Customer Reviews

Odinn's Child: The Heroes of the North Live On (Viking Trilogy) (No. 1)

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Tim Severin has cobbled together great scenes from Norse saga history to construct a novel which takes his fictionalized protagonist, Thorgils Leifsson (illegitimate and somewhat mysterious son of Leif Eiriksson, according to Erik the Red's Saga), from his earliest days as a babe in Orkney and Iceland to childhood in Greenland and Vinland and then back to the European world in the last days of the Viking era.

From carefully selected and fleshed out scenes from Eyrbyggja Saga, when the mysterious, uncanny and somewhat overbearing Thorgunna comes to live briefly among the Icelanders, to the various North American expeditions described in the two extant Vinland sagas (Eirik the Red's Saga and the Tale of the Greenlanders), Severin manages to insert young Thorgils into a series of big moments in viking history. We follow him back to Iceland, where he insinuates himself into the final legal battle in the escalating feuds of Njal's Saga, and then takes up with the shrewd Icelandic chieftain, Snorri the Priest, and gets to participate in one of Snorri's famous escapades when he cleans out a nest of local vikings by force of arms (recounted in Eyrbyggja Saga). Then our hero, Thorgils, hooks up once more with Kari Solmundarsson from Njal's Saga. Kari is the sole survivor of the attack which burned Njal and his wife, along with their sons, daughter, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren to death in Njal's farmhouse. Kari, who alone escaped the carnage in the black smoke of the flames, swears vengeance on the burners and Thorgils gets to go along and witness some of the famous viking's feats of arms as Kari pursues his single minded objective. Then it's on to the Battle of Clontarf, from the Orkneyinga Saga, as King Sigtrygg Silkybeard, Norse king of Dublin, casts his lot in war against Brian Boru, High King of the Irish in yet another famous viking moment. Along the way, Thorgils manages to cross paths, albeit briefly, with the infamous Grettir the Strong from Grettir's Saga who is, of course, Iceland's most renowned and admired fugitive, the hero cum anti-hero par excellence.

If you know the sagas, there are few surprises here though Severin does a nice job of fleshing out details and patching the disparate episodes together in a convincing narrative skein. Unlike Severin, of course, the saga writers were famously sparing with words and Severin makes up for that with lovingly layered on detail all his own. To make it all hang together Severin must naturally make some choices and so he changes the details here and there to suit his story. Fredyis' famous killings in Vinland, for instance, are altered slightly though Severin provides a very plausible description of how these come about.

He also chooses to accept the reference in Erik the Red's Saga to Thorgils' presence in Iceland "a year before" the Frodriver Marvels, thereby equating the Thorgunna identified as Thorgils' mother, Leif's summer paramour in the Hebrides, with the Thorgunna who came to Iceland a few years later and was supposedly responsible for the hauntings remembered in the Frodriver Marvels described in Eyrbyggja Saga. That the Thorgunna of Frodriver fame is apparently a much older woman than a young man like Leif might have been attracted to, and is not mentioned as having a son, Thorgils, in Eyrbyggja Saga, is disregarded as Severin sticks with this somewhat questionable reference in Erik the Red's Saga. Still, he makes his decision convincing by suggesting this Thorgunna might have been something of a nymphomaniac with the hots for a still green-behind-the-ears Leif Eriksson.

Overall, Severin does a more than creditable job and his writing is solid, though I thought the story started falling apart after Clontarf when our hero finds himself on the loose in Ireland for a number of years. The Irish episodes felt too didactic to me, even compared to the episodes lifted from the sagas. Indeed, in the end the story is little more than a series of these famous saga events strung together through the artifice of an old Norse monk who has written it all down as a personal memoir, while hiding out in a Christian monastery, and afterwards secreting his private manuscript among the official ones in the scriptorium. Well, it's an interesting notion and it provides a credible basis for the story's otherwise remarkable coincidences and very un-saga like voice.

Overall I liked this one though I found it slow going in places, particularly in the final third of the tale, and could often predict what was coming as one great saga scene was telegraphed into the next. If you are not that familiar with the sagas and you like Norse tales, this one is probably a good choice.

Here are a few other relatively recent novels that partake of the saga tradition and its motifs:

Saga: A Novel Of Medieval Iceland

The Greenlanders

Two Ravens

SWM

author of The King of Vinland's Saga

A strong first fiction effort from an established history writer.

Tim Severin's historical accuracy is excellent in this novel which follows the exploits of the historical Thorgils, an illegitimate son of Erik the Red. His travels take him from Greenland and Vinland to Iceland and eventually Ireland, tracing his childhood and later teen years through the world depicted in the Icelandic Sagas.

Thorgils, devoted to Odinn, holds to his Heathen faith though a period which finds the world around him rapidly becoming Christianized. As a modern Heathen there is much in this tale which resonates deeply with me and leaves me wondering if the author himself might not be Heathen.

Strongly plotted and vividly described, I found Severin's style in this volume to be more suited to jouranlism than fiction, which is why I gave it four starts rather than five. Happily the second volume of this planned trilogy does not warrant the same criticism. Though many of the secondary characters are somewhat flat, Thorgils himself is complex and well developed.

This surely was a great read and was even better since I am an Icelander. He manages to make a very good historical novel by weaving many events and characters from the Sagas together.

I happen to know quite a bit about the history of the time and Severin has obviously done his research very well. I think around 90% of characters and events are supposed to have actually happened according to the Icelandic Sagas. Of course it is not clear how much of the Sagas is true but probably most of them.

I highly reccommend this book and can't wait for the rest!

I have never heard of Tim Severin before encountering this novel, which was Mr. Severin's first foray into the fiction realm. He used to write exclusively non-fiction history books, which I learned from the list of books he had written (not less than ten books, excluding this novel). The second and third (last) of the trilogy: Sworn Brother and King's Man, respectively. For reviews of the other two novels, please find my separate reviews.

Odinn's Child was the first of the Viking trilogy retelling Thorgils Leifsson adventures and life story from his beginnings in Iceland/Greenland/Vinland in 999 A.D. till somewhere 1070 A.D. Well... in order not to spoil Tim Severin's plot, a reader must judge the book by reading it him/herself for details. If you enjoy reading history/historical fictions, Vikings cultures (including their famous sagas and runes), and not surprisingly, some British histories, and also geography/traveling; I bet you will be thrilled reading it. For me, reading this particular novel and all the remaining two novels in the trilogy is like going to the History classes in college, while not having to take the test and the best of all, not realizing at all that we are being "history knowledge inseminated" into us by Mr. Severin.

It was depicted by Severin, that most people during that period early 11th century AD were highly superstitious, and life was very hard in the Scandinavian territories, for they were very close to the Arctic circle up north. Bickering and killings among high-court families and enemies were also common denominations in these series.

Tim Severin has succeeded in distributing his very well-researched knowledge into the public domain, while making them fun by creating a non-fiction novel, as opposed to sometimes tedious, non-fiction historical books. However, there were a few of minor mistypes on names and comas in latter books. Besides that, after finishing the whole trilogy, I found that Viking could have been written into a single book, instead of now three novels. Of course, there are some psychological and financial reasons for dividing them into three parts, which I did not found very much different if it had been packaged into a single section. Some readers might be intimidated, since the total paperback trilogy that I read was about 1000 pages total. Being one of Edward Rutherfurd's fan, it was "normal" for me to read 1,000 pages one time, though most people will find it almost impossible.

Comparing to Rutherfurd's novels, I found Tim Severin's were researched in a broader scale, where typical Edward Rutherfurd's novels were more acute in terms of depth. Where Sevrin's Thorgils character was the main and sole protagonist, in Rutherfurd's there were many major characters.

My final tally for Odinn's Child and Viking trilogy in general:

Book 1: Odinn's Child: 5-star read

Viking trilogy: 5-star overall

The lead character in the first book of what is to be a trilogy is Thorgils Leifsson born in 999. As a child he travel to Vinland, the furthest outpost of the West and while there witnesses a massacre led by his malevolent aunt. During the massacre the Viking settlement is also destroyed He appears to attract trouble wherever he goes. In Iceland he is caught up in a blood feud between two rival families. He travels to Ireland but his ill luck follows him across the water and he is taken prisoner in battle.

An ardent worshipper of the god Odinn, Thorgils tempestuous life will take him through many adventures and to many corners of the world. He will face hardships in battle, shipwreck and many other disasters. But Thorgils has grown into an intelligent man and in the main has the wit to extricate himself from most of the troubles he find himself in.

I found the book an enjoyable read. There are many similar books on the market but this is as good as most.

Tim Severin is an acute student of History. This knowledge is readily apparent in this first book of the Viking trilogy Odinn's Child. The verse keeps you hooked from line one until you froth at the mouth swearing that book two hasn't already arrived. I own and have read all three. They are perfect. If you love historical fiction. If you have a little heathen in you. Do yourself a favor and order Tim's books.

Wow. I loved this book. I can't wait to read the rest of the trilogy. I won't go into detail like some already have, but I will say I was in awe by page 20. Tim's style is easy going and fun. I felt like a friend was telling me a story over some brew. If you are a fan or a believer in the Old Ways, you won't be sorry with this one.

I decided I wanted a good viking book to read so of course I went straight to one titled "Viking" and I wasn't dissapointed with the book at all (despite the fact that there's very little viking activity in the book).

Instead of giving a summary of the book I'm going to list a few pros and cons of the book:

Pros:

-The author has a beautiful way of writing!

-The characters are very well developed and you truly feel for them, especially the narrator, Thorgils

-The book is a page turner even when there's not a lot of action, though the action is very well written and keeps you on the edge of your seat!

Cons:

-The Paragraphs are SO long! Paragraphs are a very good tool of keeping the pacing of a book going and at times there were page+ long paragraphs that kind of slowed the book down at points

-Towards the end of the book the editor got very lazy! It wasn't anything big, just a typo here and there but enough to really get annoying.

This is a hard read, the pace is very slow with nothing happening for large parts of the book, it was a real struggle to get through the first half, the second half is better but still not good.

The style of the book is that of an old man writing his autobiography, this makes for a very lifeless read, everything is told as a simple series of events with no real narrative, simply I did A, I did B, I did C, etc.

There is also a persistent and annoying habit of adding annotations to people so "I met person A, little did I know he was to have a huge impact on my life", this is just poor story telling and feels really old fashioned.

There seems to be some real knowledge of the history and mythology of the places encountered behind the writing and this helps to make some of it interesting even though most of the facts are clearly fictional.

Another weakness in the book is Thorgils, he isn't a very interesting character, he is just a spectator, he never seems to display any initiative or, in fact, any personality at all.

Thorgils is a poorly drawn cypher for the trip through history and that makes it hard to care about any of the events.

The book just comes across as dead, no excitement, no originality and no real story.

Once you get past the first half it is readable but I would never recommend it to anyone.

Very like Forest Gump meets the Norse. The main character is involved in some of the biggest events of the time. Also reminds me of the Brenard Cromwell Alfred series.