process takes time. They need to be observed in action for a while before the telltale signs can be discerned.

I was pleased by some positive quotations from the church fathers early in the book, but less pleased by the chapter at the end discussing religious concepts, which favors eastern religions because of their emphasis on shared spiritual connections. Still, it’s interesting that contemplation of the sociopathic condition – which occasionally expresses itself in acts that can only be described as evil – leads even scientists inevitably to a consideration of the soul.

The big problem for Christians, I think, is that it seems as if the sociopaths around us are incapable of grace. They cannot repent, because they are utterly blind to sin. They would appear to be children of the devil from birth. I don’t really have a category in my theology for this.

The Sociopath Next Door was a fascinating read, and well written. But troubling.