The Long Ships Mass Market Paperback Author: Visit Amazon's Frans Gunnar Bengtsson Page | Language: English | ISBN:
B00B1KTWYI | Format: PDF, EPUB
Download The Long Ships Mass Market
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- Mass Market Paperback
- Publisher: Balla U7043; First Thus edition (1966)
- ASIN: B00B1KTWYI
Having heard so much about this saga-type novel I sought it eagerly & finally broke down & bought it via amazon uk (after a long & fruitless hunt stateside). Rather expensive for this paperback w/lots of typos & editing problems, I thought. But the book, I judge, was worth it in the end. The tale of Orm Tostesson & "friends", this book follows the adventures of this typical late tenth century viking through nearly all the high-points of vikingdom in the period. From raids & servitude on the coasts of Moorish Spain, to visits with Irish monks and dinner with the Danish King, Harald Bluetooth, and his assorted guests, including no less a worthy than Styrbiorn Olafsson, the Jomsviking and claimant to the Swedish throne about whom E. R. Eddison wrote so brilliantly in his own viking novel, Styrbiorn the Strong, this book takes us through all the paces. Orm ends up with a very noble wife living in a backwater part of Scandinavia (the borderlands between Sweden and medieval Denmark) but even there he gets no peace since his enemies and adventures pursue him. And in his maturity another and final adventure comes his way when he is summoned to the eastern reaches of far Gaardarike (the country that was to become Russia) to claim an "inheritance" of great value. Along the way, Orm makes some good friends, some bad enemies, participates in some (but by no means all) of the great events of viking history in that period, and finally mellows to become a better man who embraces the new way of thinking while yet feeling at home in the old.
Every serious reader has had the experience: perhaps by accident --on a library shelf, or in a dusty box at a garage sale-- you stumble across an out-of-print book that seizes your imagination through its author's sheer mastery of the storytelling craft.
And you wonder: why, O why, doesn't the publisher re-issue this in lieu of one or another of the emminently forgettable titles in current release?
Such a book is THE LONG SHIPS by Frans Bengtssen, which crossed the Atlantic from Scandinavia to America in the early 1950s; like Leif Ericson, who made the same trip long before Columbus, this book lingered only briefly here before vanishing with scarcely a trace.
And that is a tragedy for anyone who craves an epic, lusty tale of Vikings and their travels-- told with a sophisticated humor that is both wry and understated and with a sense of historical perspective that blends so subtly into the narrative that one is staggered to later find it is painstakingly accurate. Thank you, History Channel-- but I heard it all first, and far more compellingly, from following Orm Tostesson's exciting voyages, enthusiastic plunderings and thrilling adventures in THE LONG SHIPS.
This book is a delight in every way: certainly, you can read simply for it for the lyrical use of language (it is, by the way, a translation from its original Swedish, and translator Michael Meyer deserves canonization for his masterful rendering of it into English). But it works well on so many other levels --as an action/adventure, or as a character-driven historical novel-- that to attempt to limit this book's sophisticated multi-layered appeal would be a disservice.
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