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Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘The Tale of Audun From the West Fjords’

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The actual face of King Svein Estridsson of Denmark. Reconstruction by Danish scientists in 1911. Photo credit: Arne Kvitrud.

I’ll probably be reporting on several Icelandic saga tales for a few days now, while I finish reading the long book I’m working on – intended for review elsewhere, no less (!).

Tonight’s offering is one of the more charming tales in The Collected Sagas of Icelanders. I was already pretty familiar with it, as the late Magnus Magnusson included it in his long-ago cassette recording, Tales From Viking Times (no longer available). It’s called “The Tale of Audun From the West Fjords.” This story focuses on good manners and good luck, rather than martial prowess or (apparently) cunning, as a means to get ahead in the world.

Audun is a poor young Icelander who goes to work for a rich merchant in order to make his fortune. After some profitable dealings, he sails to Greenland, where he takes a flyer – he trades in everything he’s earned thus far for the ultimate prestige item – a polar bear. This he determines (for some unexplained reason) to transport as a gift to King Svein Estridsson of Denmark. That’s a big deal, as, at the time, a white bear carried about the same social cachet a Lear Jet does today (though a bear is probably less useful in day to day business).

We are not informed what security measures are required for carrying a live bear on a Viking knarr, but no doubt a muzzle was involved.

His ship puts in in Norway on the way, and Audun takes the bear with him to his rented lodgings (what else could he do?). King Harald Hardrada (cue ominous background music) gets word of the new guy in town with the expensive bear. He summons Audun to see him, and an interesting – indeed, classic – conversation follows.

King Harald first asks (just in case he’s dealing with a moron) whether Audun will give him the bear in return for the price he paid for it. Audun refuses.

Then Harald asks if he’ll sell it for twice what he paid. Again, Audun says no (politely, I have no doubt).

Finally, Harald asks Audun if he’ll make him a gift of the bear. Again, Audun turns him down, explaining that he’s made his mind up to take it to King Svein.

If you sense that this is, for Audun, the most dangerous moment in the story, you’ve learned something of Norse culture. This final bid is in fact the highest of them all. If Audun were to give Harald the bear as a pure gift, Harald would be obligated, under the rules of honor, to reciprocate with an equally generous reward. The reward would have to be as extravagant as a white bear was rare. (This was during the Medieval Warming Period, so no doubt contemporary Al Gores were warning of sea levels rising.)

Audun’s refusal is so audacious that interpreters disagree to this day as to what it signifies. Is Audun just too much the country bumpkin to understand that these kings, Harald and Svein, are mortal enemies, and that denying the bear to Harald in order to give it to Svein is likely to enrage Harald – well-known to be a merciless enemy? Or is he somehow counting on Harald’s sense of honor (a dangerous gamble, considering Harald’s ethics)? One is reminded of yesterday’s story of Thorleif the Earl’s Poet, where Thorleif refused Jarl Haakon in a similar situation and brought doom on himself.

However, Audun has caught Harald on one of his good days, and Harald lets him go, making him promise to come back on his way home and tell him how Svein responded to the gift.

Audun then proceeds to Denmark, where he’s received graciously by King Svein (who looks very good in this story), rewarded with gifts, and made part of his household. Then Svein subsidizes Audun on a pilgrimage to Rome, and in the end (I’m skipping stuff here – Wikipedia gives a synopsis) sends him home with a ship and other treasures. Audun keeps his promise to stop off and see Harald again, and Harald is once again a good sport. Audun goes home rich.

The Tale of Audun From the West Fjords is a delightful story, easy to like. It’s also very revealing about Viking Age values and mores.

My only complaint is the somewhat weak, literal translation used in this collection. Some very vivid dialogue is here rendered flat and bland.

Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘The Tale of Thorleif, the Earl’s Poet.’

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Jarl Haakon, headed back to Norway from Denmark, jettisons a load of Christian priests who were forced on him. Illustration by Christian Krogh from Heimskringla.

Tonight, another report on one of the skalds’ sagas (technically a tale) from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders. “The Tale of Thorleif, the Earl’s Poet” is interesting primarily, I think, because of the picture it provides of its writers and editors. It’s taken from the 14th Century saga collection known as the Flatey Book (of which I’ve written here before). The tale may incorporate genuine old legendary material, but it’s been thoroughly massaged to conform to medieval Christian thinking.

The tale begins with a synopsis, in which the writer makes it extremely clear that (trigger warning!), although this story includes elements of heathen beliefs, magic, and cursing, the ultimate moral is going to be a good one – avoid that stuff or it’ll come back to bite you.

Our hero is Thorleif Asgeirsson, the son of a well-to-do Icelander, who shows early aptitude for poetry. After some preliminary adventures, he gets outlawed (learning magic while a fugitive) and manages to sail for Norway in a merchant ship his father buys for him and stocks with trading goods.

Thorleif arrives in Norway, where he meets the current ruler, Jarl Haakon (whom you may recall from The Year of the Warrior and Death’s Doors), at the wharf. Haakon offers to buy his cargo, but Thorleif prefers to offer his goods on the open market. His blunt refusal offends Haakon, who takes revenge by having his men burn Thorleif’s ship and steal all his goods. Thorleif then flees to King Svein Forkbeard in Denmark, and begins planning his magical revenge, which he achieves finally. However, the ultimate repercussions will bring disaster back on him.

The tale contains snippets of skaldic poetry, which probably indicates some basis in true events. However, the story as we have it is pretty fantastic. It contains, for instance, the old fairy tale motif of someone concealing a bag under his shirt (camouflaged by a false beard in this case), down which he shovels large quantities of food, amazing the spectators with his appetite. This motif is often capped in the fairy tales by the cutting open of the bag, mimicking disembowelment, allowing the hero to fake his own death – but nothing like that happens here.

Another point of interest is a mention of Thorgerd Altar-Bride (Holgabrud), who is identified as Jarl Haakon’s personal patron goddess. I’ve read of Thorgerd (who may be Freya under a different name) elsewhere, but I think this was the first time I’ve come across her in an actual saga story (Snorri never mentions her in Heimskringla). If this were the only source of information about her, I’d wonder if she wasn’t just an authorial invention – but I think she’s mentioned in at least one other place in Flatey Book. Just another indication of how much knowledge has been lost about Viking religion.

Final verdict: “The Tale of Thorleif, the Earl’s Poet” is not a well-told story. And it’s not very plausible as a historical source either. But it does offer some points for the curious to ponder.

Authors, Fiction, Non-fiction

Peace, Long Sought and Fought For

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“Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint;
    preserve my life from dread of the enemy.
Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked,
    from the throng of evildoers,
who whet their tongues like swords,
    who aim bitter words like arrows,
shooting from ambush at the blameless,
    shooting at him suddenly and without fear.” (Ps. 64:1-4 ESV)

Israel: Israel has fought for peace for decades. Here’s one story of the life-long war:

The occupation of Gaza was a burr, not a territorial benefit. In the decades following the 1967 war, hundreds of thousands of Israelis moved themselves to the West Bank, to the ancient provinces of Judea and Samaria, the historical home of the Jewish people, where they formed the “settlements” that have caused such controversy. But Jews do not hear the same mystic chords of memory from Gaza, and so efforts to settle them in Gaza to create geopolitical “facts on the ground” never really took root. By the early 2000s, 8,500 Israelis had moved to 21 tiny settlements, in a situation so dangerous that those 8,500 Jewish Gazans had to be guarded by 24,000 Israeli soldiers.

Israel’s enemies: Will the real neo-Nazi please stand up? “Contemporary Marxism is not some secret conspiracy. It is right there in the open telling us what it is and what it wants.”

Novels: Author Richard Russo “discovered that what really interested readers were his stories about growing up with an often-absent father in a declining upstate New York manufacturing community filled with struggling but memorable characters whom some might call ‘deplorables.’” 

Un-cancelation: Timothy L. Jackson, a professor of music theory, seems to be winning his fight against those who would censor him.

Family of C.S. Lewis: What happened to Warnie Lewis after his brother Jack’s death? A new book focuses on his correspondence with a missionary doctor in in Papua New Guinea.

Photo by Juli Kosolapova on Unsplash

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Oceans and the Stars,’ by Mark Helprin

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“How many orchids are there in the Amazon? Trillions? They’re beautiful. No one ever sees them, but they’re there. Value is independent of recognition. It must be. If a tree falls in the forest, of course it makes a sound. What kind of idiot would think it wouldn’t? A sound is not defined by its being heard.”

“This may be the most difficult and perhaps for some the last thing you will ever do. You’re doing it for others, for principle, for decency, and, in essence, out of love. Our actions and imperfections will always be with us. It’s impossible to kill a man, no matter how evil he may be, without a perpetual debit to one’s own conscience and a trespass against God. Anyone who tells you otherwise is blind to himself and the world. But we take on such a burden so that those at home need never bear it, nor even understand that for the sake of the innocent we protect, we accept the stain….”

Mark Helprin has released a new novel, and it hardly needs saying that it’s wonderful. I think The Oceans and the Stars may be one of my favorites from his pen.

Stephen Rensselaer was once a staff officer under the Secretary of the Navy, but he couldn’t resist telling the president what he really thought. So he was demoted and condemned to serve as commander of the innovative small ship whose design he defended to the commander in chief – the PC, a fast, nimble, heavily armed vessel intended for coastal service. When war breaks out with Iran (it was weird to read this in the wake of recent events in the real world), Stephen is assigned to the Athena, the only PC in existence, and dispatched with his crew to the Middle East.

This is awkward, because Stephen, in middle age, has just found Katy, the love of his life. But duty is in his blood, and he must go to war.

Under Stephen’s inspired command, the Athena punches well above its weight, even destroying a much larger ship. It takes a while for his crew to warm to him – they think him old, they don’t understand his jokes or his Shakespeare quotations, and sometimes his actions make no sense to them (as when he forbids porn aboard his ship). But when a group of Somali pirates hijack a French cruise ship off the horn of Africa, and begin executing prisoners at the rate of one per hour, Captain Rensselaer and the Athena meet their destiny. Because their orders are to stay out of it, but there’s a higher law – a law that may demand the highest price from a warrior.

I saw echoes of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in The Oceans and the Stars, and also of Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. No doubt there were other references I missed. The book engaged me entirely, keeping me up when I wanted to go to sleep. It bears comparison with Helprin’s excellent earlier anti-war novel, A Soldier of the Great War. But that book focused on the futility of war, where the finest souls and most heroic deeds were thrown away in a meaningless cause. In The Oceans and the Stars, the cause is not meaningless, but the souls and the deeds are unappreciated or even punished. Nevertheless, there is no question that right is right, and that moral choices matter in a Higher Court.

I loved it. I recommend it highly. Cautions for chilling descriptions of terrorist atrocities.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Detective,’ by Arthur Hailey

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I’m old enough to remember when the late Arthur Hailey was riding high on a string of bestsellers, some of which (like Airport) were made into big movies. I never read any of his books myself, though. When his final novel, Detective, became available cheap, I figured I’d give him a try.

Final judgment: By all accounts this is his weakest novel, but even so it leaves me with no desire whatever to read any more of them.

Malcolm Ainslie is a Miami police detective. He’s headed out of the station to start a much-needed family vacation one day, when he gets an urgent call. Elroy Doil, a convicted serial killer Malcolm helped to put away, is scheduled for execution that evening. He’s announced that he wants to make a confession, but he’ll only talk to Malcolm.

The timing is terrible, and it demands a long, fast drive up to the prison in Raiford. But Malcolm can’t resist going. When he and his partner arrive, they have just a half hour to talk to Doil, who admits he committed most of the vicious torture killings he was accused of. But he swears one of them wasn’t his work.

Before being led to execution, Doil begs Malcolm for absolution, knowing that Malcolm is an ex-Catholic priest. Malcolm no longer has any faith, but he says a few words to comfort him.

This sets Malcolm on a course of investigation to learn whether one of the killings was actually a copycat. The answer to that will be a shock to the city and the nation.

Okay, what was good about Detective? I guess I’d have to say it’s educational. This is a police procedural and a half. Hailey was famous for researching the bejeebers out of a profession and then describing all its facets in detail in a book. He does this here.

And that’s about all I have to say positive about the book (though I did finish it). First of all, Hailey was a dull stylist. There’s not a spark of wit or lyricism in the whole manuscript. There were moments of excitement, but that was pure plotting, without the benefit of prose effects.

The fulsome, overstuffed quality extends to character descriptions. Whenever a character of any importance is introduced, we get treated to a few paragraphs of info dump about them. We learn, all in one gulp, about their childhoods, their careers, and what traumas made them what they are. This is an industrial, interchangeable-parts approach to storytelling – and it’s boring.

The big thing that annoyed me was that the book was preachy – from the negative side. The author has satisfied himself that all religion is bunk – though important, for some reason. But all sensible people have rejected organized religion. He wants you to understand that. The one priest in the book who actually believes the Faith is – of course – a strident caricature.

Also, the self-conscious political liberalism of the narrative is kind of amusing, considering what’s happened in the decades since the book was published in the 1990s. We’re treated to a sort of old Disney fantasy of an egalitarian society where racial integration is succeeding beautifully, and everybody coexists happily. Little did Hailey expect that this model would not satisfy the Left, who’d soon be calling for the whole cultural edifice to be incinerated.

Detective was not a very good book.

Blogs, Socials, Fiction, Reviews

A flattering review of ‘King of Rogaland’

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“Dangerosa Jones” at the Regular Rules on Substack has posted a highly flattering review of King of Rogaland:

This combination of history and myth produces a ripping yarn. There is no other way to put it. Father Ailill and Erling are by no means perfect. They are holy warriors only in the most flawed and human of ways — this makes them interesting, multi-dimensional, and armed, a compelling combination. I do not like the popular form taken by current fantasy novels, most of the time, as I find the characters shallow and the conflicts contrived. These books are the exception that proves the rule.

Read it all here.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Ice in the Blood,’ by Kevin Wignall

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She sighed and said, “He’s quite sweet, actually, beneath all the company bluff and bluster. I kept thinking of Graham Greene the whole time I was with him.”

Jay didn’t get the reference.

“I don’t follow.”

“I mean, I think he’ll end up dead, sooner than later.”

I think of Graham Greene myself, actually, whenever I read a Kevin Wignall novel. The difference is that I find Greene wholly opaque to my comprehension, while I quite enjoy Wignall. On the other hand, Greene has a moral center (though I may differ with his judgments), while I’m never sure what Wignall wants me to think about his characters.

Jay Lewis, hero of Ice in the Blood, is a former CIA agent, now working freelance private security. Currently he’s living on the French Riviera, heading up security for Vitali Petrov, a Belorussian general who’s planning a coup in his home country. He has the support of the US and Britain. However, Jay is in fact a double agent, working for an undisclosed employer to thwart the coup.

Jay’s seen and done most everything, but he’s not prepared for the sudden appearance of a former girlfriend who has brought along a ten-year-old boy whom she says is Jay’s son (Jay never knew he existed). She’s a peaceful person, a career relief worker. She doesn’t know how to handle a boy like this Owen, who is obviously Jay’s son to anyone who looks at them both, and possesses what seems like an innate talent for intrigue and violence.

The woman disappears before Jay can figure out a way to put her off, leaving Owen in his care. Well, he’ll have to find someone to look after him, but that will take a few days to arrange. In the meantime, he lets the boy tag along with him. Owen clearly hungers for a male role model, and Jay quickly warms to him, even finding him useful as camouflage and as a source of information. Especially when Owen makes friends with Petrov’s son. A plan begins to gel in Jay’s mind – but it will involve putting Owen at some degree of risk.

But what if Owen wants to be just like his dad?

In a story like this, one expects the hero to learn heartwarming lessons about love and responsibility as parenthood changes him inwardly. And that does happen to some extent. But it’s a lot more complex than that, and in the end I wasn’t sure what to make of the story’s resolution.

But it was a good story, well-told, vivid, and exciting. I enjoyed it, but I’m not sure it didn’t corrupt me a little.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Madison P.I.’ by Brian Clements

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We’re dealing here with a book I got as a free sample (not an uncommon thing). Madison P.I. is the third book in a series by Brian Clements starring Joe Bamberg, a former local news reporter in his home town of Madison, Alabama. Having solved a couple crimes in previous books, he’s now set up as a private eye.

The first client to come to his office is an eighteen-year-old girl named Riley Evans. Riley is concerned about her mother, who’s been missing for three days. Turns out the woman is a degenerate gambler with a drinking problem, and Riley has been more or less mothering her mother. She came to Joe because her mother told her she’d dated him briefly as a young woman. This is true, but it doesn’t make Joe any more comfortable.

Things get puzzling when the local sheriff, instead of cooperating or even giving him the cold shoulder, actually bars Joe from having any contact with the police. Joe will have to intrude on some of the seediest locations in the area in order to find Riley’s mother. And the girl insists on accompanying him most of the time. Surprisingly, she’s actually helpful sometimes.

The writing in Madison P.I. wasn’t bad. The plotting was a little rough, but also not bad. I did have trouble with some moments when Joe seems to act out of character, as when he subdues a professional thug with a few moves learned in a self-defense course.

Still, this wasn’t a bad book. I probably won’t read any more in the series, due to the author’s somewhat sanctimonious liberalism, as when he repeatedly denigrates the Second Amendment, yet has his hero save his life more than once with a concealed carry weapon. Also, I disliked Joe’s opinion that it’s always okay to steal from insurance companies.

Oh yes — it ends in a cliffhanger, which annoys me.

But Madison P.I. isn’t bad at all for a self-published mystery.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Supremacy License,’ by Alan Lee

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(Back from Høstfest in Minot. No incidents to report, and my book sales were excellent. Remind me to tell you someday about being a “Høstfest VIP,” which isn’t as good as it sounds.)

I have complained more than once about novels that seem intended to compete with mindless Hollywood thrillers – stories where the hero races from one violent confrontation to another, shrugging off “flesh wounds,” shaking his head and recovering immediately from head trauma, crashing cars and blowing up buildings rapidly enough to prevent the reader from pondering the improbability of the whole frothy concoction.

However, it’s possible for the Hollywood thriller novel to work as light entertainment – if the author has writing skill and a sense of humor. Those qualities won me over almost immediately as I read The Supremacy License.

Our main character is Manny Martinez, code name “Sinatra,” whom I knew previously from author Lee’s Mackenzie August novels (which I also like very much). Manny is an improbable character, a former gang member, drug addict and convict who has cleaned his life up to become the most gung-ho, super-American US Marshal ever. He has devils he wrestles with, but his friendship with Mack, his job, and his love of country keep him on the straight path. He is also, we are reminded, devastatingly attractive to women and a deadly fighter.

As the story opens, Manny is summoned to a meeting with high-level FBI agents. They offer him a job – not full time but sort of on-call – as a special agent for a super-secret domestic black ops group. He would be helping to eliminate criminals so dangerous the government can’t even acknowledge their existence. His partner, oddly, would be Noelle Beck, a demure Mormon data analyst who harbors a secret crush on him.

Manny’s all in from the word go. Anything he can do to serve the USA he’ll do, and the more dangerous the better. His first job is one for which he’s uniquely qualified – to arrest or kill a powerful Honduran terrorist who happens to be his former girlfriend.

Two things made The Supremacy License a lot of fun – Manny’s personality, a blend of tongue-in-cheek arrogance and genuine moral nobility, plus his complete, reckless fearlessness in action. I liked Manny a lot, and I look forward to following his further preposterous adventures. Well done.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Romeo’s Justice,’ by James Scott Bell

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This will be a short review – probably shorter than the book deserves. But I’m busy playing Viking in Minot, snatching a few minutes before bedtime, and I’m kind of tired (the festival is going fine; thanks for asking). Anyway, I love all the Mike Romeo books, so what is there new to say about Romeo’s Justice?

Mike Romeo, erudite Los Angeles private eye working for Ira, an ex-Mossad attorney, beats up an obnoxious type at the very start of the book, just to set the tone. The guy deserved it. Then he has a date with his girlfriend Sophie, who is learning to coexist with Mike’s forceful ways.

Ira asks Mike to take on a case from Noel Auden, a mother whose son recently (ostensibly) committed suicide. He had left their Catholic faith to explore spirituality at a school called the Roethke Spiritual Center, out near the Salton Sea. According to his suicide note, he did it because of global climate change, but Noel wants to be sure, in light of the seriousness of suicide in Catholic doctrine.

Mike goes out and starts poking around, asking questions. As you’d expect, there is pushback from some nasty characters, as well as from the police, most of whom are in the pay of a local energy tycoon. But that’s all in a day’s work for Mike Romeo.

Romeo’s Justice was not full of surprises, but it was full of Mike’s personality and Bell’s prose, the things that bring us back. Important issues are addressed. A resolution is found in the end.

Good book. Well worth the price.