{"id":16428,"date":"2022-02-21T18:53:38","date_gmt":"2022-02-21T23:53:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=16428"},"modified":"2022-02-21T18:53:38","modified_gmt":"2022-02-21T23:53:38","slug":"the-wanderer-by-michael-ridpath","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/?p=16428","title":{"rendered":"‘The Wanderer, by Michael Ridpath"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From time to time <\/strong>I run across a mystery related to the Vikings or the sagas. Usually I am disappointed. The research tends to be cursory, and I find many historical nits to pick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Ridpath\u2019s The Wanderer <\/a><\/em>was different. I have a few criticisms, but they don\u2019t fall on the research side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is part of a series about an Icelandic-American detective named Magnus (one of the things you need to get used to \u2013 accurately \u2013 is the general use of first names where we\u2019d use last names. This is due to Icelandic patronymic naming conventions. Our hero\u2019s full name is Magnus Jonson, but the Jonson part is rarely used. Magnus was born in Iceland but raised in the US, where he was a policeman in Boston for some years. But now he\u2019s home in Iceland and is a police detective there. He doesn\u2019t really feel at home in either place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s a young female historian named Eyglo, who made an international name for herself with a documentary about Viking women. Now she\u2019s working with a British crew on a documentary about Gudrid the Far-Traveled, Erik the Red\u2019s daughter-in-law who made it both to America and to Rome during her lifetime. They\u2019re particularly excited about a couple new discoveries they\u2019ll be highlighting. One is a letter from Columbus himself, recently discovered in the Vatican library, that details a trip to Iceland where he acquired sailing directions for a land to the west. The other is a string of wampum \u2013 shells used by Native Americans for money \u2013 found in an archaeological dig at Gudrid\u2019s farm in Iceland. The shells have been sourced to Nantucket, which indicates that Nantucket must have been the site of a Viking settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then a young Italian woman, also an archaeologist, is murdered near Gudrid\u2019s farm. Murder is rare in Iceland, and Magnus is assigned to this important case. He will learn that archaeologists don\u2019t just dig things up \u2013 sometimes they bury them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, The Wanderer<\/em> was well-written. The dialogue was good; the story moved right along. My main quibble was a flavor of political correctness, which is not surprising in our time. It wasn\u2019t preachy, just present in the background. Some of the characters\u2019 actions, it seemed to me, were only plausible on the basis of pop gender dogma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I wouldn\u2019t call this book Scandinavian Noir. It lacked that suicidal, Kierkegaardian tang. Which is all to the good, in my opinion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All in all, I found The Wanderer<\/em> surprisingly good, and I recommend it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From time to time I run across a mystery related to the Vikings or the sagas. Usually I am disappointed. The research tends to be cursory, and I find many historical nits to pick. Michael Ridpath\u2019s The Wanderer was different. I have a few criticisms, but they don\u2019t fall on the research side. The book … Continue reading ‘The Wanderer, by Michael Ridpath<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,15],"tags":[4074,4072,4073],"class_list":["post-16428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reviews","tag-magnus-iceland-mysteries","tag-michael-ridpath","tag-the-wanderer"],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16429,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16428\/revisions\/16429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brandywinebooks.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}