Customer Reviews

Die Abenteuer des Röde Orm

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Having heard so much about this saga-type novel I sought it eagerly and finally broke down and bought it via amazon uk (after a long, fruitless hunt stateside). Rather expensive for the copy I managed to secure (not the one featured on this page). And it had lots of typos and editing problems. But the book was worth it in the end. The tale of Orm Tostesson and "friends", it follows the adventures of this typical late tenth century viking through nearly all the high-points of vikingdom in the period. From raids and 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.

I did think the book a bit too episodic though this is no indictment of it since the sagas themselves are nearly always such and the "voice" smacks very much of the sagaman's art. However, a close reading makes this very clearly a modern novel for the humor is quite bracing and alone marks this tale out as one of ours and not one from an earlier time. I especially appreciated Orm's hypochondria, despite his courage in the face of battle, a very human and humorous touch! And the fighting is all very realistic, no great superhuman feats of derring do (except occasionally as we find in the real sagas). Some of the literary technniques used, besides the marvelous sense of tongue-in-cheek humor, are also quite contemporary. I did think the tale a bit slow in places, especially at the beginning, and rather more predictable than not.

And, more, it is not, in my opinion the best of the viking or saga novels despite what others have said here. For tautness and action, none have yet done it better, in my opinion, than H. Rider Haggard with ERIC BRIGHTEYES. For the pure poetry of style, Eddison's STYRBIORN THE STRONG still has my vote. And for the resounding greatness of the tale and the power to move, no modern author has ever penned a better saga novel than Hope Muntz did with THE GOLDEN WARRIOR. But Bengtsson did a very nice job and deserves five stars for it. I take my hat off to him and to those here whose reviews obliged me to obtain and read this fine viking tale.

By the way, there are a whole slew of good books out there for those into vikings and historical adventure, including a brand new one by Jeff Janoda called SAGA: A NOVEL OF MEDIEVAL ICELAND which details the events surrounding one of the most intriguing episodes in Eyrbyggja Saga (one of the most renowned of the original Norse sagas). It tells the story of a great feud between two chieftains over a little piece of forested land in an Iceland in which wood was as precious as gold. Other good ones include Cecelia Holland's very modern and psychological TWO RAVENS, a glimpse into the hot-house environment of an Icelandic farm, and Jane Smiley's THE GREENLANDERS which tells of the final days of the the Norse settlement in Greenland as the cold and Eskimos close in around the settlers. And if you still have any patience and want more, perhaps you'd want to try my own small effort, THE KING OF VINLAND'S SAGA, which I wrote to be the saga I'd always wished had been written and preserved about the Norse excursions to North America.

All, I believe, are available in some form or another on-line. Mine I know is.

SWM
author of The King of Vinland's Saga