I somehow managed to get all the way to this year before ever hearing about Vollmann and the only other one of his books I've read so far is Europe Central which I loved. I say this because The Ice Shirt was so creative and different that I don't really know how to review this book. Vollmann's subject is the first collision between "Europeans" and "Native Americans", in this case between the Vikings if you will and the Inuit and Micmac in Greenland and Newfoundland. Calling it "historical fiction" is incredibly misleading. Vollmann has sources for pretty much everything in the story but those sources are saga, myth, legend, and clearly much of the story (in fact the most important parts) are not "true" in any kind of objective sense.
Rather it really is an imagining of what the collision of different cultures must be like and gives us an explanation for what happened at least as how we know it. In this we should not forget that Vollmann called this Volume One of "Seven Dreams". The Ice Shirt really is a dream with all of the imaginings and impossibilities that exist in our dreams. Inserted into that dream are Vollman's own pieces about visits to the Arctic that give fabulous color to the story of Freydis and Gudrid told in the dream.
Nevertheless, Vollmann has produced a brilliant picture of what this clash of cultures must have been like as well as it's causes. He has given me much to think about and I will be thinking about the Ice Shirt for a long time. And I will be reading the other books in the Seven Dreams series but doing so with no expectations in what they will be like to read.
As much as I liked The Ice Shirt, I should say that in my opinion, it doesn't all work perfectly (which is why I give this four stars, not five.) Generally the Vikings portions of the story (i.e. the vast majority of the book) are written in a pseudo saga style. Every once in a while, Vollmann inserts (clearly intentionally) a gross anachronism which certainly serves the purpose of jolting the reader but I was not always sure what the point of doing so was. And while I'm the very last person to criticize a writer for being too long or too short (because I always assume the author had purpose for what he or she did or didn't write) here, for me I thought the ending dragged out. Freydis's journey through the underworld was for me too long but when it was over, the story almost abruptly ends.
Several people have made the comment that they don't like historical fiction because they can't tell what is true and what is not. Do not avoid The Ice Shirt for this reason. The truth of the book is not in the objective history; it is in the psychology of the people. Vollmann has imagined this in a way that was for me absolutely compelling and I recommend it highly.
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