Viking Tales
1902
Long before electricity, Icelandic families spent the dark winters gathered around the fire, their faces lit by flickering flames while a father or grandfather told stories of kings and sea voyages, of battles won and strange lands found. These were the sagas, passed from mouth to mouth until someone finally wrote them down. This book is one of those fireside tales, brought to life for a new generation. We follow Harald from the night of his birth, when his father names him and grants him his first thrall, through his boyhood dreams of glory, his wild years as a Viking adventurer, and finally to his crowning as King of Norway. But the story doesn't end there. Harald's reign sparks an exodus westward: bold Vikings sailing from Norway to the Orkneys, then the Faeroes, then Iceland, and finally across the Atlantic to Greenland and the shores of a land they called Vinland. Each island hop was an accident of wind and will, a ship driven off course into history. This is adventure stripped to its bones: courage against the unknown, endurance against the sea, and the fierce loyalty that made a man's word worth more than gold. For children who have ever stared at a map and wondered what lies beyond the edge, these stories still burn bright.
Editions
X-Ray
“Iceland is a little country far north in the cold sea.””
— Jennie Hall
“The winter nights were very long. Sometimes the sun showed for an hour, sometimes for only a few minutes, sometimes it did not show at all for a week. The men hunted by the bright shining of the moon or by the northern lights.””
— Jennie Hall
“the people grew tired of this little gossip. Fathers looked at their children and thought: "They are not learning much. What will make them brave and wise? What will teach them to love their country and old Norway? Will not the stories of battles, of brave deeds, of mighty men, do this?””
— Jennie Hall
“And so it was for a long time. Some wise men wrote down the story of those voyages and of that land, and people read the tale and liked it, but no one remembered where the place was. It all seemed like a fairy tale. Long afterwards, however, men began to read those stories with wide-open eyes and to wonder.””
— Jennie Hall
“So he built fires at the mouth of the river near there, and stood by them and called out loudly: "I have put my fire at the mouth of these rivers. All the land that they drain is mine, and no man shall claim it but me. I will call this place Reykjavik.””
— Jennie Hall
“But none may go to Valhalla except warriors that have died bravely in battle. Men who die from sickness go with women and children and cowards to Niflheim. There Hela, who is queen, always sneers at them, and a terrible cold takes hold of their bones, and they sit down and freeze.””
— Jennie Hall
“he knew that a brave man has many wounds, but never a one on his back.””
— Jennie Hall
“Oh! it is better to live on the sea and let other men raise your crops and cook your meals. A house smells of smoke, a ship smells of frolic. From a house you see a sooty roof, from a ship you see Valhalla.””
— Jennie Hall
