Fiction, Reading, Reviews

Saga reading report: ‘The Saga of Thord Menace’ and ‘The Saga of Ref the Sly’

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The Saga of Thord Menace

As usual at Viking events, I whiled away my quiet minutes this weekend by reading sagas from The Complete Sagas of Icelanders.

I read two. The first one, The Saga of Thord Menace, was of particular interest to me because it impinged (or intruded) on the family history of Erling Skjalgsson, the hero of my Viking novels.

You may recall “The Tale of Klypp the Hersir,” which I translated and posted a while back. That tale (from the Flatey Book saga collection) states that Klypp, just after avenging his wife’s honor on King Sigurd Sleva (translated as “Sigurd the Snake” here, though I’ve also seen it translated “Sleeve” and “Slobberer”), was slain by Ogmund Kaaresson, Erling’s grandfather and his own kinsman. But this saga identifies the killer as one Hroald Ogmundarsson, who would be, I assume, Ogmund Kaaresson’s son. However, I wouldn’t put much trust in this version – it’s a late saga, and not especially realistic.

The Thord of this saga is supposed to be a brother of Klypp’s, who went along with him to kill King Sigurd, and escaped with his other brothers. They flee to Iceland, where Thord ends up clashing with a man named Skeggi of Midfjord (a historical figure), who is said to have stolen the famous sword Skofnung from the grave of the Danish hero Hrolf Kraki. (The legend of Skofnung said that it must draw blood each time it was unsheathed). Most of the rest of the saga involves each one of the two men trying, repeatedly and unsuccessfully, to kill the other. However, Thord has adopted Skeggi’s son Eid as his foster-son, and Eid manages, time and again, to make peace between them.

A crudely amusing element in Thord the Menace’s Saga is the miserly old farmer Thorhall, who claims to be a friend to Thord, but always runs from a fight. For this he is repeatedly scolded by his young wife Olof. After Thorhall’s death, Thord marries Olof. I think this plot thread is intended by the saga writer as comic relief.

The Saga of Ref the Sly

The Saga of Ref the Sly (the name “Ref” actually means fox) follows a familiar fairy tale plot pattern – young Ref is a lazy lout, loafing around the home-fire while all the other boys and men are out working and fighting and competing in sports. Everybody laughs at him, and there are rumors that he’s effeminate (the translator actually uses the word “gay,” which I judge pretty anachronistic). However, when his father is dead and an aggressive neighbor starts pasturing his sheep on their family’s land – also killing their shepherd – Ref suddenly proves himself a formidable man. He kills the bad neighbor efficiently with a spear he made himself, and flees with his family to Greenland. Ref never returns to Iceland, but settles in Norway and Denmark respectively, dogged all the time by the kinsmen of the man he killed. He is skillful and inventive artisan and builder, often using inventions of his own to save his family’s lives (this saga is a little like the old “A Team” TV show in that way). In the end, he dies peacefully, on a pilgrimage to Rome.

One of Ref’s great enemies, we are told, is a member of King Harald Sigurdsson Hardrada’s bodyguard. King Harald (with the wisdom and foresight kings generally exhibit in sagas) grants the man permission to go on his vengeful journey, but warns him that he won’t succeed. I was amused by a description of a board game sent as a gift to King Harald from Greenland – it’s a set of gaming pieces, “both for the old game with one king and the new with two.” That would be a reference the old Viking game of hneftafl, and the “new” game of chess.

There’s also an intriguing moment when Ref’s uncle Gest calls on “The One Who Made the Sun,” an attempt to portray an old heathen as one who looked forward to the True Faith.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Action report, Viking Fest MN, weekend 1

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I have successfully survived the first weekend of the second annual Viking Fest Minnesota, in Farmington. I drove down and back each day, and am happy to report that I managed to accomplish that without killing my car off, this time around. There is extensive construction being done on Highway I-35, so the drive required a higher than usual level of situational awareness. Yet I passed the test.

Last year’s first weekend was unusually hot for October at this latitude, and it was the same this year. I sat under my sun shade/awning, which was occasionally in a position to shield me. I drank a lot of water and wore my broad-brimmed hat. Saturday was better business than Sunday.

If you were there last year, you may recall that I was located on the outside of the Historical Reenactors’ section, on the west side (I think it’s west) near the section’s entrance. This year I’m on the south side.

I will not share photos of that outside part of the festival, where I was located, which is generally (not always) Viking-themed Renaissance Faire stuff. Crytals and face painting, etc. But I’ve got a few shots of the serious reenactor area. Here’s a couple combat photos:

And here’s a guy whose tent was near mine (but on the Authentic side of the rope), who is carving out the bow of what will be a 27-foot Viking boat. The strakes will fit into the niches, which is how it’s done.

There’s one more weekend to come. It’s worth the visit.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Notice of Default,’ by Christ Lengquist

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A real estate detective is an original twist on the genre. And Chris Lengquist’s Notice of Default isn’t at all a bad story, though it’s not a novel but a novella.

Cal Brink is a former private eye who has turned to the quieter world of real estate sales in Olathe, Kansas. Unfortunately, there’s a recession on and business has been quiet.

He gets a phone call from a woman who refuses to identify herself. She just tells him there’s a real estate mystery to be found at a certain address. When he goes there, he finds the body of a woman stabbed to death.

After dealing with the police, Cal tells his wife about the case, and finds that she has some very good suggestions, based on her extensive community knowledge.

Notice of Default is not a thriller at all. It’s just an interesting little mystery yarn featuring well-realized characters. I quite enjoyed it, and wished it were longer.

Recommended.

Bookselling, Uncategorized

Viking Fest Minnesota 2026

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The above photo is almost exactly one year old. It features me, flogging my books at Viking Fest Minnesota in Farmington, Minnesota.

The festival goes on again this year, both this weekend and next. I plan, God willing, to be there for those days — God granting that I do not suffer car trouble as I did in 2025.

For more information, check out their web page here:

Fiction, Reviews

‘Paper Tigers,’ by Lou Aguilar

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“To understand that, you’d have to be one of us. Every day, we’re told how wonderful we are by wannabees and never-weres clinging to our ladder of success. But in our gut, we know that there but for the grace of God – if we believed in God – go we. The more insecure we get, the more virtue signaling we do.”

It’s always a pleasure to read a story that turns out to be conservative. Not that I was surprised by that discovery, as author Lou Aguilar is a well-known conservative journalist. Paper Tigers is a fun book, though I’m not sure it’s entirely successful as a story.

Nick Jarrett is a studly young aspiring newspaperman from Wyoming – a conservative and a Christian. Somehow (and this is the first great improbability in this book), he has snagged an entry-level job at no less a paper than the Washington Post. (This is at the beginning of Pres. Trump’s first term. That’s not stated specifically, but the clues are obvious.) The first day in the mail room, he meets the other newbies, one of whom is Laura London, a surpassingly beautiful young woman with whom he immediately strikes romantic sparks. Unfortunately, Laura is not only a committed liberal, but already in a relationship.

But Nick is blessed with a quantity of self-confidence most of us can only dream of. He manages, not only to make time with Laura, but to ferret out more than one big Washington story. Before the book is over, he’ll be faced with a choice between losing Laura or breaking the story of a major (and shameful) political scandal.

Paper Tigers was fun to read, and the writing was pretty good. I just had trouble with what I saw as a lot of wishful thinking. Conservative guy comes to Washington, like Mr. Smith but more cynical, manages to romance the beautiful girl and successfully score off the liberals, foiling their devious plans. I wish the world were like that.

On the other hand, I have no idea what it’s like to have great confidence, or to understand how to attract women. Maybe the story is more plausible than I think.

Cautions for adult situations (Nick may be a Christian, but he doesn’t hesitate to have sex before marriage). I don’t recall much offensive language.

I suspect most of our readers will enjoy Paper Tigers. Some probably more than I did, and I had quite a good time.

Religion

‘More enthusiasm!’

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When Elisha became sick with the illness of which he was to die, Joash the king of Israel came down to him and wept over him and said, “My father, my father, the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” Elisha said to him, “Take a bow and arrows.” So he took a bow and arrows. Then he said to the king of Israel, “Put your hand on the bow.” And he put his hand on it, then Elisha laid his hands on the king’s hands. He said, “Open the window toward the east,” and he opened it. Then Elisha said, “Shoot!” And he shot. And he said, “The LORD’S arrow of victory, even the arrow of victory over Aram; for you will defeat the Arameans at Aphek until you have destroyed them.” Then he said, “Take the arrows,” and he took them. And he said to the king of Israel, “Strike the ground,” and he struck it three times and stopped. So the man of God was angry with him and said, “You should have struck five or six times, then you would have struck Aram until you would have destroyed it. But now you shall strike Aram only three times.” (2 Kings 13:14-19)

Tonight’s topic: Underachieving kings with whom I identify.

The Old Testament passage above tells a story that’s always troubled me. I’m not saying I disapprove of Elisha. It just makes me feel awkward. Here we’ve got King Joash of Israel, a monarch who gets a mixed grade from the biblical writers. We’re told that he wasn’t as bad as a lot of other Israelite kings, but wasn’t as zealous as God would like.

Anyway, Joash hears that the prophet Elisha is dying, so he goes to visit him. (The phrase, “the chariots of Israel and its horsemen” is a metaphor – it means that Elisha’s influence was worth battalions to the national defense – as indeed it was.) Elisha gives him an assignment, which turns out to be a test. First he tells him to shoot an arrow out the window. Then he tells him to strike the ground with his arrows. Joash throws three arrows down – and quits.

This does not please Elisha – or, apparently, God either. Elisha tells Joash that he’d have the same number of victories as the arrows he struck on the ground. If he’d been more enthusiastic, he could have changed history. (“Now he tells me,” the king said, I suppose.)

That’s what bothers me. All my life I’ve felt that I’ve done the best I knew how, but it wasn’t considered good enough. Even if I did what I was told, I didn’t do it with enough enthusiasm. So I failed the test.

Same thing with King Saul in 1 Samuel 15. Saul has been commanded by the prophet Samuel to utterly wipe out the Amalekites – destroying even their livestock and property. Saul, in the flush of victory, takes some booty (and the king as a prisoner). Because of that, Samuel tells him God has rejected him as king. Saul grabs Samuel and tears his robe. Samuel tells Saul that God is going to tear his kingdom away from him in the same manner.

Seems pretty harsh, doesn’t it?

But I think my reflexive reaction misses the point. I don’t think God judged Joash or Saul simply on those single failures. I think the failures were symptomatic – they were being judged on their whole lives, and the dramatic scenes were just the moments when matters came to a head.

As Jordan Peterson (or Gregg Horowitz, anyway) says, “The way you do anything is the way you’ll do everything.”

Fiction, Reviews

‘Romeo’s World,’ by James Scott Bell

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First of all, I would like to note (with considerable pride) that there are a few review blurbs printed at the beginning of James Scott Bell’s Romeo’s World, the latest in his long-running Mike Romeo mystery series. And the very first one they use is one of mine, from this very blog, where I say that Mike Romeo is who I want to be when I get younger. This is most gratifying.

Oh, the book? You want to hear about the book too? Fine. Have it your way.

This time out, Mike is down at the beach with his new wife, Sophie, when they see a small plane crash into the ocean a little distance from shore. Mike sets out swimming and just manages to pull a young woman out of the wreckage before the plane sinks. He manages to get her to shore, and she’s in hysterics. She doesn’t want to be seen, she says. He and Sophie get her up to their house, and call a doctor for her. After the woman is cleared for health, she asks Mike to drive her to a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley, then gets out and walks away.

Shortly after that, Mike is informed that the woman is dead, that she committed suicide. This makes him mad. The man who died in the plane crash was a successful real estate developer, an older man to whom she had been engaged to be married. Mike starts poking into his business, and finds plenty of secrets to be suspicious about. It goes on from there.

Mike Romeo is always fun – he’s a literate cage fighter, a seeker of beauty and virtue as well as justice. His employer and mentor, wheelchair-bound lawyer Ira Rosen, is especially fun to spend time with. I have to report that I saw the big plot twist coming, but still I fully enjoyed Romeo’s World and devoured it quickly.

Recommended, of course.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘The Frontiersmen: A Narrative,’ by Allan W. Eckert

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“We have given you a fine land, Brother, but you will find it under a cloud and a dark and bloody ground.”

When I was a little boy, my greatest hero was Davy Crockett. Still, I occasionally read a book about Daniel Boone. And in the Boone stories, I noticed they sometimes mentioned a man named Simon Kenton. Kenton was generally spoken of in the same breath with Boone, as a man greatly respected on the frontier, a skillful hunter and tracker, and a leader.

But, oddly, I never saw a story about Simon Kenton.

A couple weeks ago I caught a YouTube clip from an interview with Mel Gibson. He mentioned that he was reading a book called The Frontiersmen: A Narrative, by Allan W. Eckert, and that it was about Simon Kenton. “Ah ha!” I thought. “At last I can learn the story of this mysterious man.”

And golly – what a story it is.

Simon Kenton was born in 1755 in Virginia, the son of a poor Irish immigrant father. He was the kind of boy who skipped both farm chores and school to spend time in the woods. A tall and strong boy, he fled “to the territories” at the age of 16, believing he had beaten a romantic rival to death. To evade the law, he adopted the pseudonym “Butler,” under which he lived for many years – until he ran into someone from his home town, who informed him that not only had he not killed his opponent, but he himself was assumed dead.

Gradually his natural gifts for wilderness living made him a renowned hunter. He once rescued Daniel Boone from Indian captivity, and he was himself captured on another occasion – tortured, made to run the gauntlet several times, and finally adopted into the tribe. When he got the chance, he returned to the white settlements, where he claimed a lot of land (most of which he eventually lost) tried to run businesses (which all failed), and participated in the wars for Kentucky and Ohio – where he became a legend.

But The Frontiersmen is a plural title, and there’s a second major thread in this book. That thread follows the life of a truly remarkable man on the other side – the Shawnee chief Tecumseh. Tecumseh’s story rises to the level of true tragedy – he was, by all accounts, a man of great intelligence, decency, and leadership talent. Born into a happier situation, he might have become the founder of a nation – he came close to welding together Native American tribes from all over the continent, in an effort to drive the White Man back. It was likely a hopeless dream, but the extent of his success, even so, was astonishing.

I need to warn you that this story about the “dark and bloody ground” is indeed a dark and bloody story. Some of the cruelties described on both sides may keep you up at night (though one can’t escape the fact that it was the White Man who was the aggressor).

The Frontiersmen is written in novelistic form – the author uses imagined dialogue (always based, he says, on reliable reports – though I have trouble figuring out how he knows what a chief said to his wife in bed). The writing is generally good, not great – I caught some grammatical slips. Also there are a number of OCR misreadings in the e-book text.

Christianity is treated with great respect, which I appreciated. (Kenton, we are told, was gloriously saved in a Methodist church service as a middle-aged man.)

There’s a marvelous epic sweep to The Frontiersmen. I found it compulsive reading, and it moved me – often almost to tears. I highly recommend this book. Cautions for sexual situations and (especially) for scenes of appalling cruelty.

Music

Amelia sings ‘Recessional’

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You probably know about “Amelia,” the purple-haired AI girl created by the British thought police as a character in a propaganda video game. The idea was to present a despicable, bigoted character everybody would hate. Instead, thousands of people embraced her and elevated her to hero status in scores of blessed violations of copyright.

There’s a content creator called Epochalypse which puts Amelia to brilliant use. They’ve made her a singer, doing original songs (now and then), traditional British folk songs (more often), and arrangements of poems by Rudyard Kipling (to especially powerful effect). I, personally, can’t get enough of them.

Above, Rudyard Kipling’s “Recessional,” written for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

And I’ll address a possible objection right here — Amelia is an AI creation. I am on record as a foe of AI. Is that not hypocritical?

My answer: Maybe. I’m certainly capable of hypocrisy.

But let me make my position clear: I have credentials in the AI wars. I’m a genuine wounded veteran, someone who lost his living to the technology.

But I try not to be ruled by anger. AI is a tool — a very powerful one, but still a tool. And when I see a tool well-used (as it is here), I reserve the right to praise the tool-wielders.

We will not win the culture wars by refusing to use the tools at our disposal. Feelings don’t come into it. Ethics yes, feelings no.

Have a good weekend.

(I hope I’m not out of line in adding an appeal for prayer. Our friend David Llewellyn Dodds, the Inklings scholar who frequently ornaments our comments section, is having health problems. If you’d lift up a prayer for him, it would be a good thing.)

Uncategorized

Alcuin of York

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Tonight, a tribute to a man to whom every book lover owes an incalculable debt. But do you ever think about Alcuin of York? No, I’ll bet you don’t. You only think about yourself.

The simple video above pretty decently describes that great Englishman’s achievements in the intellectual sphere. Did you know he was the one who popularized putting spaces between words in a text? He didn’t invent the idea — I believe he got it from the Irish. But he took it with him to Charlemagne’s Cathedral School and made it the standard for western Christendom. Also punctuation marks and capitalized first letters of sentences.

The video doesn’t mention the matter Alcuin himself would have considered most important in his life — his work to spread the gospel. His master Charlemagne was essentially a jumped-up Germanic barbarian, and not above letting his sword do the talking for him. In 782 he baptized 4,500 (the number is probably exaggerated) Saxon chiefs who had reneged on an agreement, and then beheaded them on the spot. Alcuin was not pleased about that.

He lived at the very beginning of the Viking Age, and his lament over the sacking of Lindisfarne in 793 is often quoted.

When I was with you, your loving friendship gave me great joy. Now that I am away your tragic sufferings daily bring me sorrow, since the pagans have desecrated God’s sanctuary, shed the blood of saints around the altar, laid waste the house of our hope and trampled the bodies of the saints like dung in the street.

What assurance can the churches of Britain have, if Saint Cuthbert and so great a company of saints do not defend their own? Is this the beginning of the great suffering, or the outcome of the sins of those who live there? It has not happened by chance, but is the sign of some great guilt. You who survive, stand like men, fight bravely and defend the camp of God. 

(Alcuin, letter to Bishop Higbald)