By some weird twist of fate, Wyrd bið ful aræd, I quite recently came across with the book series written by Bernard Cornwell telling the tale of Uhtred of Bebbanburg and Alfred the Great of Wessex. First book bearing the name “The Burning Land” (ISBN 978-0-00-721975-9) and I have now finished four of the six books and I am closing up with the fifth. Which is rather unusual, since I have done most of the reading at work as I am now driving a truck full time, while I am still trying to finish my masters theses (fifty pages done, thirty pages to go, yeay) and I am still back on active (reservist) duty, which is entirely different story (which I am more than happy to explain, should someone ask). As a historian I am accustomed to absorb rather large quantity of written information in a relatively short period of time (some 400 pages in Finnish or 200 pages in English a day with the memorizing capacity enough to achieve 5 out of 5 score in exams of Master’s level) but only once before Uthred have I truly buried myself between the pages and that was with The Ramses Series (Ramses: The Son of Light - Volume I ISBN-10: 0446673560) by Christian Jacq’s. By burring I mean the inability to stop reading until the story was done, for an example while I was reading the Ramses series I made and drank a pot of coffee at 2 am just so I could finish that chapter/book (luckily I was a junior student so no-one noticed my absence in class next day). The masterpieces of the great Tolkien do not even come close, only Michael Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead: The Manuscript of Ibn Fadlan Relating His Experiences with the Northmen in A.D. 922 (ISBN 0-394-49400-8) had similar effect on me, but that I finished in just one night. If my memory serves me well: We have discussed about the Great Alfred in this very forum? The only English king with the moniker: Great. So I am bound to ask, have any of you read these magnificent books by Cornwell (and Crichton)? And if you have, what did you think about them? By some weird twist of fate, Wyrd bið ful aræd, I came across with the Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead (which have never been translated in Finnish) some ten years ago. It is mostly fictional and just another description of the Beowulf legend, but it is still based on an existing, if only in fragments, manuscript that withholds the first known description of Old Norse burial rites. Reading that description was the first time I truly questioned my born again faith in the Son of man. Over ten years ago my dear friend was hospitalized because of some complication from type 1 diabetes and I was the one who called the ambulance. I knew he was born and bred as a pagan and I gave him my copy of the “Eaters” to give him something to read in the hospital. A vain gesture I thought as he was in coma when the help arrived, four days later he rang me and told me that he had just signed out from the hospital and thanked me for lending him the book he now called the Viking bible. I soon forgot that incident and took my pilgrimage to Ἁγία Σοφία to feel the very presence of the holiest of the holy, and to this day I do believe that I felt such presence there, no matter that the great cathedral is now soiled by followers of the false prophet. Then again that feeling is long past, a faded memory. Now, as read about Uthred and about the Old Gods, Uthred may be a fictional character, but Cornwell gives a vivid description of the Old Gods, I no longer know what to believe. I feel that the Old Gods are bidding me, that my ancestors are bidding me: “Lo, there do I see my father. Lo, there do I see my mother, and my sisters, and my brothers. Lo, there do I see the line of my people, Back to the beginning! Lo, they do call to me. They bid me take my place among them, In the halls of Valhalla! Where the brave may live forever… Or it is the devil that bids me, I do not know. I do not know why I am even writing this, must be a due a momentarily loss of sanity. But one thing I do know, I will not be buried in some sad cemetery, I will burn on a bonfire; even if I had to light it by myself (funeral pyres are illegal in Finland). Sorry about the ranting, still more than curious to read your opinions about those great books, and about the Old Gods. ps. still not a troll.
