Some thoughts upon reading John Gardner’s Grendel

I’m troubled, deeply troubled, by the extremes of existentialist, postmodern thought. The kind that gets put under the microscope in John Gardner’s fine little 1971 novel Grendel.

If the Dragon is right, Grendel cannot be morally condemned, and his actions are no better or worse than Beowulf’s, or anyone else’s. They are, like everything else, absolutely meaningless. The Dragon is the real horror of Grendel—a beast that adheres to hard, cold materialism. “It’s all the same in the end, matter and motion, simple or complex. No difference, finally. Death, transfiguration. Ashes to ashes and slime to slime, amen,” says the Dragon to Grendel. Nothingness awaits us at the end. The dragon’s speech is like Morgoth’s to Hurin; negating meaning, negating the possibility of a benevolent God, negating even an uncaring but eternal creative force in the universe. Certainly negating an afterlife or any possibility of escape.

Compare the conversation of Hurin/Morgoth in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Children of Hurin:

“Beyond the Circles of the World you shall not pursue those who refuse you.”

“Beyond the Circles of the World I will not pursue them,” said Morgoth. “For beyond the Circles of the World there is Nothing. But within them they shall not escape me, until they enter into Nothing.”

…to Grendel/the Dragon:

“Nevertheless, something will come of all this,” I said.

“Nothing,” he said. “A brief pulsation in the black hole of eternity.”

We are just a cog in the wheel, part of the mindless machine. The Dragon recommends coping with this state by hoarding wealth and sitting upon it.

Postmodern thought of this sort has no clothes; we need a moral compass.

Styrbiorn the Strong, a review

“There is but one way for a man, and that is to remember that none may avoid his fate. This is to a man as the due ballast to the ship, which maketh the vessel indeed loom somewhat deeper, but keepeth it from tossing too lightly upon the uncertain waters.”

–E.R. Eddison, Styrbiorn the Strong

As a youth, E.R. Eddison (1882-1945) so loved William Morris’ translations of the Old Norse sagas that he taught himself Old Icelandic, desiring the pure injection of North Sea ice water into his veins that the stories in their original tongue delivered. He carried that love of the Sagas with him as a writer of fantasy fiction. Their echoes can be felt in Eddison’s best known work, The Worm Ouroboros (1922), but four years after the Worm Eddison set to work on the real thing, trying his hand at his own saga Styrbiorn the Strong (1926).

Styrbiorn the Strong tells the story of Styrbiorn Olaffson, teenage heir to the throne of Sweden. Denied his birthright and exiled from Sweden, Styrbiorn spends three years a-viking, during which his power and influence waxes mightily. Three years later he returns to claim his share of the kingdom. Except for a few minor characters everyone in the story is an historical figure. The main facts of the tale are also historical, including the concluding bloody Battle of Fýrisvellir, but the details and characterizations are of Eddison’s own making.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Some new books received: Styrbiorn the Strong, Tolkien on Film, and more

Purchased with an Amazon giftcard I received for Christmas, here are some new books that I'm really looking forward to reading and reviewing.



Vikings and E.R. Eddison ... how can this fail to be awesome? Also, how many authors would pay to have their cover blurbed by Tolkien?



I've seen better covers, but contents look great, a mix of positive and negative critical reviews by scholar-types. Good food for thought pre- The Hobbit.



Now that's a cover... you can never go wrong with Harlan Ellison. I bought it used and so didn't "pay the writer." Don't kill me Harlan. 



The Demon of Scattery, a review

I’ve had the Poul Anderson/Mildred Downey Broxon collaboration The Demon of Scattery (1979) sitting on my bookshelf for ages, and this past weekend I was finally able to take it down, dust it off, and breeze through its lushly illustrated 207 pages in a few hours. It wasn’t really what I was expecting, both in a good and a not so good way.

I think I hesitated reading it all these years because of its cover. It features a sorceress summoning up a snake-demon, though not the kind of sorceress I prefer—there’s far too much Marion Zimmer Bradley and not enough Weird Tales in her attire (yeah, I’m kind of shallow like that. And I have been known to judge a book by its cover).

I shouldn’t have been so quick to judge the book, of course, as the tale does not contain the scene depicted at right. Instead, what you get is a historical fiction-infused fantasy tale set on Scattery Island, a real place off the coast of Ireland. Uninhabited today, it once was home to a monastery that was subject to a few Viking raids in the ninth and 10th century. According to historical notes at the back of the book, the Vikings raided the monastery in 816 and 835 AD but then did not return to it for more than 100 years, despite the fact that Scattery Island was a strategic location for launching raids on the mainland. Scattery was also said to be home to a monster named Cata that once prowled its coastline, which may have been the reason the Vikings later gave it a wide berth. In short, the historical record contains plenty of raw elements for the makings of a fine tale.

The day I went a-viking

How many people can say they sailed in a viking ship of their own making?

So what if the mast was made of PVC pipe, and the planking and shields of cardboard. The end product looks pretty good, and it netted us another First Place entry in the Highland Lake Boat Parade in Andover, NH, this past 4th of July weekend.

This was probably our most ambitious pontoon boat project yet. The mast and sail were a pain in the ass. That's a 10 foot piece of 3-inch diameter PVC pipe, seated in a toilet flange, screwed to a piece of thick wood, and spray painted brown. We drilled a hole at the top to accommodate an eight-foot long crossbeam made of 1 1/2 inch PVC. A few guy wires gave it stability. The sail is an old bedsheet. Red spraypaint for the vertical stripes.

I set the wife and kids to work making shields--a total of 13, including 6 per side and one for the mast. They did some awesome work. The shield bosses are tinfoil. They probably wouldn't stop a longsword or spear thrust, but they look the part.

The coup-de-grace came courtesy of my uncle. My original plan was to have the cardboard at the front taper to a whimpy point; he suggested constructing a huge prow to give our very square pontoon boat more of a sweeping longship appearance. We nailed together a few pieces of wood to frame the prow, ran a rope from the sail to the point to give it a little more lift, and voila! My uncle is a (literal) engineer, I couldn't have done it myself.

For those wondering (I know you are), the dragon head/tail are built using two pieces of styrofoam packing from an empty TV box. The head is an empty 18-pack of Coors Light. We spray painted the whole thing green. A styrofoam ball cut in half serves as the eyes and a pair of styrofoam cones are the horns.

At the conclusion of the parade we gave our ship a proper viking funeral: All but the styrofoam was burned in a pyre on the beach as the fireworks burst overhead. Much beer was consumed.

All in all it was an awesome event. My plastic axe was hungry and I was sorely tempted to pillage and plunder a few shoreside cottages but my wife had her hand on the tiller. And my 86-year-old grandmother would have none of it.

The Broken Sword, an (audio) review

Note: This post also appears on SFFaudio.com.

The Viking Age of England offers fertile ground for storytelling. It was a time of strong men, beautiful fair-haired women, and bloody raids for plunder. Christianity was the new religion on the block, striving to make inroads on the old pagan beliefs—and often at the point of a sword. Gods were said to mingle with men and the world lay poised on the edge of Ragnarok, a final battle and fiery conflagration that would end the world.

Poul Anderson drew on the best of this wild and poetic age, stirred it up with myth and fantasy, and the result was his 1954 novel The Broken Sword. Its like has rarely been matched in the annals of fantasy literature.

I’ve read The Broken Sword previously and knew what a wonderful book it was, but TV and film actor Bronson Pinchot’s narration in this new Blackstone Audio, Inc. production added a new dimension to the novel. I had first heard Pinchot in a reading of Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon. While he was wonderful there he ups his game in The Broken Sword, reading with a spite and fury in his voice that perfectly matches the book’s unrelenting grimness and battle fury. Pinchot breathes life into beautiful maidens and proud warriors, deep-throated trolls, and ancient elven warrior-kings whose voices are like winds sighing through treeless leaves.

Oddly enough there is exactly one sound effect in the entire recording—an echo effect used to convey the cold, cruel laughter of Odin—and it’s on the final disc. It was cool but rather jarring, considering it’s on the last disc and there’s no precursor. But on to the tale.

In The Broken Sword the land of Faerie exists alongside the lands of men, invisible save to those with the witch sight. Faerie is a land of bright castles and achingly lovely elves, of the gods of Odin and Tyr, the giants of Jotunheim, black-eyed trolls, and other, fouler monsters.

Pride and ambition touches off the events of The Broken Sword. Orm the Strong is the fifth son of Ketil Asmundsson and thus low in the totem pole of inheritance. Rather than accept a smaller share of wealth Orm seeks his own fortune by going a–viking. On one of his raids he kills a husband and his sons, burning their hall to the ground. The man’s mother, a witch, escapes and swears revenge: She bestows a curse that Orm’s eldest son will be fostered beyond the world of men, while he in turn will foster a wolf that will one day rend him.

The elf-earl Imric travels to the lands of men and sets the witch’s curse in motion. Imric takes Orm’s unbaptized infant son Skafloc and replaces him with Valgard, a changeling, whom Imric himself has fathered by raping a captive troll woman. Valgard’s dark ancestry is evident when he bites his unknowing mother’s breast and grows restless and violent in Orm’s care. Skafloc, raised among the elves, is fair haired and fair of spirit, though equally mighty and otherwise a mirror image of his dark changeling “brother.”

After he discovers his true half troll, half-elf heritage, Valgard embarks on a mission of revenge, killing several members of his foster family. Aided with an army of trolls he then launches a war of annihilation on the elven lands of Alfheim. Skafloc and the elves are beaten back by the initial assaults and all seems lost. Only by going on a quest to reforge a powerful ancient weapon—the eponymous broken sword, a weapon of terrible demonic power that demands blood each time it is drawn and ultimately turns on its wielder—can Skafloc save Alfheim and avenge his family.

Though The Broken Sword seems largely forgotten these days it remains influential. The elf Imric for example reveals the clear stylistic (and thematic) influence The Broken Sword had on subsequent authors like Michael Moorcock. Moorcock (a big fan of the book, who once wrote that The Broken Sword “knocked The Lord of the Rings into a cocked hat”) based his Melniboneans heavily on Anderson’s elves. Imric is (largely) Elric of Melnibone, not only in similarity of name, but in appearance and even character. Anderson’s Elves are darker than those in The Lord of the Rings (though I would point out that Tolkien’s elves closely resembled Anderson’s in his source material; see the prideful warrior Feanor from The Silmarillion). They are haughty, prideful, shun the sunlight, and if not malicious are certainly mischievous. These traits have their roots in Norse myth, which both Tolkien and Anderson drew upon.

Everything about the book is wonderfully northern. Characters mingle soaring verse with common speech in conversation. Anderson weaves old northern vocabulary into the tale, evocative words like “Fetch,” “Fey,” and “Weird” (the latter is a fate from which no man escapes), which lend The Broken Sword a hard northern ethos to match its flavor. In this pagan hierarchy the Norns are higher than the towering Jotuns or even the Aesir. Even the gods will die in the fires of Ragnarok at their appointed time. That grimness bleeds through into The Broken Sword as its protagonists are slowly crushed beneath the merciless wheel of fate.

"Throw not your life away for a lost love," pleaded Mananaan. "You are young yet."

"All men are born fey," said Skafloc, and there the matter stood.

This is hard stuff and an unforgiving outlook on life, though not incompatible with that other somewhat famous work that debuted in 1954—Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. No matter what Moorcock—he of the tin ear when it comes to Tolkien analysis—may tell you.

The writing in The Broken Sword is top-notch, really and truly great stuff. A small sample of dialogue uttered by the troll-woman Gora:

“The world is flesh dissolving off a dead skull,” mumbled the troll-woman. She clanked her chain and lay back, shuddering. “Birth is but the breeding of maggots in the crumbling flesh. Already the skull’s teeth leer forth and black crows have left its eye sockets empty. Soon a barren wind will blow through its bare white bones.”



One final, important note about the Blackstone recording: The text is Anderson’s original from the 1954 version of the book, which Anderson updated in 1971 for republication in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. This is not immediately apparent from the description on the Blackstone website. I’ve only read the 1971 version, so for those who haven’t had the chance to experience The Broken Sword in its earliest and rawest incarnation you now have another chance.

Shamelessly lifted news items: Agincourt, The Hobbit, and Styrbiorn

A few news items of interest, lifted shamelessly from other blogs and/or newsgroups I subscribe to:

Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt headed to the big screen. I enjoyed Cornwell's take on this legendary battle from the Hundred Years' War a lot (if you're interested, my full review can be found here at The Cimmerian), if not as much as The Warlord Trilogy or The Saxon Stories. I'm already giddy with the thought of seeing French knights charging English longbowmen and the ensuing slaughter in the mud. And Henry's pre-battle speech, of course.

E.R. Eddison's Styrbiorn the Strong to be reissued. I plucked this bit of news off a new blog I recently added to my roll, Tolkien and Fantasy. Styrbiorn the Strong is a book I've long had on my "to be read list" but haven't yet obtained, as it's been long out of print. This new edition by the author of the incomparable The Worm Ouroboros is due out in August and I'll be purchasing it with glee. How can you go wrong with Eddison's style combined with a rousing viking tale?

Hobbit titles, dates revealed. So we've got the dates--December 14, 2012, and December 13, 2013--and the respective names of the two-part film: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. Sounds promising! The associated news that Orlando Bloom is reprising his role as Legolas is decidedly less so. I actually don't mind this deviation, provided that it's a minor role and doesn't involve Bloom single-handedly slaying Mumakil (or wargs, or the entire Bodyguard of Bolg) at the Battle of Five Armies. This is Beorn's turn to shine, and he had better not be upstaged by an uber-elf.

Thor kicks ass!

I rarely get to see “big person” movies these days. Thanks to my two young daughters, my most recent movie experiences include Tangled, Yogi Bear, and Toy Story 3 (the first and last are recommended. Yogi Bear... not so much). So naturally when the chance to see a grown up movie with a friend of mine finally rolled around, we saw … Thor.

…okay, so Thor is suitable for most kids, too. But let’s face it—these recent Marvel movies are geared just as much for current/former comic book fans in their 20s, 30s, and 40s who want to see spectacle and experience nostalgia for the heroes of their youth. That described my anticipation for this film. And Thor delivers!

I’ve always liked the character of Thor. I was never a big collector of the comic back in the day (Captain America and Savage Sword of Conan were my favorites), but for a time I did collect The Avengers, and next to Cap, Thor was always a favorite. I was (and still am) interested in Vikings and Norse mythology so I felt a natural attraction. I also liked the fact that Thor provided some much needed muscle on the Avengers and could fight guys like Goliath and Ultron in toe-to-toe battles that tore up city streets and knocked over buildings.

Overall, Thor was a very good film and I enjoyed myself immensely. I haven’t seen all the super hero films, but I enjoyed this one more than Spiderman and Batman. It felt bigger and more otherworldly and suffused with glorious comic-book eye candy (Asgard, and in particular the Bifrost Bridge, looked great). I liked the big, bold, dramatic acting, which plainly had a Kenneth Branagh influence. Heimdall was very cool character.

Given that Thor is a God of Thunder from another plane there are naturally going to be cultural clashes when he comes to earth. These made for some of the funniest and best scenes in the movie. My favorite bit was a scene in which Thor is eating in a diner and has his first cup of coffee. Enjoying it, he slams the empty mug down on the floor, shattering it into a thousand pieces as he shouts, “Another!”, as if he were in some great mead hall in Asgard. I laughed out loud. I also loved the scenes in which Thor loses his powers and is a mortal man but doesn’t realize it until he’s overpowered by a group of scientists, or finds himself at the wrong end of a stun-gun.

The best thing about the movie is the actors, which I wasn’t expecting. Chris Hemsworth was very charismatic and played an entirely convincing Thor. I had never heard of him previously but can see him blossoming into a big time action star. Anthony Hopkins was good as Odin, bringing the gravitas to the role one would expect. The guy who played Loki was great (though not quite as buff as the Loki I remember from the comics), both scheming and sympathetic. And the love interest between Natalie Portman’s character and Thor worked for me. It was done simply and sincerely and left you feeling the pang of separation.

I thought Thor had some problems. S.H.I.E.L.D. struck me as far too inept/gullible. There was a fight between Thor and a steel-encased guardian that ended in anti-climactic fashion, given the big build-up of the guardian’s powers. Thor is exiled to earth and loses his powers, and when they are restored I wanted to see more of him in action, flying and exhibiting great feats of strength and skill with Mjolnir. Alas, he was whisked off far too quickly to Asgard at film’s end for the final climactic show-down with Loki.

Also, I never really understood (or cared) what Portman’s character was trying to do with her pseudo-scientific project. And I would have liked to have seen a little more of the culture shock that would naturally result when you get an alien God walking the streets of earth. By film’s end Thor seems pretty comfortable in jeans and a flannel shirt, which seemed entirely too quick and convenient.

But in the end Thor left me both saying “wow” and wanting more of this character—which is probably exactly what the film makers intended, given that Thor, Iron Man, and the forthcoming Captain America are all coordinated build ups to 2012’s The Avengers, which is now pretty much a must-see for me.

Drinking in the demonic energy of Tolkien’s The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun

If you like the sound and rhythm of words — and if you’re a hopeless J.R.R. Tolkien junkie — you’ll like The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun (2009, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). Lacking either of these prerequisites, you probably won’t. And there’s not much more to say than that.

Casual Tolkien fans likely won’t buy The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun, and even semi-serious fans who have tackled The Silmarillion may lack the appetite for it. It consists of two long poems, around which are sandwiched an exhaustive introduction and a pair of lengthy explications/footnotes, the latter written by Tolkien’s son Christopher. Added together, this additional material is longer than the poems themselves.

The real reward of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun is its wonderful language. The poems—“The Lay of the Volsungs” and “The Lay of Gudrun”—are composed in eight line alliterative stanzaic metre. Reading them makes me wish I knew the native Old Norse Tolkien of which Tolkien spoke so admiringly; the modern English is pretty darned powerful already.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Internal, external conflict ignite Cornwell’s The Burning Land

“Our gods prefer feasting. They live, Uhtred. They live and laugh and enjoy, and what does their god do? He broods, he’s vengeful, he scowls, he plots. He’s a dark and lonely god, Uhtred, and our gods ignore him. They’re wrong.”

–Bernard Cornwell, The Burning Land

Conflict — internal to fictional protagonist Uhtred of Bebbanburg, and external to blood-soaked, fire-ravaged Britain — burns brightly in The Burning Land, the fifth and latest entry in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Stories, a partially fictionalized chronicle of the real-life Viking invasions that swept Dark Ages Britain.

A Saxon-raised-Dane, Uhtred is a microcosm of the rough mixing of Christianity and pagan culture that occurred in war-torn ninth century Britain. Uhtred is a Saxon whose father was killed in a Danish raid. Taken prisoner as a thrall to the Dane Earl Ragnar and raised hard, he nevertheless grows to love the Danes. Although they’re ferocious raiders, the Danes drink deep of life, scorn Christian virtues of humility and pity, and worship the pagan gods of Thor and Odin (they expect less of their followers than the one God, and leave more leeway for fun).

But Uhtred’s loyalties are torn. His hereditary home is the Northern kingdom of Bebbanburg and his peoples are Saxon. Over the course of the series he comes to respect the coldly pious and serious, but brilliant and fair King Alfred of Wessex (Alfred the Great) and at times reject the occasionally murderous habits of the Danish warlords.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

In the grip of “The Northern Thing:” My top 10 northern inspired stories

Let us die in the doing of deeds for his sake;
let fright itself run afraid from our shouts;
let weapons measure the warrior’s worth.
Though life is lost, one thing will outlive us:memory sinks not beneath the mould.
Till the Weird of the World stands unforgotten,high under heaven, the hero’s name.

–from Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, Poul Anderson


If I had to choose a favorite sub-genre of fantasy literature it would be those writings showing the clear influence of ancient Northern mythology. Fantasy critic Lin Carter once described a group of writers including the likes of J.R.R. Tolkien, Poul Anderson, and William Morris as being possessed by “The Northern Thing”; I too am firmly in that Icelandic grip of iron. There’s just something about tales of pagan heroes possessed of grim northern courage, set against a backdrop of bleak fjords and smoldering mountain peaks and gray lowering skies, that make me want to hop on the nearest dragon-headed longship and go a-viking.

Following in no particular order are my top 10 favorite northern stories. These are stories inspired by northern myth (the Prose and Poetic Eddas), legend (the Icelandic Sagas), or history (the Danish invasions of England), and sometimes all three at once.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

“Unshaken on his rocky throne above the bleak fjords”: A review of H. Rider Haggard’s Eric Brighteyes

The default setting for most fantasy is a faux late-Middle Ages, generally ascribed to the period from the Norman conquest of 1066 to roughly the end of the 15th century. Hence we get novels whose characters live in sprawling, lavishly decorative castles, answer to a high king in a monarchical society, embrace chivalric ideals, and speak in an ornate language of high culture. In comparison, the coarse, rough mine of the early Middle Ages and in particular the Viking Age is relatively untapped. I enjoy the Crusades and the Hundred Years’ War as much as the next guy, but I prefer the song of spear and axe, the smoke of the burning hall, and the sight of the dragon-headed longship against the backdrop of the ruins of ancient civilization.

This disparity is unfortunate, because although the number of novels set during the Viking Age is relatively low, I have generally found them to be of exceeding high quality. Poul Anderson’s Hrolf Kraki’s Saga and The Broken Sword are among the best of this smallish genre (though I’m not sure if the latter can be properly classified as set during the Viking Age, heavily Nordic-influenced though it may be). Bernard Cornwell’s ongoing historic fiction series The Saxon Stories is similarly great, devoid of ant overt references to magic but with all of the poetry of the age. I would add to that mix Harry Harrison’s The Hammer and the Cross, a fun, if savage and bloodthirsty read, while Nancy Farmer’s young adult work The Sea of Trolls is quite good and entertained me as a full-grown man. I have also heard praise from many quarters for E.R. Eddison’s Styrbiorn the Strong, which I have not read (it’s out of print and not easy to acquire).

It’s hard to say which of these Viking Age-inspired works would win a theoretical Holmgang amidst hazel rods, but having just now read H. Rider Haggard’s 1889 novel Eric Brighteyes, I can now state that any previous order I had established is deeply in doubt, so mighty is this book. In fact, I would unhesitatingly declare it among the finest works in the genre, better than Cornwell and at least as good as Anderson’s best. It may not be as much a household name as Haggard’s more famous works King Solomon’s Mines and She, but it’s nevertheless rightly considered a classic in some quarters and one of Haggard’s best.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Cimmerian sighting: "Fantasy” a worthy entry in Anderson’s canon

While others seek the passageway to elven realms in vain, Poul Anderson throws wide the gate to let his readers enter into wonder … Anderson is a “literalist of the imagination.” He makes what is magical real and what is real magical. Of such power is poetry born.

—“An Invitation to Elfland,” Sandra Misesel, from Poul Anderson’s Fantasy

Poul Anderson gets a lot of love around these parts, and with good reason. While I can’t speak to his metric ton of science fiction, he’s written a lot of great fantasy novels, including Three Hearts and Three Lions, and the Nordic-flavored War of the Gods, The Broken Sword, and Hrolf Kraki’s Saga. All of these are worth finding and reading.

But Anderson also wrote some excellent short stories. I have a couple of his collections and will vouch for the excellence of Fantasy (1981, Pinnacle Books, Inc).

Belying its vanilla title (Fantasy? Was Pinnacle Books considering Men with Swords as an alternative?), Fantasy is actually a wide-ranging, eclectic group of short stories that includes “soft” sci-fi (debatably fantasy) stories, a handful of essays, including a satirical non-fiction look at the sword-and-sandal brand of fantastic fiction (“On Thud and Blunder”), and a few excellent traditional fantasy tales.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

The Burning Land set to reignite the Saxon Stories

The cover blurbs on Bernard Cornwell’s books read “Perhaps the greatest writer of historical adventure novels today,” and frankly, you’ll get no arguments from me. I've come to love Cornwell, who is in every sense a Man's writer. There's no romance in his books and no literary pretension, so if you're looking for those elements, try something else. On the other hand, if you like bloody battles, cowardice and heroism, grim suffering and cruel murder, oath-making and breaking, hard drinking and mirth, and, most importantly, darned good storytelling, Cornwell's your man. His greatest strength is probably his ability to spin a compelling, fun tale, and he does it with a keen eye for historic accuracy.

Cornwell's ongoing series The Saxon Stories features vikings, shield walls, axes, dark ages combat, hall-burnings, and general mayhem. If this stuff sounds appealing (and if you're a reader of The Cimmerian or this blog, how could it not?), you owe it to yourself to pick up the first book in the series, The Last Kingdom, and get started.

The Saxon Stories is an ongoing historical fiction series about the reign of Alfred the Great and the clash of Danes and Saxons in 9th century Britain. The stories are told through the viewpoint of Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a warrior who was born a Saxon and fights for their cause, but was raised among the Danes, and so has an iron-plated boot in each camp. Uhtred is a fun character, as he's torn between hereditary love for his ancestral homeland and a passion for the Danes. Although they're murderous raiders, the Danes drink deep of life, scorn Christian "virtues" of humility and pity, and worship the pagan gods of Thor and Odin. These qualities appeal strongly to Uhtred, who grew to love the Danes during his capture and upbringing under Earl Ragnar.

I read the first four books in the Saxon Stories with gusto (these include The Last Kingdom (2004), The Pale Horseman (2005), The Lords of the North (2006), and Sword Song, published in 2007), and eagerly anticipated the next book in the series, so much so that Cornwell's decision to interrupt Uhtred's saga with Agincourt was a bit of a let-down, even though I wound up enjoying the heck out of it.

But I was very pleased to find out that the fifth book, The Burning Land, has been released in the UK and will be available in the United States in January 2010, according to Bernard Cornwell's official Web site.

Looks like 2010 will be off to a fine, blood-soaked start.

(Cross posted from The Cimmerian ).

Hrolf Kraki in the Guardian

As a longtime proponent of Poul Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga, I was pleased today to see a review of this fine but mostly forgotten novel over at the online version of the British newspaper The Guardian, Cracking Poul Anderson's Kraki. The Guardian's Alison Flood is working her way through some of the fantasy genre's classics, including former British Fantasy award winners, which Anderson claimed in 1974 with Hrolf Kraki.

I don't agree with some of Flood's criticisms of the novel, including her disdain for Anderson's mythic language and poetry (which I think is part of the novel's unique charm and appeal, as well as a reflection of Anderson's faithfulness to the source material, the fragmentary Hrolf Kraki Saga and other ancient Icelandic sagas). But it's nice to see this mythic tale of a brief, shining period of peace in dark ages Denmark get some public recognition.

Cimmerian sighting: Unearthing David Drake's "The Barrow Troll"

“You Northerners believe in trolls, so my brother tells me,” said the priest.

“Aye, long before the gold I’d heard of the Parma troll,” the berserker agreed. “Ox broad and stronger than ten men, shaggy as a denned bear.”

—David Drake, “The Barrow Troll”

One of my haunts for used books, Webhead Enterprises in Wakefield, MA, seems to house more than its fair share of exceptional short story collections (I’ve scored copies of Prime Evil, Dark Forces, and Revelations in Webhead, to name a few). It was there I purchased the excellent anthology Whispers, whose contents include “The Barrow Troll,” a terrific short story by David Drake.

“The Barrow Troll” was originally published in 1975 in Whispers magazine, a former periodical specializing in dark fantasy and horror. Drake, a former assistant editor for the magazine, wrote a nice piece about Whispers on his personal Web site.

Starting in 1977 editor Stuart David Schiff released the first of six best-of collections from the magazine in a book series also entitled Whispers. “The Barrow Troll” appears in the first of these anthologies.

In his introduction to the story, Schiff describes “The Barrow Troll” as “a brutal and shocking piece.” That about sums it up. It’s a wonderful fusion of horror and fantasy, probably my favorite entry in what is an almost-uniformly excellent collection (though Karl Edward Wagner’s “Sticks” is also an absolute gem). Whispers’ table of contents reads like a who’s who of legendary horror/fantasy authors, as it includes stories by Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, Dennis Etchison, Hugh B. Cave, Richard Christian Matheson, Robert Aickman, Joseph Payne Brennan, Manly Wade Wellman, and Ramsey Campbell, among others.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Cimmerian Web site.

Top 10 fantasy fiction battles: Battle of Cynuit

8. The Last Kingdom, Bernard Cornwell
Battle of Cynuit

He stared balefully across the encampment where men were drinking. “Do you know who wins battles, boy?”
“We do, Father.”
“The side that is least drunk,” he said, and then, after a pause, “but it helps to be drunk.”
“Why?”
“Because a shield wall is an awful place.”

—Bernard Cornwell, The Last Kingdom

As a self-professed lover of medieval-flavored fantasy and historical fiction battles, and as someone who relishes in bloodshed on the printed page, I nevertheless must come clean: Some periods of ennui aside, I’m quite glad that I live in modern, civilized times. I especially thank the powers that be that I don’t have to strap on arms and armor and fight in the blood-soaked hell that was a viking shield wall.

Bernard Cornwell shattered any fantasies I may have had of engaging in dark ages combat in his wonderful, ongoing series The Saxon Stories. These books have something of a shield wall fetish, and are a repository for the sweet science of making one (keep that in mind should the need ever arise). For example, there’s this good-to-know factoid:

You can hear a shield wall being made. The best shields are made of lime, or else of willow, and the wood knocks together as men overlap the shields. Left side of the shield in front of your neighbor’s right side, that way the enemy, most of whom are right-handed, must try to thrust through two layers of wood.

Cornwell describes how many battles were delayed for hours as men on both sides gulped ale to build up their courage. Shield walls were simply too brutal and murderous to stand in completely sober. Picture a rugby scrum in which the participants not only push but stab one another with spears and short blades over the rims of their shields, or underneath, at exposed legs and ankles. Many fighters would strap iron plates to their boots to turn such wicked strokes, Cornwell says.

But more about shield walls later. The background of the battle of Cynuit is as follows: Uhtred of Bebbanburg, a Saxon who was captured in a raid as a youth and raised among the Danes, Ealdorman Odda, and approximately 900 Saxons square off against the raven banner of Ubba Lothbrokson and his 1,200 Danes. Odda and Uhtred have the advantage of high ground and some degree of protection from the old, eroded, earthen fort of Cynuit. But they have only a day’s worth of water and cannot withstand a siege, so they must act.

Uhtred develops a plan to sneak out at night with a small force of 100 men and burn the Danish ships, which are moored in a nearby river. Since the Danes are so protective of their longships, Uhtred predicts that they will lose their discipline when they rush back to quench the fires. Uhtred’s small force will fight them there, on the narrow strip of marsh-lined beach where Ubba cannot bring all his strength to bear. Then, in the heat of the combat when shield walls are locked, Odda will fall upon Ubba from the rear with the rest of the men from the fort.

But this plan is easier said than done. Though he’s beginning to gray Ubba is a mighty fighter, perhaps the mightiest in hand-to-hand combat of all the Danes. He wields a wicked heavy axe in combat and no man who has stood before him in battle has lived. His men are better armed than Uhtred's. But Ubba’s one weakness is his superstitious nature. He does nothing without a sign from the gods, and in this battle the runesticks have fallen against him. Thus, when Uhtred and Odda refuse his offer to surrender, Ubba feels fear.

Uhtred’s plan works. Sneaking through the pre-dawn hours on foot he manages to set fire to a few Danish ships at daybreak, rousing Ubba’s small army like a swarm of angry bees. The few Danes near the ships are confused and easily cut down. Uhtred and his 100 men form a shield wall that stretches across the narrow beach and close with the main of the Danish army. Uhtred recalls his father’s words as the shields touch close.

Shield wall. It is an awful place, my father had said, and he had fought in seven shield walls and was killed in the last one.

The angry Danes make the mistake of charging like mad dogs and not forming a proper shield wall of their own. Uhtred’s men slaughter the first wave. “It was ax work and sword work, butchers’ work with good iron.” A battle calm comes over Uhtred and he finds killing frightfully easy with his short sword Wasp-Sting:

I lunged Wasp-Sting forward, and the Dane ran onto her point. I felt the impact run up my arm as her tip punctured his belly muscles, and I was already twisting her, ripping her up and free, sawing through leather, skin, muscle, and guts, and his blood was warm on my cold hand, and he screamed, ale breath in my face, and I punched him down with the shield’s heavy boss, stamped on his groin, killed him with Wasp-Sting’s tip in his throat.

The Danes regain their composure and order a shield wall of their own. Five or six hundred Danes advance with murderous intent. Uhtred encourages his small force to stand its ground. “They’re coming to die! They’re coming to bleed! They’re coming to our blades!” he shouts.

The clash of shield walls rings like a thunderclap. Uhtred experiences “the thunder of shield hitting shield, my shield knocked back against my chest, shouts of rage, a spear between my ankles, Wasp-Sting lunging forward and blocked by a shield, a scream to my left, an ax flailing overhead.” The battle degenerates into a grunting mass of men hacking and stabbing and dying and bleeding. Uhtred’s shield wall is driven back on the burning ships.

But then Odda arrives and takes the Danes from behind. The pressure is immediately relieved. Uhtred draws his battle-sword Serpent-Breath and attacks, discovering that he is in elite, deadly company:

Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear. I was such a one.

Danes begin to fall back, and some retreat to their ships, shoving them off into the sea. But Ubba bravely stands, ordering a last shield-wall in a rearguard action. A berserk rage overtakes him:

And then, with a roar of fury, Ubba hacked into our line with his great war axe … his huge blade was whirling again, making space, and our line went back and the Danes followed Ubba who seemed determined to win this battle on his own and make a name that would never be forgotten among the annals of the Northmen. The battle madness was upon him, the runesticks were forgotten, and Ubba Lothbrokson was making his legend.

In a mighty single duel Uhtred slays Ubba when the latter’s foot slips in the spilled guts of a corpse. Uhtred stabs him with Serpent-Breath in the arm, then hacks his neck. Uhtred shows his foe the ultimate respect due a viking, holding Ubba’s hand tight to his axe as he dies, since only a man who dies on the battlefield clutching a weapon makes it to Odin’s hall.

“Wait for me in Valhalla, lord,” Uhtred says to the dying man. And with Ubba’s death, the Danes are finished.

Top 10 fantasy fiction battles: Battle at Leidhra

The ‘battle piece’, as a historical construction, is as old as Herodotus; as a subject of myth and saga it is even more antique. It is an everyday theme of modern journalistic reportage and it presents a literary challenge which some of the world’s masters have taken up.

—John Keegan, The Face of Battle

I read fantasy for the story, for the escape, for the adventure, for the monsters and magic, and for the memorable characters. The best fantasy has the added bonus of examining the important matters in life (God or his lack thereof, mankind’s purpose on earth, society and civilization) and exercises the mind in higher thinking.

But heck, I’ll admit it: I also read fantasy for the fights.

There’s nothing I enjoy more in a book than a well-portrayed battle scene. In the next few posts I’ll be exploring my top 10 favorite fantasy battles. These are epic combats that inspire with their courage, frighten with their ferocity, sadden with their pathos, and occasionally sicken with their terrible carnage and destruction. But above all else they are a joy to read.

These posts will celebrate the mass battles; fantasy has its share of great single combats too (Eowyn vs. the Witch King in The Lord of the Rings, and Gregor Clegane vs. the Red Viper in A Song of Ice and Fire are two that immediately spring to mind), but solo duels or minor skirmishes are for another day. Several of these large-scale battles, however, do feature terrific single combats within them.

Some of this list is borderline “fantasy,” since I’ve included entries from the historical fiction genre and events that really happened. But since the details of these ancient battles are largely lost to the passage of time, and out of necessity must be heavily re-imagined by the author, I have included them here.

So without further ado, and in no particular order, sound the horn, shields at the ready … Now for wrath, now for ruin and a red nightfall!

(Warning: If you haven’t read these books, be prepared to experience some spoilers).

10. Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, Poul Anderson
Battle at Leidhra

I’ll tell you right off the bat that the final, climactic battle from Poul Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga will be hard to top. It features boar-trolls, attack dogs, shield walls, men in bear form, heroism, slaughter, and ultimate ruin. In brief, the build-up to the battle is as follows:

A great host of evil led by the false King Hjorvardh and the wicked Queen Skuld march through the night to murder Hrolf Kraki and his men, sleeping unawares at the stockade fortress of Leidhra. Fortunately Hrolf’s man Hjalti sees the traitorous host coming and rides his horse at a breakneck pace to rouse his lord. Hjalti’s horse dies from exhaustion as he reaches Leidhra, and, leaping from his falling mount, awakens Hrolf and his men to the danger with a fragment from the ancient Bjarkamal:

Athelings, rise up and honor your oaths,
all that you swore when the ale made you eager!
In foul winds as fair, keep faith with your lord,
he who withheld no hoard for himself
but gave us freely both gold and silver.

Hjorvardh and Skuld’s massive army encircles the fort. They dispatch messengers to tell Hrolf that he can save his life if he kneels to Hjorvardh, but Hrolf answers like every good Viking king should: He extends his middle finger and tells his men to drink up.

“Let us take the best drink we have,” he called, “and be merry and see what kind of men are here. Let us strive for only one thing, that our fearlessness live on in memory—for hither indeed have the strongest and bravest warriors sought from everywhere about.” To the messengers: “Say to Hjorvardh and Skuld that we will drink ourselves glad before we take their scot.”

The next morning Hrolf and his 11 champions and the rest of his men issue from behind the walls to fight the enemy on open ground. The description of their charge is a sumptuous visual simile: “Along their ranks went that ripple as of wind across rye, which bespeaks a peak of training.”

Formed in a great wedge Hrolf’s men smash the enemy’s center, killing countless of the foe. Fighting in front of the press is a great red bear, which none recognize but is one of Hrolf’s men, Bjarki, fighting in bear form. Later Bjarki fights as a man, hewing shields, helmets, arms, and heads, his own arms bloody to the shoulder from killing.

Hrolf and his men have the early advantage, but their charge and crushing advance leaves them overextended and surrounded by the great mass of the enemy. Skuld summons a wolf-gray troll-boar the size of a bull, and later uses undead and a handful of shadowy monsters to attack the Danes.

The battle rages the entire day, and as night falls hope begins to fade. Great are the deeds of Hrolf’s champions, but the enemy are too many. Hrolf’s most trusted friend, Svipag the one-eyed, is thrown and slain by the boar, and Bjarki is gored and slain as he finally kills the beast. The circle of defenders around Hrolf inexorably closes. Grief-stricken by the impending death of his king and the end of the glorious reign he brought to Denmark, Hjalti speaks a lengthy set of staves, including the following memorable lines:

Let us die in the doing of deeds for his sake;
let fright itself run afraid from our shouts;
let weapons measure the warrior’s worth.
Though life is lost, one thing will outlive us:
memory sinks not beneath the mould.
Till the Weird of the World stands unforgotten,
high under heaven, the hero’s name.

At the end, his death at hand, Hrolf leaves the dwindling shield-circle and wades alone into the sea of foes until he too is slain. “Man after man he felled. No one of them slew him; it took them all.”

A berserk bit of history: The Battle of Stamford Bridge

With my interest piqued by the recent news that HarperCollins will be publishing The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun by J.R.R. Tolkien in May 2009, I've been doing a bit of reading about norse myths and history. My "extensive research" has included surfing the Web and flipping thorugh a couple sourcebooks on the subject. These include a copy of Time Life Books The Northmen, from a long-extinct "The Emergence of Man" series, and The Vikings, also by Time Life, which is part of a series called "The Seafarers."

I think I paid 50 cents each for these hardcovers at a library sale. At roughly 170 pages each neither is exactly a treasure-trove of information, but they do contain some great full-color pictures of viking artifacts as well as a good overview of viking culture, and also provide inspiration for further reading. From one of these books I started doing a bit more digging on an event called the Battle of Stamford Bridge, which essentially marked the end of the viking incursions into England.

Of all the details of the Battle of Stamford Bridge, I found this bit particularly fascinating and awe-inspiring (you can read it here at Wikipedia) :

The story goes that a giant Norwegian armed with an axe held up the entire Saxon army, and single-handedly cut down over 40 Saxon soldiers. He himself was only killed when one Saxon drifted under the bridge in a barrel and thrust his spear through the latches of the bridge, killing the Norseman.

Now, this account is very likely an exaggeration or a distortion of the truth. After all, the battle occurred in 1066, in the midst of the Dark Ages. Three weeks later William the Conqueror prevailed over the Saxons at the Battle of Hastings, starting an age of Norman rule which eradicated much of England's history. It's unclear (or at least, I'm unclear) of who provided the account of The Battle of Stamford Bridge, how it was recorded, and how this particular detail of the battle survived.

Nevertheless, I think it's safe to assume that such a story has some basis in fact. While it's highly debatable whether a viking actually cut down 40 Saxon soldiers single-handedly, or was finally killed by a spear-thrust from below, its likely that some lone berserk viking held the bridge long enough to make an impression on the Saxons and survive into recorded history.

What a sight that must have been!

Historic fiction writer supreme Bernard Cornwell is currently in the midst of a great series about the Danish invasions into England called The Saxon Stories; although his stories are set much earlier in the conflict (the 9th century/early 10th century period, chronicling the stories of historic personages such as Alfred the Great, Ivar the Boneless, and Guthrum the Unlucky), I'd like to see Cornwell eventually tackle this battle and bring to life the tale of this nameless viking warrior who briefly held back the advance of an army.

The Sea of Trolls: Children's lit with a viking spirit

This recent post over at Black Gate reminded me of how much good writing, past and present, has been done in the fantasy genre under the guise of young adult literature. Some classic series for children that I enjoyed back in the day (and still do) include Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence, The Prydain Chronicles by Lloyd Alexander, and of course, C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.

Nowadays J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials are at the forefront of the young adult fantasy field. I can't vouch for either of these series, since I haven't read Pullman's trilogy and have only dipped my toe in the water of the Potter books. But I will highly recommend another semi-recent entry in young adult fantasy: Nancy Farmer's The Sea of Trolls (2004).

Despite the good work being done in the genre I'll freely admit that the young adult tag had me a bit skeptical at first, but any hesitancies about reading The Sea of Trolls proved ill-founded. Indeed, for the viking-lover in me, Farmer's work gets a hearty thumbs-up. It just proves that good writing transcends age limits, which are largely artificial designations anyway. Good books are good books regardless of how they're categorized.

The Sea of Trolls certainly pushes the young adult envelope--although there's no sex and gore, it does contain quite a bit of violence, and plenty of suffering, fear, and loss. But I wouldn't hesistate recommending it for any young teen. Although I'm generally no fan of children as protagonists (they're usually portrayed as too adult-like, are granted with superhuman powers and/or surrounded by a halo of protection that makes them invulnerable, or are just plain annoying), Jack, the main character of The Sea of Trolls, was well-drawn and likeable.

Jack is a young, bright boy living on the Irish coast and is taken in by the powerful, reclusive Bard as a servant and understudy. But Jack and his sister Lucy are abducted in a viking raid led by the berserker Olaf One-Brow (yes, the tale bears more than a passing resemblance to Ursula Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea). Through his own pluck, good fortune, and magical training learned at the feet of Bard, Jack proves his worth and avoids being sold into slavery. He manages to befriend Olaf and become the berserker's personal skald, and even warms the heart of his icy daughter Thorgill.

But later Thorgill decides to give away Jack's sister Lucy, her thrall, as a gift to Ivar the Boneless and his half-troll wife Queen Frith. This begins an epic quest to the magic troll-lands of Jotunheim in which Jack has to rescue Lucy before she is sacrificed to the goddess Freya.

Farmer's book is a wonderful blend of action, myth, norse legends, viking raids, and magic, all wrapped up in a well-told, albeit lengthy, tale. At 480 pages, The Sea of Trolls is a hefty read, and I have to wonder how receptive young adults are to this book. As much as I love fantasy lit I know I would have balked at a novel that size as a kid. Then again, I'm consistently amazed at the success of the Harry Potter books, which, despite their telephone-book girth are devoured like candy by both adults and young kids, so what do I know?