Writing

A skald’s reward

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Egil Skallagrimsson, from a 17th Century Icelandic manuscript.

Egil sat down and put his shield at his feet. He was wearing a helmet and laid his sword across his knees, and now and again he would draw it half-way out of the scabbard, then thrust it back in. He sat upright, but with his head bowed low…. He wrinkled one eyebrow right down onto his cheek and raised the other up to the roots of his hair…. He refused to drink even when served, but just raised and lowered his eyebrows in turn.

King Athelstan was sitting in the high seat, with his sword laid across his knees too. And after they had been sitting there like that for a while, the king unsheathed his sword, took a fine, large ring from his arm and slipped it over the point of the sword, then stood up and handed it over the fire to Egil. Egil stood up, drew his sword and walked out onto the floor. He put his sword through the ring and pulled it towards him, then went back to his place. The king sat down in his high seat. When Egil sat down, he drew the ring onto his arm, and his brow went back to normal. He put down his sword and helmet and took the drinking horn that was served to him, and finished it. Then he spoke a verse….

The passage above comes from the Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson (from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders). It’s a rather famous scene, in which we get to observe some of the nuances of the ancient poet-king dynamic. Egil is considered the greatest poet (skald) in the world, and he’s well aware of it. Even at the court of Athelstan the Great of England, one of a skald’s A-list gigs, he feels entitled to a certain level of appreciation. At this point he doesn’t feel he’s been getting it, and his passive-aggressive show produces a mollifying response from the great king. Egil is a prima donna, and prima donnas must have their due.

All of this is only vaguely connected with my theme tonight, but it came to my mind as an illustration. My own case is that I don’t feel unrewarded. I feel rewarded in the very best way.

It came to me during my morning writing session today. There are few satisfactions in life to match that of reading something you’ve composed and being able to say, “You know, that’s pretty good. That’s what I’d like to read in a book myself.”

And I thought, what rewards do I have as a author? There’s the pleasure of seeing my work published (though I have to admit there’s less satisfaction in viewing an e-book than in holding a genuine printed volume. But I’ve had that pleasure too). There’s money – though my books have brought little of that. There’s fame – which has eluded me thus far. Has the king withheld my gold ring?

No, I realized. The work itself is my best reward. I know I’m writing this book for myself when I was twelve years old, desperately longing for a good Viking novel to read. And I think I’m getting the job done. No amount of money could buy that satisfaction.

Don’t get me wrong. I’ll take money and fame if they’re offered. But in a pinch this is enough.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Traitors Gate,’ by Jeffrey Archer

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I got a deal offer on Jeffrey Archer’s latest novel, Traitors Gate. I figured that since I’d never read any of his books, I might as well give one a chance.

Verdict: I can understand why Archer is a popular author. But Traitors Gate never really gripped me.

William Warwick is a high-ranking officer with the London police force. Among his duties is serving as part of the security detail that transports the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London to Buckingham Palace on state occasions. Another member of the detail is Ross Hogan, his best friend. A further thing they share is a common enemy – a high society con man named Miles Faulkner. Warwick and Hogan have stopped Faulkner’s schemes before, and early in this story they foil him in an attempted art theft. Faulkner vows revenge and hits on a plan to steal the Crown Jewels – not to sell them, but simply to publicly humiliate Warwick and Hogan, and ruin their careers.

Traitors Gate was technically impeccable. It delivered the kind of thriller excitement advertised on the cover. But for this reader, it all seemed pretty superficial. I didn’t really believe in the characters, and it all seemed kind of overprocessed, like white bread.

This book is part of an ongoing series. One challenge series authors always face is whether to describe characters who’ve been described in previous volumes. It’s always been my practice to assume the reader has started with this book, and provide new descriptions. It doesn’t take long, and it’s not hard to make it natural. But Archer doesn’t bother with that. Only new characters get descriptions, and even attributes like racial identity – not entirely irrelevant to this story – may be withheld until half-way through the book.

So, I’d say all in all Traitors Gate is a good airport book, one that will keep you entertained and not bother you at all with any deeper themes or moral challenges.

Uncategorized

‘There’s Something In the Barn’

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A Facebook friend alerted me to the movie trailer above. “There’s Something In the Barn.” It’s not one I worked on, nor have heard of it before. Not my kind of thing, really, but some of you might find it amusing. As I’ve often mentioned, I just don’t get horror. I think this springs from being a coward. It takes a braver person than I to enjoy being scared. Let alone to laugh about it.

The take on the “barn elf” here is an interesting one. One would never actually call them barn elves in Norway, I’m pretty sure. As mentioned in my novels, the Hidden Folk don’t like to be called by name. You call them the Good Neighbors, or the Little Old Men, or something like that. And, as the movie emphasizes, offending them is nothing to be undertaken lightly.

It’s basically a reversal on the sweet – but overly sentimental – picture offered in the classic commercial below, released by the Tine Dairy Products Company back in 2017:

You can make a good Christian argument that the horror version is more appropriate. The church traditionally has considered the Hidden Folk to be demons (probably).

There’s a theory that all horror is conservative. I’m not sure that’s true, but I think you can make a good case that Horror as a genre is conservative in its essence, if not in all its instantiations. (Instantiations is a lovely word I learned in Library School).

Got my tree decorated today. And I found a section in The Baldur Game that I think I’ll have to cut, or at least reduce to its bare bones. Like a victim in a horror story.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Dead In the Dark,’ by Stephen Booth

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I got a deal on Dead In the Dark, which proved to be the 17th volume of an 18-book police series by Stephen Booth. The series, as best I can discern, centers on the relationship between Inspector Ben Cooper and Detective Sergeant Diane Fry, but at this point she’s been reassigned to a sort of major crimes unit in a different area (they both live and work in Devonshire, England). There seems to be some friction between them at this stage.

Ten years ago, a man named Reece Bower was accused of murdering his wife, who had disappeared without a trace. The police were ready to arrest him on circumstantial evidence when a plausible witness reported seeing the victim alive. The case went no further, but public opinion condemned Bower. Now he too has disappeared, equally inexplicably.

Meanwhile, DS Fry is part of a team investigating the murder of a Polish immigrant, found dead in his flat after being stabbed in an alley. Suspicions naturally turn to nationalist groups resentful of immigrants.

I think my unfamiliarity with the series left me at a disadvantage in reading Dead In the Dark. The characters seemed somewhat unfocused in my mind. The story seemed kind of wide-ranging and scattered, and the ultimate solution of Bower’s disappearance struck me as implausible.

There were political elements too. I think author Booth made some effort to be evenhanded, but in the usual English style he tends to equate the right wing with racism.

Still, the writing was good. Dead In the Dark wasn’t a bad novel, but it might be better to start reading the series closer to the beginning.

Music, Writing

The Long Serpent reaches metaphorical port

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Above, the folk song “Ormen Lange” (The Long Serpent). I think I’ve posted versions of this song a couple times previously, but in each case they were more authentic than this one. I believe the song itself derives from a Faroese chain dance song, and the original song structure is a little foreign to Americans. This version was recorded some years back by a Norwegian folk group called the Wanderers, who dumbed it down a little, making it something I personally enjoy a little more.

And why do I post yet another version of a song I’ve already bored you with (at least) twice? Because it’s about King Olaf Trygvesson and his long ship, and he was Erling Skjalgsson’s brother-in-law, and this post is my public announcement that this past Saturday, I completed my (apparent) life’s work. At least in first draft. I finished the job of getting the essential story of The Baldur Game all down on paper. Or screen. In written form, in any case. There’s lots of revising and reviewing and rewriting to do yet, but the story is tentatively finished. I know how it comes out. I’ve typed END at the end.

The author is generally the last to know whether a story is any good, of course. But I’m pleased. This is, I think, the book I always wanted to write.

If I have not created deathless art, I have at least realized my delusion, like a mad scientist in a B movie.

Music

Advent Singing: Veni, Veni, Emmanuel (O Come, O Come, Emmanuel)

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Our first hymn of the advent season is the Latin version of O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. These words have been traced to the eighth century when the medieval church chanted ‘O’ Antiphons during Vespers on the final days of advent. At least, that’s when they were established in church liturgy. There is a bit of evidence suggesting they were prayed or chanted before that. The tune we use is from a Requiem Mass in a fifteenth-century French Franciscan Processional.

The English words we’re familiar with come from Englishman John M. Neale in 1851. I have copied the words sung below the next video, showing a processional in the Basel Cathedral of Switzerland.

“Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14 ESV).

Veni, veni Emmanuel;
Captivum solve Israel,
Qui gemit in exilio,
Privatus Dei Filio.

Refrain
Gaude! Gaude! Emmanuel,
Nascetur pro te, Israel!

Veni o Jesse virgula!
Ex hostis tuos ungula,
De specu tuos tartari
Educ, et antro barathri.
Refrain

Veni, veni, O Oriens;
Solare nos adveniens,
Noctis depelle nebulas,
Dirasque noctis tenebras.
Refrain

Veni, Clavis Davidica!
Regna reclude caelica;
Fac iter tutum superum,
Et claude vias inferum.
Refrain

Authors, Bookselling, Publishing

Christmas Books by Dickens and Thackeray

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I’d say most Americans who know anything about Charles Dickens know that he wrote A Christmas Carol and maybe something else, like The Oliver Twist and Shout. Something they won’t know (and I didn’t either) is that A Christmas Carol was only the first of Dickens’s Christmas tales, which he produced as the Christmas book market was changing with the publication of seasonal annuals.

Leaning again on Joseph Shaylor’s 1912 book on publishing and bookselling, A Christmas Carol was released a few days prior to Christmas Day 1843 for five shillings a copy. Due to his publisher’s waning faith, Dickens had to argue for this work to be its own book and agreed to pay all costs, his publisher receiving a commission. That wasn’t cheap. The original run of 6,000 books sold in a day, but Dickens earned only £250. Interest held for the following year, selling 15,000 copies and earning the author £726.

(For comparison, a solicitor’s clerk could earn 18-25 shillings/week, launderers 2 ½ shillings/day, female upholsters 9-11 shillings/week, and butlers £40-100/year. One pound is made of 20 shillings. Taken from The Dictionary of Victorian London)

By November 1844, Dickens had written The Chimes: A Goblin Story of Some Bells that Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In, and it sold better than its famous predecessor. In 1845, Dickens released The Cricket on the Hearth, which reportedly sold twice as much as The Chimes did. Next, he released The Battle of Life in 1846, which doesn’t have a Christmas theme. No word on how well it was received, but Shaylor does describe it as the last of Dickens’s Christmas books “as it was found impossible to maintain the high standard that the first volumes had reached, and as the books were rather expensive.” The Spectator closed its 1846 review, saying, “The name of the writer, and the holyday disposition of people to spend their money, may circulate the book; but if this experiment upon the public be repeated, Mr. Dickens will find that a trade carried on without the requisite capital must come to a stop.”

Dickens took another swing at it with The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain in 1848. It reportedly sold 18,000 copies and made the author £800. (I wonder if he continued to bankroll their publication.)

Perhaps spurred by Dickens’s seeming success, William Makepeace Thackeray published Mrs. Perkins’s Ball with his own illustrations as an 1847 Christmas book, the same year Vanity Fair was released. He reportedly wrote a mock critical review of Mrs. Perkin’s Ball, ‘realizing’ midway through that he had written it himself. The success of this Christmas book encouraged him to release these titles in each of the following years: Our Street (1848), Doctor Birch (1849), Rebecca and Rowena (1850), and The Kickleburys on the Rhine (1851). The last book was advertised “to be ready on December 16, for the annual edification of Christmas parties” in illustrated editions for seven shillings, six pence, or without illustrations for five shillings.

An illustration by Thackeray from his book Mrs. Perkins's Ball.

“Grand Polka,” an illustration by Thackeray from Mrs. Perkins’s Ball (Wikimedia Commons Public Domain)

For a few Saturday links:

C.S. Lewis: Aaron Earls offers a passage from The Horse and His Boy as one that always makes him cry. I understand. I can still hear the voice of the reader of this passage from an LP I listened to repeatedly as a kid.

Wartime Christmas: Writing in 1915, Arthur Machen asks how we should handle celebrating Christmas during the Great War. “[W]e grown-ups, like the wealthy dealers, can look after ourselves in this matter of presents. It is the children that we should think of chiefly, and we should determine that no shadow of the war shall be allowed to spoil their Christmas.” He mentions puzzles at the end. I wonder what he would have thought of these marvelous wooden puzzles.

Utopia: Étienne Cabet and his 1840 Voyage en Icarie (Travels in Icaria), “was so popular and affecting that it led hundreds of French citizens to leave their homes and journey to the United States to realize the egalitarian paradise he had described.” As it fell apart, the author blamed the women.

Feature Illustration: Kyd (Joseph Clayton Clarke), “Character Sketches from Charles Dickens,” Wikimedia Commons Public Domain

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Fire Pit,’ by Chris OUld

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In the Faroes you’re overshadowed by mountains wherever you go, and now – in their absence – I realized I’d got used to their overbearing presence, like a stern father, always looking on disapprovingly.

I’ve raved about the previous two novels in Chris Ould’s Faroes series, and I’m happy to report that The Fire Pit is just as good. Maybe better. It is unclear whether the series is intended to go on from here, as most of the unresolved plot threads from the previous books get tied up here. But I hope there will be more.

Suspended English detective Jan Reyna is still in the Faroes when The Fire Pit begins, but he’s preparing to leave. He needs to go home and settle his problems on the job, one way or the other. But first he’s stopping off in Denmark, to see the place where his mother committed suicide when he was 5 years old, and see if he can spark any memories. While he’s there, his autistic Danish researcher will discover that his mother worked at a secretive mental institution, which she fled suddenly just before her death.

Meanwhile, his Faroese detective friend Hjalti Hentze must investigate the apparent suicide of a reclusive man. Then he’s called to the site of an abandoned hippie commune from the 1970s. There two skeletons have been discovered in secret graves – an adult woman and a female child. This is the same commune where Jan’s mother lived for a while – and before long Hjalti will be joining Jan in Denmark, their mysteries having merged.

The Fire Pit (and all the Faroes mysteries) are exactly the kind of detective novels I like best. Although there is action and suspense, the emphasis is on character and motive. There’s even a moment of Christian wisdom (though provided, sadly, by a woman pastor).

I was also pleased that Horsens, Denmark, where my Danish ancestors hailed from, gets a couple mentions.

I highly recommend The Fire Pit along with its predecessors. Top-notch Scandinavian Noir, unmarred by nihilism.

Writing

My journey with Erling

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Above, milestones in my pilgrimage with Erling Skjalgsson. On top, me with Erling Skjalgsson’s memorial stone in Stavanger, sometime around 2003. Below that, me playing Viking at Hafrsfjord, on Erling’s turf, in 2022.

When I stand before the Last Judgment and the Lord asks me, “What did you do with the talent I entrusted to you?” my answer, I guess, will be, “Well, I spent about 50 years writing Erling’s saga.” Will that be a satisfactory answer? I don’t know.

Writing-wise, I’m deep in anticlimax territory now, just tying up loose ends. I don’t think I’ll be done with the first draft of The Baldur Game tomorrow, but it will be soon. There’ll still be plenty of work left to do, of course – editing, polishing, tying up plot threads. But the tale will essentially be told very soon now, the formation formed. A stage on my journey finished.

I don’t remember exactly when it was that I first settled on Erling Skjalgsson as the Viking hero I’d write about. Reading Heimskringla, the sagas of the kings of Norway, I always found him a puzzling character. The main episodes where he showed up were impressive. Snorri Sturlusson, the author, must have had a soft spot for him. We meet him first when his powerful kinsmen offer him as a bridegroom for King Olaf Trygvesson’s sister, and he surprises everyone by turning down the title of jarl (and the more you understand about Norse society, the more surprising that decision is). Then he gets mentioned here and there, first as a supporter of Olaf Trygvesson, then as an opponent of (Saint) Olaf Haraldsson. We learn that, to his credit, he runs a self-help program to help his slaves buy their freedom. He really stands out when he rescues his nephew Asbjorn from the king’s justice in a dramatic scene at Avaldsnes, And at last Snorri gives him a stirring, Alamo-style death scene. But there’s also the suggestion that he’s a traitor.

I realized Erling was local to me. Sola, where he lived, was not far at all from where some of my ancestors came from, near Stavanger. And Avaldsnes was where my great-grandfather Walker grew up.

But what clinched it for me was acquiring  enough historic insight to understand what Erling was all about. It may have been reading Prof. Torgrim Titlestad (whose book I’d later translate) that helped me to get it, or maybe I’d begun to work it out myself as my political sensibilities matured. I honestly can’t remember. But Erling suddenly fit all the criteria I’d begun setting when I first pondered writing a Viking novel as a kid.

Of course it still didn’t come together until, sometime in the late 1980s, I guess, while I was living in Florida, Father Ailill burst on my mind. Ailill would be my bridge character, my hobbit – the Everyman who’d interpret the Viking world for the reader. I thought, “I can make this work.”

Remains to be seen, of course, but I like how it’s coming along.

When I’m not feeling melancholy about saying goodbye.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘A Short History of Nearly Everything,’ by Bill Bryson

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There seemed to be a mystifying universal conspiracy among textbook authors to make certain the material they dealt with never strayed too near the realm of the mildly interesting and was always at least a long-distance phone call from the frankly interesting.

Back in the 1970s, one of the most fascinating programs on television was broadcast (in the US) on PBS – a short English series called “Connections,” hosted by James Burke. Burke, a somewhat odd-looking fellow in a sort of leisure suit, took the viewer on a journey through time, tracing how some remote phenomenon in history, like a variety of medieval cargo ship, led through various permutations to the invention of plastics. What made the show work was that Burke kept it down-to-earth (often funny) and related his science to intriguing personalities, events, and places.

I thought of “Connections” often as I read Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything, which I’d been meaning to read, but hadn’t gotten around to until its 20th anniversary of publication (I got a deal on it; it pays to be patient). The book is a history of science, very, very long, but fascinating from front to back.

Author Bryson alternates his chapters between descriptions of the universe and its laws as we understand them, and the pageant of how humans discovered those laws. What makes the book work is, first of all, his knack for helping the non-scientist think about counterintuitive concepts and massive numbers (“you can get some idea of the proportions if you bear in mind that one atom is to the width of a millimeter line as the thickness of a sheet of paper is to the height of the Empire State Building”), along with no reluctance at all to showcase the eccentric or petty sides of revered scientists (to his credit, he also likes doing justice to researchers who’ve been elbowed aside by the spotlight-seekers).

The overall goal seems to be to wow the reader with how amazing and complex our universe is (and to admit how much we still don’t know about it). The book is full of Wow! moments. Bryson clearly loves his material, and he’s eager as a kid to share his delight. 400 pages worth.

Being me, I found some things in his narrative that he probably didn’t intend. The incredible complexity of life and its structures seems to me to suggest intelligent design (though Bryson carefully avoids that subject, seeming to pooh-pooh any idea of a Creator. But that approach leaves a lot of questions unanswered – surely as many questions as faith leaves unanswered).

The big problem with A Short History of Nearly Everything – for this reader – was sheer input overload. The information provided includes a lot of doomsday talk – we’re told how likely it is that we’ll collide with an asteroid, or suffer another extinction-level pandemic. When he tried to raise our enthusiasm for environmental causes, I felt more inclined to sit back and say, “Yeah, well, you just told me the Yellowstone Caldera is long overdue to erupt and kill us all; it hardly seems worth the effort.”

Nevertheless, A Short History of Nearly Everything is a tremendous book and well deserving of its classic status (even if some of its science is outdated now). I recommend it highly. You’ll find a lot of arguments for Intelligent Design here, even if that wasn’t the intention.