Customer Reviews

Long Ships

5 star:		(88)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

(For those with an interest in the saga as novel, a few other good ones I'd recommend 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 the Eskimos closed in around the settlers there. 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 this part of the world. All, I believe, are available in some form or another on-line. Mine I know is.)

Stuart W. Mirsky
Author of The King of Vinland's Saga

This book is an eternal classic. Set in the height of Viking Age it tells us how Orm (Snake) is kidnapped by a band of marauding vikings. He then serves as a slave on a moorish ship, he is a mercenary among the muslims, he is marauder in England. He marries royally, settles, and goes on a treasure hunt for stolen gold in Russia. Bengtson uses the laconic language of the vikings to hilarious effects. The translator manages to keep it, which is great. The book is historically accurate with many historical events and persons interwoven in the narrative.

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.

The copy I obtained (with great difficulty; it's hard to track down THE LONG SHIPS, but well worth the effort when you do) was published by Collins of St. James' Place, London. I understand Random House holds the American rights.

If there is any justice in the literary world --or wisdom left in today's publishing houses that is not measured with a cash register-- THE LONG SHIPS would immediately be reissued to a new generation of readers, to much fanfare from those of us who have already had the pleasure of reading it.

--Earl Merkel
(Author, FLU SEASON/THE FINAL EPIDEMIC and LIKE DISTANT CITIES BURNING, NAL/Penguin/Putnam, both scheduled for publication in Summer/Fall 2002.)

English literature began with a Viking story, "Beowulf," but have you ever tried reading it? My own "Beowulf" experience led me to believe Viking literature is right down there with Viking cuisine in terms of digestibility. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a novel about Vikings, written over half a century ago, to be as thrilling, fantastic, and engaging as "The Long Ships."

It's the story of Orm, a farmer's son in southern Sweden in the late 900s who one day finds himself a prisoner of a merry gang of Vikings. They quickly adopt him, and set out for adventures off the northern and southern coasts of Europe. Before the book is half over, Orm has found himself in courts from Spain to England, espoused three different religions, slain several dozen foemen, and found a princess to be his bride.

Frans G. Bengtsson's novel, originally published in Sweden in 1945, showcases two things I didn't expect from a Scandinavian academic, brevity and humor. Sure, the book is nearly 500 pages long, but Bengtsson crams a lot of incident in every page, describing events in broad strokes and letting the reader's imagination do the rest. Bengtsson's style, preserved marvelously by Michael Meyer's 1954 translation, is to consciously evoke the elliptical prose of ancient Viking sagas, but in such a way as to allow for a modern, tongue-in-cheek sensibility to come through, one that reflects a Viking world, however hard-bitten, of great wit and depth.

"The Long Ships" is marvelously quotable: "For no man complains of the weight of the cargo, when it is his own booty that is putting strain upon the oars." Or: "Only poets can win wealth with empty hands, but then they must make better songs than other poets, and competition spoils the pleasure of composition."

The book jacket includes an enthusiastic reviewer describing "man-size helpings of battle and murder, robbery and rape," which captures some of the tone of "Long Ships" but misses most of the point. Orm is no savage bandit, but a thoughtful, evolving character of great honor. The Vikings he travels with do some robbing and killing, but in a measured way. As the novel goes on, a sense of social responsibility, manifested in Orm by his adoption of a somewhat twisted form of Christianity, comes through.

You might say the story of Orm is the story of the Christianizing of Scandinavia, told from a rather neutral viewpoint that respects Christianity's mellowing influence without being blind to its flaws in practice. You might also call it a straight-up adventure yarn of many threads. After a battle, Orm and his comrades may retire to a feasting hall to hear stories of brave deeds that fill pages and then never come up again. Or else we might get stories like that of a pair of jesters, forced to entertain the slayer of the king they loved, who come up with a marvelous form of vengeance right out of Monty Python.

One thing you can't call "The Long Ships" is dull. Even when Orm is not actually at sea (he actually spends a good deal of time raising a family on a farm), the book stays busy. Some old enemy is trying to take his head off, or else he is having another marvelously circuitous exchange with his dyspeptic priest friend, Father Willibald.

And the voyages Orm takes are a lot of fun, encompassing as they do the whole of the known world at that time, from Ireland to the Dnieper River and many points in-between. While a work of fiction, Bengtsson finds ways of introducing a lot of relevant Dark Ages history, even if some of it, like an enjoyably arch Y1K scare, may not be 100% accurate.

Other books are fun to read. "The Long Ships" is a book to get lost in. You will feel like a teenager again as you take the long way home with Orm, enjoying his simpler yet wondrous time and wishing the world could have stayed so forever.

Exceedingly well translated, humourous description of Orm and his viking ilk. Certainly attests to the liberal thinking and philosphical candor of the viking era and pokes fun at the norms of the times. My paperback edition was given to me in tatterns and our family is reading it - loose page by loose page. A great book for precipitating conversation about historic perpectives and value systems. I strongly recomend this book be read by both teens and their parents so that they can laugh and learn together. DOES ANYBODY HAVE A HARDCOVER COPY IN REASONABLE SHAPE THAT I CAN BUY?

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. 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 pure 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 all those here whose reviews obliged me to obtain and read this fine viking tale.

(For those with an interest in the saga as novel, a few other good ones I'd recommend 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 the Eskimos closed in around them. 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 this part of the world. All, I believe, are available in some form or another on-line. Mine I know is.

What can I say... I have read this book a lot of times, in swedish that is, it is easy to find here. What is so special with it is that the big things in the book is accurate historicaly, but well it is not a dry book about what actually happened. I have read the old stories or Sagas of the north, and in this book the same feeling is there, the dry humour, the witty remarks and the tradition. When Toke get in to see Orm finish his enemy in an "Envigg" they asked him what happened, he said "well he was hard but now he has finished peeing" thats nothing special just like the old sagas of the north... As far as I know no one have regretted reading this book. But I am Biased, I am scandinavian....

I f the Vikings did not really live like this Frans Bengtsson persuades us that they did. All the characters live in my mind still although I have not read it for many years. It is a vivid recreation of a fascinating age. I wish the publisher would re-issue it so that I could sail with Orm Tostesson and his crew again.

Let's get this out first. The cover to this book is just plain awful. Normally I would pass this book by figuring if the publisher didn't care enough about it to pay for a decent artist how good could it be? Thankfully, some of the reviews here encouraged me to take a chance and I definately didn't regret it.

I don't know if it's due to the translation or the author's style but the writing is absolutely superb in conveying the feeling of the time. You could just imagine this story being told in exactly the same way hundreds of years ago across a campfire or over a good cup of mead.

A great story that takes place in a time and among a people who don't get many (good) books written about them. Check this one out!

As with several other of the reviewers, I first read this book long ago, and probably five times since. It is not only the adventure, the scholarship and the huge geographic extent, but above all the dry humour which appears on every page and has me chuckling although I practically know it by heart.And they say the Swedes have no sense of humour. Maybe Bengtsson was from Skania and therefore really a Dane, like his creation. The translation is a work of almost equal genius; the English reader thinks he is reading an original stylist, not a translation. But alas, I couldn't steal my father's copy, and have lost two of my own (well, something happened to them). WHEN WILL SOMEONE REPUBLISH? It has a guaranteed sale . . . .