I think I mentioned that I did a podcast interview for Baen Books a couple weeks back, about the “Vikings” TV series. I wasn’t aware it had been posted — last week, I think. Anyway, if you go here, you can scroll down and listen to the one second from the top.
Hailstone Mountain can be purchased for Kindle here.
I returned my attention to the fine day. Sola farm, named for the sunny southern slope on which it stood, gave a generous view of the country south along the Norwegian coast. Looking that way I had the blue sea to my right, bending into Sola Bay whose wicked surf was our constant chorus. We tasted the brine in the air always, like breakfast fish. Stretching southward was the unremarkable but rich country of Jaeder, flat by Norwegian standards and rocky, good country for raising grain and digging peat.
I could not see north as I stood, but just so you’ll know, there was more of the same kind of country in that direction, interrupted by the great water of the Hafrsfjord, the land stretching northward toward the tip of Jaeder, which is a peninsula ending in the Boknafjord. Off to our east was more of the Boknafjord and Erling’s winter market of Stavanger, with mountains beyond, and north over the water was the rest of Norway, a rocky and mountainous country fit only for goats and trolls if you want my opinion.
I tell you this to explain why Erling was a busy man. Norway, “the north road,” is a long land, and ships go ever up and down the coast, for trade mostly, but also for war. If you’re coming from the south, around the southern tip at Lindesness, you pass the regions of Agder and Jaeder. Agder and Jaeder are niggling for harbors. The first good harbors are up in our country, at Risa and in the Hafrsfjord.
So if you mean to make that trip, it’s good to be on friendly terms with Erling Skjalgsson, lord of Sola. One may, with luck and a fair wind, pass by Erling’s country on a long summer day, but it’s not a thing to gamble on.
All this had been true even before the late King Olaf Trygvesson gave Erling, his brother-in-law, lordship over the country from Lindesness all the way north to Stad, thus adding another good day’s sail to our reach.
True, this lordship was disputed now, Olaf Trygvesson being dead at the bottom of the Baltic and his enemies Jarl Erik and Jarl Svein ruling up in Nidaros as sworn men of Svein Forkbeard, the king of Denmark.
But Erling Skjalgsson was not a man to give ground to trifles like kings and mortality. He ruled as he had ruled, and his enemies had failed to take that rule from him. Change seemed even less likely now that Jarl Erik had been summoned to help his king chastise the English.
Hailstone Mountain can be purchased for Kindle here.
At last the girl Freydis came into view, yellow-haired and buxom, leaping the fence lightly (giving me a glimpse of a pretty ankle whether I liked or not) and running lightly through the grass to her uncle, Lemming. Her uncle stopped what he was doing and gave her his full attention, as he ever did.
“I need a new ribbon,” she said. “A blue one, to braid in my hair. Deirdre has some she wove. She’ll trade me one for one of your bronze pins.”
Lemming summoned his strength and said, “No.”
Freydis pouted and asked, “Why?” She was a master pouter, that girl. God had given her a fair, plump mouth and she knew how to use it to get her way, as many men had learned, even men better defended (like me) against her whims than Lemming. Continue reading Hailstone Mountain, Snippet Three
Kenyon High School, photo: LakesnWoods.com
They have begun tearing down my old high school in Kenyon, Minnesota, pictured above. Nobody needed a building that size in the town, and it was full of asbestos, I understand.
I’m less sad about this than I was when I first heard the idea broached. As I think back, I realize that I don’t actually have a lot of good memories of the place. Although it’s sad that future tour guides will not be able to show pilgrims on Lars Walker heritage tours the place where the author studied and skipped the prom.
I wonder if there’s a cosmic maximum number of alma maters I’m allowed to have. I cheated by going to three different colleges, so now that I’ve signed up for graduate school one of the previous ones has to go.
I should mention that if you have an established book blog and would like a free review e-copy of Hailstone Mountain, I can arrange to get you one.
CHAPTER I
I sat on the stone home-field fence, watching Lemming in the meadow. The big, ugly smith was doing his sword drill, as was his daily custom. Dividing an unseen circle in the air again and again, swinging Smith’s Bane, the heirloom sword Erling Skjalgsson had given him, with a corded arm that never seemed to weary, making whistling sounds in the air. It was a beautiful bright day in spring, an uncommon enough event to make me wish to sit in the sun and revel a bit. A seagull lit a little distance away to make a meal of something he’d snatched. Another gull flew in to dispute it with him, and they squabbled loudly, using their beaks on one another. The disputed prize, I saw at last, was a bloody seagull chick.
“He’s good,” said a voice, and I turned my head to see Erling Skjalgsson coming up behind me, tall and fair, dressed in a blue linen summer shirt.
“I suppose he is. He’s been in fights enough and he still lives. I’m no judge of swordsmanship. My folk weren’t fine enough for swords. An axe for me, when I must needs fight.”
“Would you like to learn?”
I smiled. “Steinulf once told me, ‘Seven days to learn to fight with an axe. Seven years to learn to use a sword.’”
Erling smiled too. “That’s about right. Still, you’ll be that much older seven years hence whatever you do. If you’d like to add swordsmanship to your skills, you’ve but to ask.”
“Thank you, but I think there are better ways for a priest to spend seven years.”
“Please yourself.” Erling settled his elbows on the stones and watched Lemming. “I wonder where he learned,” he said.
“What do you mean? He practices every day.”
“As you yourself pointed out, it takes seven years, more or less. It’s not been that long he’s had the sword. He was skilled from the day he filched that weapon from my father’s dead hand, though only new-freed, and no thrall is trained to the sword.”
“How do you explain it then?”
“I think Lemming wasn’t born a thrall. I think before his enthrallment he was raised as a warrior. We contrived to get a little of his story from him, as one pries meat from a mussel, how his brother was sacrificed and how Freydis is his niece, but there’s more to the story.”
“I suppose we could ask him.”
“Do you think it would do any good?”
“With Lemming? No.”
“I agree. But I do wonder.”
“And now so do I.” Continue reading Hailstone Mountain, Snippet Two
Edith Schaeffer, widow of the apologist Francis Schaeffer, passed away on March 30 at the age of 98. WORLD Magazine reports:
Among Edith Schaeffer’s greatest contributions to the world: her humanity, artistic nature, humility, and hospitality. Sometimes Sunday lunch boasted as many as 36 guests, but she always made more food than she expected to need. She made rolls by hand, forming them individually, sometimes into the shapes of snails, topping them with different kinds of seeds, and turning the leftover dough into cinnamon rolls. She would sometimes stop in the process of roll making to take a phone call, then pray for the caller. “You keep making the rolls,” she’d say to her assistant Mary Jane Grooms. “I’ll pray.”
I was in the same room with her once, a few years back, at L’Abri in Rochester, Minnesota. I didn’t introduce myself because, although it would have meant a lot to me, she looked very frail and I didn’t feel it was worth tiring her.
Absent from the body, present with the Lord.
A look at my sales figures suggests to me that I need to promote Hailstone Mountain, my new novel. So I’ll be doing some snippets. Here’s the first, actually the Prologue:
I sat in the darkness. The mountain-rats slept around me. I could see some of their forms in the firelight. My brown cat lay curled against my leg, purring soundlessly. They’d shared their supper with us—dried fish.
I felt no need of sleep just then. I’d slept a lot on my high stone bed.
“Are you awake, Outsider?” a voice asked. At first I thought it might be the cat speaking again, but then I saw it was a boy, one of the mountain-rats. Although I could not see him clearly, I thought I knew which one he was. Sixteen winters or so, with bright blue eyes.
“I’m awake, my son.”
“Why do you call me your son?”
“It’s what I call everyone. Son or daughter. It’s my business to be a father to people.”
“I never knew for sure who my father was.”
“That’s just why I’m here.”
“May I ask you a question, then, …Father?”
“Of course.”
“Have you been out in the great world?”
“Aye. And mean to be again.”
“Is it really there?” Continue reading Hailstone Mountain, Snippet One
I have slightly regretted posting a link to the episode map for Game of Thrones a few weeks ago. I must have forgotten what little I knew about the stories at the time. Since then, I have seen some plot synopsizes and other talk of it. I can’t say I want to see it or read Martin’s series.
Patheos has a brief review of both the shows and the novels, asking the writers to talk about how sex is handled. They say they saw a glorification of rape, no love anywhere, and a curiously distant feminism. Alan Noble writes, “In that a major theme of the series is human depravity, cruelty, and brokenness, it is appropriate that one of the most sacred and beautiful experiences in life should be depraved, cruel, and broken.”
I don’t have time for that.
Tim Keller remembers what Elizabeth Elliot told him about art.
Tissot, “The Sorrowful Mother”
It’s a darker than usual Good Friday for me. I just got word that my boss, the dean of our seminary, a gentle and godly man, passed away suddenly today. He just wrote me a recommendation for graduate school. It must have been one of the very last things he did in his office.
He sat across from me in my office about a week ago, and we discussed our ages. I said I was pretty old to start working for a Master’s. He said, “I’m a decade older than you, and I’m not planning to go anywhere.”
Is it good to die on Good Friday? A complicated question, as is the whole matter of “Good” Friday.
As far as I can tell, there are two major ways of explaining evil in the world (outside of the popular view that “it’s all garbage, so let’s just have a good time until we die”) today. One is what might be called the Buddhist Way, which understands evil to be an illusion, because existence itself is an illusion, so there’s no point getting upset.
The other is what I’ll call the Christian Way (though there are probably non-Christians who hold it in some variety). That way calls for citing the Old Testament statement that “God is a Man of War,” and believing that evil is real, but that He is in the process of defeating it.
Both ways have their problems, and cannot be proved by logic or science. But I know which suits me better. Continue reading Why it’s not called “Very Bad, No Good, Horrible Friday”