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The Greenlanders

3.83 of 5 stars 3.83 · rating details · 914 ratings · 162 reviews

Pulitzer Prize winner and bestselling author Jane Smiley’s The Greenlanders is an enthralling novel in the epic tradition of the old Norse sagas.Set in the fourteenth century in Europe’s most farflung outpost, a land of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains, The Greenlanders is the story of one family–proud landowner Asgeir Gunnars...more

Paperback, 608 pages

Published September 13th 2005 by Anchor (first published March 12th 1988)

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Jun 01, 2012 Chrissie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Chrissie by: Maudie

Shelves: greenland, hf, kindle, sample-ok, 2012challenge

I recommend this book to those of you seeking immersion into the world of medieval Greenland. The characters are the Nordic immigrants who settled in Greenland, the events taking place in the 1300s, centuries after Viking exploration. These people must cope with cope with cold and a native population that is so strange that these creatures are seen as demons. These people, the indigenous Inuits, are called skraelings. It is a world of hunger and hard times, adultery and murder, illness and death...more I recommend this book to those of you seeking immersion into the world of medieval Greenland. The characters are the Nordic immigrants who settled in Greenland, the events taking place in the 1300s, centuries after Viking exploration. These people must cope with cope with cold and a native population that is so strange that these creatures are seen as demons. These people, the indigenous Inuits, are called skraelings. It is a world of hunger and hard times, adultery and murder, illness and death and lawlessness. Death, death and more death….. and of course religion. The Norwegians settled here to trade, to hunt and to farm. The Thing and the Bishop and his priests were the ultimate authority of power, and it isn’t easy reading of their ways.

I have never run into the style of writing found in this book. To help you determine if you will enjoy it, I have included a quote:

Then she turned to Gunnar and declared that as a child of but fifteen years, Gunhild could not be asked to keep two things in her mind at once, namely the Thjodhilds Stead way and the Lavrans Stead way. And since one had to make way for the other, it was necessary that the old go out and the new come in. The result of this was that on the feast of St. Stephen, Gunhild and Gunnar went on skis across the fjord and over the hills to Thjodhilds Stead, and Gunhild stayed there, as a maiden, and came home no more. And this was also the case, that in the disorder of departure, she never once looked over her shoulder, nor did she see her brother and sisters and mother waving aéfter her, but she only went forward, looking for her new home, and this came to Birgitta as an unaccountable grief, no matter how she prayed and told herself that this was the pain of bearing daughters, and folk must always accustom themselves to it. (41%)

The language is different. There is an absence of dialog. There is a distance between the “storyteller” and the listener. There is a formality to expressions that reflects the atmosphere of the times. The reader is always looking on rather than partaking of the events. Nevertheless, as the story proceeds you very definitely come to care for the characters. When you read the above quote you feel the sorrow and grief of the mother who is losing her child – even though she reasons with herself that this is a step all mothers must take.

Although the events are tragic, there are also characters that are happy and satisfied with their lives. There are characters that will astound you with their strength, others with their individuality. There are couples that separate and take other spouses or women who manage alone. That is no small task. There is feuding and injustice and then there is kindness. There are neighbors who step in and help when they need not.

You will feel immersed in another world. You will understand what their life really was like. Mostly it was grim. You see their world with their eyes and their sensibilities. You come to understand how the skraelings could be dangerous; how the priests were worthy of respect and that sometimes one simply had to see that people were punished. I f you didn’t see this was done yourself, nobody else would. The Pulitzer prize-winning author, Jane Smiley, plops you down in another world where the mindset is initially completely foreign and strange. You come to think as they do. However, the book will not fit everyone. The writing takes getting use to and the characters are numerous. They are listed in the front. Don’t expect a lot of laughs. Do expect total immersion in another time and place.

In my view this book deserves five stars for the author’s ability to transport the reader to a completely foreign place and for that place to become real. I have chosen nevertheless to give it three stars because I personally had a hard time with the language style, even though it had to be exactly as it was to properly conjure that world. I did have trouble reading this book; I can only give it three stars.
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Jan 14, 2012 Bettie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: published-1988, historical-fiction, one-penny-wonder, plague-disease, winter-20112012, greenland, colonial-overlords, environmental-issues, epic-proportions, families, ghosties-ghoulies, lifestyles-deathstyles, medieval5c-16c, norway, paper-read, period-piece, mythology, danish-root

This is a convincing and masterly fictional account about eking out a life on mediaeval Greenland. If you prefer non-fiction then Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed is your best source.

As with Sigrid Undset's 'Kristin Lavransdatter' trilogy, 'Greenlanders' is written in oral-epic-saga mode so it didn't surprise me at all to find a character called Birgitter Lavransdottir (hattip?). Now for the *gasp* statement - I am already (100 pages in) enjoying this more than the eternal hanky...more

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Oct 21, 2007 Meg rated it 4 of 5 stars

What makes this book unique is also what makes it unapproachable: Namely, it was written in the style of a Scandinavian epic, which is a departure from the narrative graces we're used to. At first, this causes it to seem anecdotal and choppy, and I had a hard time getting into it. After I became immersed in the characters and their lives, however, it quickly gathered momentum and drew me in. Though it follows a large cast of characters, I did not find myself yearning for more attention to some a...more

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Aug 17, 2007 Andrew rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Historical Fiction Fans

This books begins with a strong premise, and interesting humanity-versus-nature story chronicling the decline of a settlement in Greenland, circa fifteenth-sixteenth century.

It would seem that whomever is responsible for editing this book needs to review basic paragraph structure and narrative flow. Jane Smiley patches snippets of dialogue and multi-year story events together between characters that may only appear once or twice.

The character relationships are especially murky, due to the Norweg...more This books begins with a strong premise, and interesting humanity-versus-nature story chronicling the decline of a settlement in Greenland, circa fifteenth-sixteenth century.

It would seem that whomever is responsible for editing this book needs to review basic paragraph structure and narrative flow. Jane Smiley patches snippets of dialogue and multi-year story events together between characters that may only appear once or twice.

The character relationships are especially murky, due to the Norwegian method of naming. For example, if you are the male son of Thor, your name would be Thorson. This becomes compounded by the cyclic character naming spread out over many multi-generational stories. For example, there are two Ivar Asgeirsons and two Asgeir Ivarsons... with scant contextual notes as to which is being discussed. Take a few dozen Norwegian first names, add lots of death, disease, and famine, blend on high, and see how they recombine over the course of approximately 70 years. A clear mental path to trace their individual threads, must involve lots of sticky notes and flipping back and forth. Or a very very good memory for names without context.

The paragraph structure was the worst part. The roughly interwoven story lines move through two to six page long paragraphs. Breaks between the story snippets are often only punctuated with phrasing such as "And another thing that happened...", with the occasional, and very inconsistent, paragraph break. The inconsistency of the change in narrator, story thread, and notation of time frame, made this book extremely frustrating to follow, and the interrelation of numerous side characters baffling.

This could have been a pleasantly dry story with a large cast of characters, but due to it structural difficulties, is very frustrating to follow. After many instances of flipping back and forth trying to remember who did what and how it applied to the current story thread, I decided to give up. It is possible that a reader who has the luxury to read this book in one sitting may be able to maintain the myriad narrative threads for long enough to find a cohesive story line. I lack the patience for this particular book.

This is the first Jane Smiley book I have read. It seems dramatically different in depth of dialogue and character relationships than described by some of her fans. I am unsure if this is one of her early works, before she had much of her structure worked out, or if this book might be a fluke. I give this story a big thumbs down, with the hope that her other stories prove more rewarding to the reader.(less)

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Feb 10, 2008 samantha rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-lit

I really don't even remember when I read this book... that said, it was one of the most beautiful books I've read. Jane Smiley is an expert in Icelandic literature and sagas, which I know she once taught at University of Iowa (she may still). She chooses to use the prose style of these epic sagas to write her own saga of 14th c Vikings attempting to colonize Greenland. This makes it a bit difficult to get into right at first, but just like with any writing style, you quickly adjust. Just give it...more

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Aug 13, 2007 Nicole rated it 3 of 5 stars

How many chances am I going to give Jane Smiley?

I had to drag myself through this 700 page epic about 14th century Norse people in Greenland. The first few hundred pages were utterly confusing - with dozens of significant and insignificant characters (and no way to distinguish the two) with similar names. If I had only kept a cheat sheet, I'd have done a lot better.

There were moments in this rambling book that were really interesting. The story spans generations of an unlucky family and the core...more

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Apr 05, 2013 Roaldeuller rated it 5 of 5 stars

Note: this is a personal and somewhat rambling review.

The Greenlanders was one of the great reading experiences of my adult life, and I have to confess that "great" reading experiences have become few and far between the older and more jaded I get. I had heard of the book for several years prior, and I knew that at some point, the time would ripe. I find that certain books reward a structured, self conscious approach to being read, The Greenlanders being a case in point. I am not sure why, it ce...more Note: this is a personal and somewhat rambling review.

The Greenlanders was one of the great reading experiences of my adult life, and I have to confess that "great" reading experiences have become few and far between the older and more jaded I get. I had heard of the book for several years prior, and I knew that at some point, the time would ripe. I find that certain books reward a structured, self conscious approach to being read, The Greenlanders being a case in point. I am not sure why, it certainly isn't rational (another example was Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose). Most books I pick up and start reading immediately, but for certain others, I feel the need to anticipate and postpone.

In this instance, I purchased a used hardback through an Amazon partner. When it arrived it was pleasingly large and heavy with a clear plastic cover protecting the jacket. The cover artwork is excellent, and the bookseller had included an additional bonus of a postcard version of the cover (or perhaps this was included by the publisher - in any case it made a great bookmark!) I set the book aside for several weeks on my bedside table to let the idea of it grow in my mind, occasionally picking it up just to enjoy the heft, and eventually, the time was right and I dove in.

When I did start to read it I was immediately captivated. It is not an easy read as some reviewers have pointed out. The prose style is that of an actual Norse or Scandinavian saga, the dialog can seem stilted, and the overall tone is stylized, spare, and stark. Smiley frequently reuses certain phrases - "there came a time" for example - reinforcing the sense that one is listening to an oral story. The characters can be difficult to keep track of. Simple events (harvests, meals) are described with the same dispassionate tone as murder. If you read quickly or skim at all, you can miss vital developments.

Despite its challenges, The Greenlanders richly rewards a reader's efforts. After the first few pages, I had sunk into it's mood, my inner ear adapting to the pacing and style of the prose, surrendering to the almost Biblical voice. I have a similar reaction to Shakespeare or Melville - difficult at first, but then as I get accustomed to the rhythm, it is as though I enter a different world. So as to not spoil the plot, I will say only that the story is truly epic in scope, covering decades and taking the character(s) from youth to old age. By the time I was finished, after several late nights of reading, I felt as though I were emerging from a dream. Images from the book remain with me, still vivid in my brain a year later.

I am generally a fan of Jane Smiley, although I must admit that I prefer her less popular books (Moo, Horse Heaven) to her blockbusters (Thousand Acres). The Greenlanders definitely falls among the former. Highly recommended. (less)

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Dec 28, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm still trying to wrap my head around this book. It's definitely not a light read. I read it over the course of about three days, but it felt slow and heavy at times, in part due to the framework of the novel (written in the style of the Icelandic sagas) and in part due to its darker thematic elements. I guess I'll break this into bullet points.

-I ended up really loving the choice of structure and narrative style. As I said, it mimics an Icelandic saga. It is a LONG book- over 500 pages, I th...more

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May 25, 2012 Alesa rated it 5 of 5 stars

You don't just read this book. You LIVE it. Who would have thought that the lives of Scandinavian settlers in medieval Greenland could be so fascinating. Life was so hard and brutal. Both the culture and the climate were totally unforgiving. But it's totally fascinating to see how our forebearers lived, and how much of stoic Scandinavian culture remains in families of that heritage today.

The author, Jane Smiley, is an author of stunning brilliance. She carries you to another time and place, such...more

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Apr 05, 2011 Emma rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, greenland, literary-fiction, family-saga, world-fiction-challenge, 4-stars-and-a-half, 10-best-books-read-in-2010

The Greenlanders is an exceptionally well-written bit of historical fiction, detailing the little-known history of the Norse settlement in Greenland from the mid-14th to early-15th century. While the story focuses primarily on one family, there is no real protagonist, and the narrative slips in and out of the lives of many members of the small community.

Smiley (no relation of mine, sadly!) consciously adopts the style of an oral epic, paying attention to the rhythm of the prose and repeating ce...more The Greenlanders is an exceptionally well-written bit of historical fiction, detailing the little-known history of the Norse settlement in Greenland from the mid-14th to early-15th century. While the story focuses primarily on one family, there is no real protagonist, and the narrative slips in and out of the lives of many members of the small community.

Smiley (no relation of mine, sadly!) consciously adopts the style of an oral epic, paying attention to the rhythm of the prose and repeating certain phrases ("It was the case that. . . ."). But there are other consequences of this style as well: there's a certain emotional distance from all the characters, who play their roles in the story but let little of their personalities or emotions shine through, compared to characters in most modern novels. There's also a certain lack of explanations and description, which, while I understand that it was a deliberate choice, bothered me somewhat: it's another way of keeping the reader at a distance.

Which isn't to say that this isn't an enjoyable or absorbing book, by any means. I wouldn't call it a "page-turner," but still didn't want to put it down once I got into it. Not surprisingly, a lot happens in the book, with major events often treated with great detachment, as there's just so much to get through. Memory and the passage of time are dealt with quite a bit; we see events that happened early in the book become legends, while other early events are forgotten about completely and disbelieved when someone mentions them half a century later. We're also witnesses to the slow decline of the Greenlander civilization: before the beginning of the book, one of the two settlements has already been abandoned, and the Greenlanders fold in on themselves more and more as time progresses. Their detachment from European civilization, and the little that we do hear about Europe in the book, provide an interesting backdrop to their daily struggles.

As a literary book, I suppose this one is meant to be able to be interpreted in many different ways, and it's interesting to see how other people here have interpreted it quite differently from me: for instance, I saw the native population as being quite minor and Smiley as deliberately downplaying their role. The "skraelings" remain an enigma, with characters telling us about them far more than we actually see them.

At any rate, I found this to be an admirable book, although I'd advise people to read the preview before ordering it, as it's not for everyone. I round down to four stars not because I found the book to be flawed, but because I found the level of detachment to be a bit much. I understand that the Greenlanders expressed very little, and that they would have found no need to explain things about their culture when they didn't realize that things could be any other way; but the book was neither narrated by, written by or written for ancient Greenlanders, and this kept the book from being as memorable as it otherwise might have been. Still, overall an excellent piece of literature. (less)

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Sep 25, 2011 David rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

For a modern book, this struck me as a lot like the old icelandic/greenlandic stories that I've read. Of course, that is both good and bad as far as my personal tastes go. I cannot fault the characterization, depth of detail, or scope. However, it just goes on and on and on and on and on. You sometimes see entire lives in a couple of pages, but that's only a tiny portion. It is extremely dense, but I have to wonder if some of that could have been cut. It makes it seem more like the old Norse tal...more

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Mar 19, 2012 Mary rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

this is a long and wordy book, but maintains interest. It is a fictional story is of the last years of the Norwegian settlements in Eastern Greenland before they vanished early in the 15th century, probably due to dwindling resources, the Black Death in Europe which brought an end to sea-going exchanges with Scandinavia, and the chilling climate change, with recurrent famines and deadly infections.

The fiction seems very real, with intense human interactions. The balance between raw interpersonal...more

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Oct 27, 2011 Anna rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: to-2011

Although I struggled to stick with this book in the first 100+ pages, but I had read really good reviews on it so I stuck with it. Soon I was hooked and I am glad I did. The most interesting aspect of this story was the influence the Greenland's relative isolation had on their morals and religious beliefs. The oral preservation of laws that tried to maintain their original ties to other norther countries maintained some continuity until lawspeaker Bjorn failed to pass them on and even failed. As...more

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Jun 19, 2011 Diana rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, literary-fiction

This is very different from the other Jane Smiley books I've read. I'm knocked out that she can write in such different styles, and I loved this book.

Norse people settled on Greenland for about four hundred years, until the Little Ice Age made it impossible for them to survive there in about 1400. I was surprised when, about a hundred pages in, I found myself getting completely absorbed in this book and its world. It's told in what can seem like a kind of flat style, maybe like Saga stories from...more

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Feb 15, 2013 Holly rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: lovers or historical fiction

Recommended to Holly by: Goodreads

Shelves: fiction, favorite-fiction

I wish there was a way to give four and a half stars rather than five or four. This book, while not as deep or revealing of human longings and repentance as "Kristen Lavransdatter", touches on similar themes and has the same Medieval Nordic feel. That alone wouldn't make it a good read, but author Jane Smiley's word selection and character development, as well as her plot lines, carry the reader easily into 14th and early 15th century Greenland where we find all of the story's major players. In...more

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May 13, 2012 Elizabeth Urello rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: novels

I loved this book so much! As with all books I really love, I can't say exactly why it was so absorbing. A lot happens, but not in a page-turning way, it's not funny at all, and while you do come to know and care about the characters, they are held at a certain remove from the reader. But it's nearly 600 pages of awesomeness about a lost society I'd never had any interest in before, and I loved every word of it. It's about endurance and survival in a hostile landscape, in which human emotions -...more

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Apr 15, 2012 Jay rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, historical-distant, gouge-my-eyes-out, greenland, redrum, tab-a-in-slot-b

I was very disappointed by this book, especially considering I've been wanting to read it since I was fourteen or so. I found the writing to be dense, which in itself isn't that big a problem, but given it was compounded by multiple-page-long paragraphs, and little distinction in time, I found the words swimming and frustrating to read. All a pity, really, as I was hoping to enjoy this book.

The Norwegian-styled naming didn't bother me too much if I really concentrated on the flow of the story, b...more

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Feb 27, 2011 Myles rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historish, literary

History has been something of a passion for me since I was very young and first read about the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs, the ancient temples and cities of the Aztec and the Khmer buried under jungle vines, and the crumbled ziggurats of Sumer. As I grew up I fell deep into the larger stories and overarching, serpentine narrative we call history, but always I was most attracted to the doomed and lost civilizations, the dwindling and disappearance of Norse Greenland being among them.

Historica...more History has been something of a passion for me since I was very young and first read about the tombs of the Egyptian Pharaohs, the ancient temples and cities of the Aztec and the Khmer buried under jungle vines, and the crumbled ziggurats of Sumer. As I grew up I fell deep into the larger stories and overarching, serpentine narrative we call history, but always I was most attracted to the doomed and lost civilizations, the dwindling and disappearance of Norse Greenland being among them.

Historical fiction is a tricky genre and one rarely pulled off successfully, prone as it is to sensationalism, but Jane Smiley is a careful student. Not only does she seem to know as much about the realities of life, great and small, for the Greenlanders, she makes perfect use of their style; she tells their story in their own voice.

The idea of a novel written with the detached air and reporting style of the Nordic Sagas is daunting to say the least, but the somber tone it lends to the story does it justice. From the beginning, the novel dwells on loss and the theme that even in times of prosperity, things had once been much better and brighter. There are no trees for timber, no source of iron, grains cannot grow, priests grow old; there are many things that must be replaced through distant trade. The arrival of ships becomes a rarer and rarer event, almost every season seems to bring about hardships that leave more steadings abandoned, forever.

I say that the style is detached, but that is not to say that the characters never express their feelings, on the contrary, the Greenlanders' love and enmity, envy and hope, is present along with a great solidity that allows them to keep farming and living, whatever their hardships. It is important too that Smiley gives a voice to the women, their own dealings with each other and men, their sense of duty and their own desires and failings.

The Greenlanders is a novel full of sadness but its never self-pitying or melodramatic. It happens that the winters grow colder, that there is conflict with the Skraelings, that the soil no longer supports as much livestock as it once did. The bindings of law and religion, without their keepers, twist or disappear. I can well understand why this should be one of Smiley's least-popular novels, though I haven't read anything else by her, because it is, for all its elegance, a harsh book in many ways. The contemplation of how easily situations and civilizations fall apart, leaving behind the well-meaning but doomed individual, is not something that is easily recommended to others.(less)

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Dec 19, 2009 Elle rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not sure why this book is so readable, but it is.
This is the story of an isolated society, where the Pope's and King's power barely reaches and about one ship a decade sails in. What happens to a small population over the course of about 70 years with almost no outside influences? A single man or the weather of a single season can have a huge influence.
The story is told like an account of local news, with few intimacies or dialogues. Usually the thoughts and feelings of the characters are w...more

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May 01, 2009 Matthew rated it 3 of 5 stars

This books was captivating in a way that caught me off guard. First of all, it's written in a prose style very different from other novels, but which feels entirely natural for the subject matter. It reads like history, a true Scandinavian family saga. But if you don't enjoy history for history's sake, you might not like the book. It doesn't have a traditional story arc, and didn't exactly keep me riveted to the pages. It can be somewhat ponderous and dense. But overall, I enjoyed sliding into i...more

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Oct 08, 2011 Sara (LitHacker.com) rated it 5 of 5 stars

I read this in 2001 by stealing it from my then-roommate when she wasn't reading it. I don't know why, but I've been thinking about this book a lot. Even though it is long and I have so many other books I want to read, I am feeling compelled to go out and get a copy and read this wonderful book again. I remember that it was completely engrossing and surprising how major plot twists that would normally come at the end of a book would crop up abruptly and surprisingly everywhere. I felt immersed i...more

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Jan 08, 2011 Sarah rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, unfinished

I really really wanted to read this book - I generally like Jane Smiley's work, and its historical fiction! About Northern Europe no less!

But in the end it was just...ponderous and dull. And frankly, I couldn't care less about any of the characters - not the unfaithful wife, the family she left behind, the crazy priest...not anyone. They were just all so dull. Even as Smiley so painstakingly - in so much detail - talked about the harshness of their life and their winters I still didn't care.

(a...more

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Jan 22, 2010 Mia rated it 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book--really, really loved it, didn't want it to end. Since I can't abide Jane Smiley's other books* I couldn't figure how I would so love one but so hate the others. I was literally afraid to read it again, fearing that I might notice on the second reading loathesome qualities I'd missed the first time around, that I'd read shallowly and under the influence of my love for Sigrid Undsett's Kristen Lavransdatter, which I also loved.

But after years and years of this wondering and wor...more

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Mar 19, 2010 Evan Brandt rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Feb 25, 2013 Rhian rated it 5 of 5 stars

This may be my new favorite novel. It was hard going at first, but Smiley's strange, impersonal way of telling the story really got under my skin. I read it six months ago and it still comes to mind constantly.

What did I like about it? The pared-down world of the Greenlanders, the subtly wrought characters, specific, gorgeous detail, and the emotion, which was somehow both stifled and explosive. There is something incredibly moving about their painful struggle to survive and their ultimate fail...more

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May 14, 2009 Dan rated it 3 of 5 stars

The gloomiest novel I've read since the Middle Ages but nonetheless engrossing and engaging. Smiley portrays individuals as unconscious actors in the collapse of a society -- the Norwegian settlement in SW Greenland around 1400. The story of that collapse was better told by Jared Diamond in "Collapse," but what's fascinating here is how individual decisions determine and are determined by history. There are far too many characters to get to know, and their names are far too long, but some of the...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Jmassa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

You think you got problems? Try living in Norse Greenland in the Little Ice Age. If you don't kill enough seals at the autumn hunt, you and your family might starve over the winter. That is if you don't die of the "vomiting ill" or get axe-murdered by a neighbor over some stupid feud. Geez.

This prodigious novel reads sometimes like a fantasy, the culture and everyday lives of the people being so strange. And at times like a "lost colony" SF novel, the community so isolated that a ship from Europ...more

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Jan 21, 2008 Sara rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've been fascinated by Greenland for the past few years, and so my dad got me this book awhile back. It's a pretty daunting looking read -- 582 pages about a fourteenth-century Norse civilization there -- so I wasn't sure I'd ever make it through it.
Since the book was written as a historical saga, it focuses more on plot than character development, and moves rather quickly between characters, sometimes spending 30 pages on a character and then seeing them die off in a sentence or two. There ar...more

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Feb 15, 2010 Jessica rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: all-timefavorites

What a truly amazing book. Written in a style reminiscent of the Norse sagas, beautifully detailed and epic in scale, this is the only book I've ever found that captures what it must have been like to live in one of the farflung Viking colonies of the Middle Ages. Greenland is a terribly inhospitable place, but I had no idea how inhospitable before I read this. They were completely unable to cultivate any fruits or vegetables or wheat. Their diet consisted of meat, from both wild and domesticate...more

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Nov 11, 2012 Melissa rated it 1 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this book, to continue my months long delve into medieval historical fiction. I read about fifty pages in and could not take it any more. This book is very dry. It reads like an account from a very boring town gossip (this person was the son of this person, went to this persons farm, did this, the other person said this, years later this happened, blah blah blah). Fifty pages in and one of the "major" characters (according to the back of the book) dies, and I couldn't car...more

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About Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist.

Born in Los Angeles, California, Smiley grew up in Webster Groves, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, and graduated from John Burroughs School. She obtained a A.B. at Vassar College, then earned a M.F.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Iowa. While working towards her doctorate, she also spent a year studying in Iceland as a Fulbright Scholar...more

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14305.The_Greenlanders?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1322464537l/14305.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14305.The_Greenlanders?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley[/url]

The Greenlanders

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