Murder & mystery in the Viking Age
In the wintry town of Thurstang, hidden away in a forgotten fjord, someone is murdering children. In a cruel twist, the killer mutilates the infants, cutting away their faces. Why would someone do this? And what links the victims?
- Eyvind Eythorsson, the Jarl of Thurstang, is caught in a deadly treaty with a neighbouring king. Only a daring sea-raid - a "Winter Viking" - can save him from a war that is coming. His beautiful wife urges him one way, his brother the other.
- Gislaug is the Jarl's lovely daughter, over whose head hangs a terrible fate.
- Valka is the beautiful slave girl with a harrowing secret.
- Helga the Volva, a mad seeress, was loved by the Jarl in her youth, and now raises her wild son in the mountains. She longs for revenge and is haunted by a prophecy of blood.
- Odhinn, one-eyed god of magic and death, controls their fate.
Can you solve Odhinn's riddle?
Tell me this,
Something I have seen, still that once suckled
Cold that was quickened, in blood cradled
A father’s face, no more to be found
A love that is lost with taking leave
On salt spume, a blood sacrifice,
A price paid for the prowess of princes
Something I have seen, still that once suckled
Cold that was quickened, in blood cradled
A father’s face, no more to be found
A love that is lost with taking leave
On salt spume, a blood sacrifice,
A price paid for the prowess of princes
Introducing Eirik Glee, riddle-solver
To promote "The Riddles of Eirik Glee" I am serialising the first novel THE THIEF OF FACES on this site's Blog. Two chapters are up already!
I've always had a deep love for the Viking Age - the whole mythology, the history, the language and literature, the landscape.
Last year, I wrote the first draft of a Viking Age mystery, the first of a projected series. Of course, there were no detectives back in the Dark Ages, but the Vikings loved their riddles. So the thought took shape, what about a Viking who wasn't a great warrior, but was good at solving riddles? What if such a man saw more than the big barbarian warriors he lived among? What if the crimes and mysteries of his age were like riddles that he alone could solve? Of course, the one-eyed god Odhinn must feature in any Viking tale about riddles - and our hero, if he serves Odhinn, must be one-eyed too, a skald (poet), specially favoured by grim Odhinn and marked out for a special destiny. So, to 9th century Norway, where Eirik Glee's career as a poet is coming to a messy end, but his career as a solver of Odhinn's riddles is just beginning. |