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A review by brynhammond
Odinn's Child by Tim Severin
4.0
“...this might be what Odinn was intending -- that I should be an honest chronicler of the Old Ways and the truth about the far-flung world of the Norsemen.”
Authentic is the word that springs to mind. It’s stitched together from sagas, as he tells us in his author’s note, and from the story set-up, with Odinn the Wanderer, the acquirer of knowledge, as his chosen god and patron, you can see the above is the aim: a universal look at the Norse world. I appreciate how trustworthy he is on the history, and when he uses the genuine saga-stuff as he does, there’s going to be enough tale. It goes from episode to episode, as he travels, which I enjoy – always new things on the horizon.
Want to mention a couple of things:
There’s a large uncanny content. Of our main, Thorgils, Erik the Red's Saga tells, “... there seemed to be something uncanny about him his whole life.” He has to do with seidr (as a true Odinn’s child), and besides that, there’s a lot of fun with things that go bump in the night. In a group this year I read [b:The Saga of Grettir the Strong|629993|The Saga of Grettir the Strong|Anonymous|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311645413s/629993.jpg|616321] – luckily, as Grettir features in #2, and I went Grettir-crazy in the saga – and that had as much fetch or ghost activity as Severin includes. So, genuine to the mind of the times, and like I said, fun.
Great women. I’m tempted to attribute these to his faithfulness to the sagas too, since Grettir’s Saga had great women. The majority of Severin’s seem to be large-framed, ‘formidable’ and not necessarily presented as attractive; perhaps he has reason to think Norse women were built on this model (I wouldn’t put it past him to have measured the skeletons); at any rate, they were fully involved in the story in a way that… they aren’t always.
And real. He may not go into great depths with the characters, but I thought them often unusual and not the stock cast; there were several I liked or who interested me.
I look forward to the next, and not only for Grettir.
Authentic is the word that springs to mind. It’s stitched together from sagas, as he tells us in his author’s note, and from the story set-up, with Odinn the Wanderer, the acquirer of knowledge, as his chosen god and patron, you can see the above is the aim: a universal look at the Norse world. I appreciate how trustworthy he is on the history, and when he uses the genuine saga-stuff as he does, there’s going to be enough tale. It goes from episode to episode, as he travels, which I enjoy – always new things on the horizon.
Want to mention a couple of things:
There’s a large uncanny content. Of our main, Thorgils, Erik the Red's Saga tells, “... there seemed to be something uncanny about him his whole life.” He has to do with seidr (as a true Odinn’s child), and besides that, there’s a lot of fun with things that go bump in the night. In a group this year I read [b:The Saga of Grettir the Strong|629993|The Saga of Grettir the Strong|Anonymous|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311645413s/629993.jpg|616321] – luckily, as Grettir features in #2, and I went Grettir-crazy in the saga – and that had as much fetch or ghost activity as Severin includes. So, genuine to the mind of the times, and like I said, fun.
Great women. I’m tempted to attribute these to his faithfulness to the sagas too, since Grettir’s Saga had great women. The majority of Severin’s seem to be large-framed, ‘formidable’ and not necessarily presented as attractive; perhaps he has reason to think Norse women were built on this model (I wouldn’t put it past him to have measured the skeletons); at any rate, they were fully involved in the story in a way that… they aren’t always.
And real. He may not go into great depths with the characters, but I thought them often unusual and not the stock cast; there were several I liked or who interested me.
I look forward to the next, and not only for Grettir.