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Seven Dreams #1
The Ice-Shirt
The time is the tenth century A.D. The newcomers are a proud and bloody-minded people whose kings once changed themselves into wolves. The Norse have advanced as implacably as a glacier from Iceland to the wastes of Greenland and from there to the place they call Vinland the Good. The natives are a bronze-skinned race who have not yet discovered iron and still see themselves as part of nature.
As William T. Vollmann tells the converging stories of these two peoples and of the Norsewomen Freydis and Gudrid, whose venomous rivalry brings frost into paradise he creates a tour-de-force of speculative history, a vivid amalgam of Icelandic saga, Inuit creation myth, and contemporary travel writing that yields a new an utterly original vision of our continent and its past.
--back cover
As William T. Vollmann tells the converging stories of these two peoples and of the Norsewomen Freydis and Gudrid, whose venomous rivalry brings frost into paradise he creates a tour-de-force of speculative history, a vivid amalgam of Icelandic saga, Inuit creation myth, and contemporary travel writing that yields a new an utterly original vision of our continent and its past.
--back cover
415 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
85 people are currently reading
4796 people want to read
About the author
William T. Vollmann
99 books1,455 followersWilliam Tanner Vollmann is an American author, journalist, and essayist known for his ambitious and often unconventional literary works. Born on July 28, 1959, in Los Angeles, California, Vollmann has earned a reputation as one of the most prolific and daring writers of his generation.
Vollmann's early life was marked by tragedy; his sister drowned when he was a child, an event that profoundly impacted him and influenced his writing. He attended Deep Springs College, a small, isolated liberal arts college in California, before transferring to Cornell University, where he studied comparative literature. After college, Vollmann spent some time in Afghanistan as a freelance journalist, an experience that would later inform some of his works.
His first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), is a sprawling, experimental work that blends fantasy, history, and social commentary. This novel set the tone for much of his later work, characterized by its complexity, depth, and a willingness to tackle difficult and controversial subjects.
Vollmann's most acclaimed work is The Rainbow Stories (1989), a collection of interlinked short stories that explore the darker sides of human nature. His nonfiction is equally notable, particularly Rising Up and Rising Down (2003), a seven-volume treatise on violence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Over the years, Vollmann has continued to write prolifically, producing novels, short stories, essays, and journalistic pieces. His work often delves into themes of violence, poverty, and the struggles of marginalized people. He has received several awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005 for Europe Central, a novel about the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during World War II.
Vollmann is known for his immersive research methods, often placing himself in dangerous situations to better understand his subjects. Despite his literary success, he remains somewhat of an outsider in the literary world, frequently shunning public appearances and maintaining a low profile.
In addition to his writing, Vollmann is also an accomplished photographer, and his photographs often accompany his written work. Painting is also an art where's working on, celebrating expositions in the United States, showing his paintings. His diverse interests and unflinching approach to his subjects have made him a unique voice in contemporary American literature.
Vollmann's early life was marked by tragedy; his sister drowned when he was a child, an event that profoundly impacted him and influenced his writing. He attended Deep Springs College, a small, isolated liberal arts college in California, before transferring to Cornell University, where he studied comparative literature. After college, Vollmann spent some time in Afghanistan as a freelance journalist, an experience that would later inform some of his works.
His first novel, You Bright and Risen Angels (1987), is a sprawling, experimental work that blends fantasy, history, and social commentary. This novel set the tone for much of his later work, characterized by its complexity, depth, and a willingness to tackle difficult and controversial subjects.
Vollmann's most acclaimed work is The Rainbow Stories (1989), a collection of interlinked short stories that explore the darker sides of human nature. His nonfiction is equally notable, particularly Rising Up and Rising Down (2003), a seven-volume treatise on violence, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Over the years, Vollmann has continued to write prolifically, producing novels, short stories, essays, and journalistic pieces. His work often delves into themes of violence, poverty, and the struggles of marginalized people. He has received several awards, including the National Book Award for Fiction in 2005 for Europe Central, a novel about the moral dilemmas faced by individuals during World War II.
Vollmann is known for his immersive research methods, often placing himself in dangerous situations to better understand his subjects. Despite his literary success, he remains somewhat of an outsider in the literary world, frequently shunning public appearances and maintaining a low profile.
In addition to his writing, Vollmann is also an accomplished photographer, and his photographs often accompany his written work. Painting is also an art where's working on, celebrating expositions in the United States, showing his paintings. His diverse interests and unflinching approach to his subjects have made him a unique voice in contemporary American literature.
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January 31, 2013
Here in the American Mid-Atlantic the winters seem to be getting shorter and milder. I remember great ice storms in my youth, walking on what seemed ice a meter high, ice pelting the roof all night long, like a hundred cats’ nails clacking on a chapel floor or millions of insects hitting the window; I remember the creaking and groaning of limbs heavy with ice up there invisible in the unending darkness of a pitch black winter night as I walked out against my parents' warnings; I remember the brief thunder of their crashing through the other ice-heavy limbs as they plummeted over-laden, and their black limbs emerging upright from the snow piles where they speared themselves- they pointed back upward from where they dropped, maybe longing to be reconnected to that mother-trunk. I remember ice inches thick on cars and we would be stuck in the house for days, logs hissing in the fireplace. This happened numerous times. Maybe I remember the snowfall as higher because I was smaller; maybe the ice-clothing on the trees and the porch seemed more armor-like and thicker because I was young and more easily awe-struck. Today and yesterday, the 30th and 31st of January 2013, it was in the mid-sixties in Washington DC and my sleeves were rolled up and I ate lunch outside in the unexpected warmth and pale light. The trees are still bare. Strangely, three days ago work was delayed because of ice. Three days ago ice did rain down and once again percussed my roof (a different roof, a different habitation, a different ice-pelting than the one earlier thought of) and the wind screamed at my windows and the walls of my house trembled as if their blood too was freezing. The Frost is still in Vinland, but it has changed. And it was never like it was in the Flateyjarbok anyway, because that was all a myth- but what do we know of those dark centuries that came before we were born other than myth? All history is myth and dream.
My memories of the ice storms of my childhood are lies. I am remembering them now decades later and hundreds of miles away, through a mind greatly altered by years and situations. Yet my mythology is my only history, it’s all I have; my memories are my own skin-bound book that tell my fiction, on which one day the final page and end cover will be closed up forever.
So it goes with all of history. In retelling the Norse and Icelandic myths, the Greenland sagas dealing with the discovery of North America (in this first of his Seven Dreams) Vollmann is simply taking the reins from centuries of storytellers and recounting again, as generations have by the fireside, an origin myth. His prose alternates from landscapes painted in overwhelming detail of flora and fauna, Eden-like descriptions of primitive pastorals, where lichen grows like rainbows on stones and grass waves like women’s hair in the wind, and some sad-eyed reindeer disappear over the horizon and a gull screams and circles over indifferent tides,and there a human is lost among the rocks, out hunting- to the vast oblivion of oceanscapes, where sky is no different from sea, and mists roll in from unknown and unseen lands to clothe everything in a dream-vision- to hellish underworlds and rivers of blood carrying worm-eaten corpses pecked at by ravens whose feathers are coated in flesh-filth and walls of snakes drip venom on the unfortunate dead cast there. Oh, there is a wealth of imaginative detail spilling out of the pages of this book; how much of it is Vollmann’s and how much of it comes from the Viking sources I don’t know and frankly don’t care; the experience is all.
Throughout the telling of the Viking-dream, holes are pierced into modern days- Vollmann the author in Greenland, Iceland, the east coast of North America, observing these lands today. A few purposes are served by these sections. One is that the intervening years disintegrate instantly, and we are standing on the ruins of the houses which a moment ago were inhabited by our mythic characters; we feel the centuries in their quick absence, we see how far we have come and how much has been lost. A kind of mysterious sadness pervades these modern sections, as if something abandoned the earth long ago, or as if men’s imaginations have become only more impoverished by the years, or as if in giving up our more wild Shirts and modes of life we have sterilized something about what it is to be viscerally alive and believe in our ability to shift forms (change our fundamental selves) and imbue objects with power (the lifeless technology we are ever more beholden to, which lessens our autonomy) or to have faith in something other than a life of materiality, function, and habits bent toward stale progress (the businessman’s homogenizing garb and dead tongue). Who doesn’t at times feel the urge to take to the road and plunder? Who doesn't long at certain hours to go a-Viking across unknown deadly seas in search of new lands? (Well, the unfortunate answer is “the vast majority of us”)... Which brings me to another function of these brief sojourns to modern times- they illustrate that we haven’t changed that much at all, that we merely repress more, that the extreme violence and chaos (believe me, this book has much extreme violence) of the warrior races of myth is still pulsing through our veins- it just erupts more strangely, less often but in spectacular explosions, in mass killings, in wars hidden from view (so that we might more easily believe ourselves to be civil), in the stylization and sterilization of our banal entertainments that are dishonestly lascivious, in our perversions, in the banal veneer we uphold of the normalcy of our lives that is always and ever anything but normal. We are still kin and relative of these pagan Vikings, we still go a-plundering and bring the Frost-Seed wherever we venture, only the death we bring is in vapid forms- pollution and exploitation of foreign workers and convenient backing of despots when it benefits our bottom line. We don’t tell ourselves honest stories. The stories we tell ourselves now, for the greater part, are lies of gentleness, lies of beauty, lies of heroism, lies of order; at least the sagas of the Vikings recognized our ugliness and brutality and gave them the place they warrant; and when beauty and goodness does bloom in this savage and spellbound tale (Gudrid), it stands out all the more against the background pallor of death, and is thus elevated to its rare and proper place. True beauty comes into fruition at moments when all beauty is under threat.
Much of the earth is wastes of stone and depthless seas.
Vollmann dreams of a first aborted colonization of North America; he dreams of Europeans first coming to America clothed in the mantle of war and armed to the teeth, in search of wealth and set to plunder and manipulate and murder and rape to obtain that wealth; he dreams of a past steeped in blood lying down at Hell’s mouth; he dreams of two sisters, one the thrall of Evil and one the daughter of Good. They are still at each other’s throats, they are still fighting their fates out in our days, in our lives; the Frost-Seed is planted deep in Vinland’s soil; the ice always returns.
My memories of the ice storms of my childhood are lies. I am remembering them now decades later and hundreds of miles away, through a mind greatly altered by years and situations. Yet my mythology is my only history, it’s all I have; my memories are my own skin-bound book that tell my fiction, on which one day the final page and end cover will be closed up forever.
So it goes with all of history. In retelling the Norse and Icelandic myths, the Greenland sagas dealing with the discovery of North America (in this first of his Seven Dreams) Vollmann is simply taking the reins from centuries of storytellers and recounting again, as generations have by the fireside, an origin myth. His prose alternates from landscapes painted in overwhelming detail of flora and fauna, Eden-like descriptions of primitive pastorals, where lichen grows like rainbows on stones and grass waves like women’s hair in the wind, and some sad-eyed reindeer disappear over the horizon and a gull screams and circles over indifferent tides,and there a human is lost among the rocks, out hunting- to the vast oblivion of oceanscapes, where sky is no different from sea, and mists roll in from unknown and unseen lands to clothe everything in a dream-vision- to hellish underworlds and rivers of blood carrying worm-eaten corpses pecked at by ravens whose feathers are coated in flesh-filth and walls of snakes drip venom on the unfortunate dead cast there. Oh, there is a wealth of imaginative detail spilling out of the pages of this book; how much of it is Vollmann’s and how much of it comes from the Viking sources I don’t know and frankly don’t care; the experience is all.
Throughout the telling of the Viking-dream, holes are pierced into modern days- Vollmann the author in Greenland, Iceland, the east coast of North America, observing these lands today. A few purposes are served by these sections. One is that the intervening years disintegrate instantly, and we are standing on the ruins of the houses which a moment ago were inhabited by our mythic characters; we feel the centuries in their quick absence, we see how far we have come and how much has been lost. A kind of mysterious sadness pervades these modern sections, as if something abandoned the earth long ago, or as if men’s imaginations have become only more impoverished by the years, or as if in giving up our more wild Shirts and modes of life we have sterilized something about what it is to be viscerally alive and believe in our ability to shift forms (change our fundamental selves) and imbue objects with power (the lifeless technology we are ever more beholden to, which lessens our autonomy) or to have faith in something other than a life of materiality, function, and habits bent toward stale progress (the businessman’s homogenizing garb and dead tongue). Who doesn’t at times feel the urge to take to the road and plunder? Who doesn't long at certain hours to go a-Viking across unknown deadly seas in search of new lands? (Well, the unfortunate answer is “the vast majority of us”)... Which brings me to another function of these brief sojourns to modern times- they illustrate that we haven’t changed that much at all, that we merely repress more, that the extreme violence and chaos (believe me, this book has much extreme violence) of the warrior races of myth is still pulsing through our veins- it just erupts more strangely, less often but in spectacular explosions, in mass killings, in wars hidden from view (so that we might more easily believe ourselves to be civil), in the stylization and sterilization of our banal entertainments that are dishonestly lascivious, in our perversions, in the banal veneer we uphold of the normalcy of our lives that is always and ever anything but normal. We are still kin and relative of these pagan Vikings, we still go a-plundering and bring the Frost-Seed wherever we venture, only the death we bring is in vapid forms- pollution and exploitation of foreign workers and convenient backing of despots when it benefits our bottom line. We don’t tell ourselves honest stories. The stories we tell ourselves now, for the greater part, are lies of gentleness, lies of beauty, lies of heroism, lies of order; at least the sagas of the Vikings recognized our ugliness and brutality and gave them the place they warrant; and when beauty and goodness does bloom in this savage and spellbound tale (Gudrid), it stands out all the more against the background pallor of death, and is thus elevated to its rare and proper place. True beauty comes into fruition at moments when all beauty is under threat.
Much of the earth is wastes of stone and depthless seas.
Vollmann dreams of a first aborted colonization of North America; he dreams of Europeans first coming to America clothed in the mantle of war and armed to the teeth, in search of wealth and set to plunder and manipulate and murder and rape to obtain that wealth; he dreams of a past steeped in blood lying down at Hell’s mouth; he dreams of two sisters, one the thrall of Evil and one the daughter of Good. They are still at each other’s throats, they are still fighting their fates out in our days, in our lives; the Frost-Seed is planted deep in Vinland’s soil; the ice always returns.
January 12, 2014
How skewed a vision of distance you can develop from looking at our standardized world maps. Geography is such a malleable, unfathomable thing. I can take a beach ball globe of the world, deflate it and make all of the continents touch and overlap and commune with one another. I can spin it around and pick any dot and call it the Centre of the Universe, erase all the political lines we've scarred the landscape with and focus on the dreamy blue of the sea.
Who says the ancient peoples were isolated from one another? There are so many islands in the Northern reaches of the Atlantic, with vulnerable human beings plying the unmarked and stormy way from one to the next in frangible wooden ships.
The meeting of two peoples: the Norsemen (Icelanders, Greenlanders... it is difficult to pin a nationality on people that flit across the map, then as now) and the First Peoples, the Inuit, the Skraeling. William the Blind blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction, bringing paint and colour to the lives of historical figures who really did walk this earth. Is it his use of primary sources that makes this story uneven? We are always telling this story from a white person's perspective, and I was hungry for a deeper plunge into the Inuit or Micmac experience of this first encounter, but such is not Vollmann's project. Alas, saga literature is vast and reams have been written about these characters, a mound of riches for Vollmann to excavate. By comparison, much of Inuit lore remains oral history, and the cultural recollection of these millennium-old happenings is scant at best. Another way of knowing the past, insofar as it is possible, is through its material record - and clothing is a recurrent motif. How can we know anything of history that is not superficial? Does clothing really define a person, in the way the bear-kings channelled the power of the beast by donning their bear-shirts?
Who says the ancient peoples were isolated from one another? There are so many islands in the Northern reaches of the Atlantic, with vulnerable human beings plying the unmarked and stormy way from one to the next in frangible wooden ships.
There were islands as numerous as stars, so that men went dreaming from archipelago to constellation, wind-blown and wave-tossed to flowery little coasts where they were deafened by the booming of waterfalls that no one had ever heard before.One thousand years ago, these wooden playthings were swept far off course and driven to the unknown coasts of a landmass formerly known as Vinland, not once but twice in a decade. Suddenly the distance between two continents is foreshortened and the "discovery" of the Americas in 1492 hardly seems impressive. Greenland was settled, but gradually creeping frost and frigid relations led to its abandonment by white folk. We have records of all these long-ago voyages in medieval saga literature, a window into the lives of those first adventurers. William the Blind draws on The Sagas of the Icelanders to revisit this violent age, when so many men were burnt in their sleep, and weaves in elements of Inuit lore and his own travels to the Arctic. Shunted abruptly to the present time, we look at the same places through the lens of today, but are they really the same? Greenland is colder and bereft of driftwood, rivers braid and change course incessantly, and glaciers bear down on mountains at formidably slow speeds. By revisiting these places, the impermanence of our short human lives is brought into sharp relief.
The meeting of two peoples: the Norsemen (Icelanders, Greenlanders... it is difficult to pin a nationality on people that flit across the map, then as now) and the First Peoples, the Inuit, the Skraeling. William the Blind blurs the lines between fiction and non-fiction, bringing paint and colour to the lives of historical figures who really did walk this earth. Is it his use of primary sources that makes this story uneven? We are always telling this story from a white person's perspective, and I was hungry for a deeper plunge into the Inuit or Micmac experience of this first encounter, but such is not Vollmann's project. Alas, saga literature is vast and reams have been written about these characters, a mound of riches for Vollmann to excavate. By comparison, much of Inuit lore remains oral history, and the cultural recollection of these millennium-old happenings is scant at best. Another way of knowing the past, insofar as it is possible, is through its material record - and clothing is a recurrent motif. How can we know anything of history that is not superficial? Does clothing really define a person, in the way the bear-kings channelled the power of the beast by donning their bear-shirts?
I know the robes better than the people, for I have seen photographs of the clothing excavated from the frozen graves at Herjolfsness.But oh, William the Blind, how you drew me in with your worlds of ice. The story came alive for me when Freydis and her wicked heart scaled the craggy heights of Blue-Shirt. The terrifying truth behind the failure of that first settlement, its vivid other-worldliness, the inner frost that chills the core of this novel - my words cannot do justice to the artistic genius behind this first Dream.
Can you understand your own dreams, which arise with mushrooms' rank richness in the night-forests within your skull?
November 17, 2013
“A man is whatever room he is in right now.” - Japanese proverb
“Who do you want to be today?” – Oingo Boingo
William T. Vollmann is going to tell me a story, and he’s going to tell it long. Unlike a Homeric hymn, he’s going to begin at the beginning. He’s warned me that what I am about to read is unreliable. What do I have to lose? Everything.
Am I a product of my environment? Or am I a patchwork of genetic coding, living out the program created by the haphazard joining of thousands of generations that ultimately resulted in this “I”. Like a Viking ancestor, can I wear a different serk (shirt) to channel the power of a beast and become someone different, something new? Will I be the same after I’ve taken off the bear-serk; after I’ve gone berserk?
Bill, you warned me not to trust in your narrative, but what happens when I’ve read your story and I’m mistrustful of your admonition of distrust? What happens when the shirt won’t come off, or I don’t want to take it off? The Blue-shirt fits nicely. The Ice-shirt even better. I think I’ll keep it on. Come on, Bill, what’s the worst that can happen? It’s 987 A.D. – these skraeling savages won’t mind.
I realize that my grandfather, and his father before him, would remove their bear-shirt, their wolf-shirt, before the night once again became day, and ultimately return to themselves. But this is different. This Ice-shirt isn’t coming off. So if you must, go ahead and preach to me from a thousand years into the future. How does this all end?
“Who do you want to be today?” – Oingo Boingo
William T. Vollmann is going to tell me a story, and he’s going to tell it long. Unlike a Homeric hymn, he’s going to begin at the beginning. He’s warned me that what I am about to read is unreliable. What do I have to lose? Everything.
Am I a product of my environment? Or am I a patchwork of genetic coding, living out the program created by the haphazard joining of thousands of generations that ultimately resulted in this “I”. Like a Viking ancestor, can I wear a different serk (shirt) to channel the power of a beast and become someone different, something new? Will I be the same after I’ve taken off the bear-serk; after I’ve gone berserk?
Bill, you warned me not to trust in your narrative, but what happens when I’ve read your story and I’m mistrustful of your admonition of distrust? What happens when the shirt won’t come off, or I don’t want to take it off? The Blue-shirt fits nicely. The Ice-shirt even better. I think I’ll keep it on. Come on, Bill, what’s the worst that can happen? It’s 987 A.D. – these skraeling savages won’t mind.
I realize that my grandfather, and his father before him, would remove their bear-shirt, their wolf-shirt, before the night once again became day, and ultimately return to themselves. But this is different. This Ice-shirt isn’t coming off. So if you must, go ahead and preach to me from a thousand years into the future. How does this all end?
March 11, 2014
Prelude to a Review
This book was my first introduction to WTV and means a lot to me personally.
I met my wife, F.M.Sushi, in 1990 and we got married in 1993. She was originally from Hobart in Tasmania, and in 1992 she suggested we go there for a quick trip. It was the first time I'd ever been to Tasmania and she was proud to show me around.
Tasmania is the smallest state in Australia, but it has always had an amazing literary culture. It might be the cold climate that is good for reading in winter.
I spied a second hand copy of this novel for $6 [bargain!] at Rapid Eye Books in Battery Point and couldn't resist it.
I had never heard of WTV at the time, but many things about the book appealed to me.
First, it had chapter titles and sub-headings throughout the text. This style has captivated me since encountering my first novel by the Australian author David Ireland.
Second, it had lots of maps, which was irresistible for someone who wanted to be a cartographer up until age 13.
Thirdly, I decided it was time I brushed up on Icelandic myths.
This latter reason is also possibly behind my 21 year long apprehension to actually read the book. Something about Icelandic myths terrifies me.
The times, they are a changing, though.
As F.M. Sushi continually reminds me, it's not a bargain if you never ever read it. It's an indulgence.
I owe it to F.M. Sushi. I owe it to Tasmania. I owe it to the Tasmanian who read it and passed it on. I owe it to Bill.
And so now I have read it.
How Freydis and Blue-Shirt Brought the Frost to Vinland
"Of Eirik the Red it is written…that he had three sons by Thjodhild: Leif, Thorstein and Thorvald. Freydis was his bastard daughter. She was married to a rich man at Gardar. Of all these it is necessary to write, and of Thorstein’s wife, Gudrun...," of whom Thorstein remarks "I never tire of your face."
The first third of the novel is almost encyclopaedic in scope and style. The historic figures of eleventh century Norway, Iceland and Greenland are presented to us in wiki dry fashion. William ("the Blind", he of the pen drawings and maps) insinuates himself into the text occasionally, to no real good effect, until he introduces us to Freydis, who is the real star of the show, at which point Vollmann really populates the myths and legends with authorial power and creativity.
Freydis is a "Queen Bitch...who has already once played us false." On their wedding day, her husband, Thorvard, "gave her a pale blue dress which came from foreign parts. It was the most beautiful dress that she had ever owned. Freydis put it on and looked at her reflection in a slow-flowing stream. She laughed and laughed all alone. Then she rushed into the hills to masturbate."
She has no need of any man other than the Blue-Shirt, a demon who she encounters in the ice: "...her will sent her forward to cut footholds in the ice. She crossed it, she clung to it; it brushed her elbow, her cheek...Thus, Blue-Shirt first caressed her...There was a rock in the middle of it, and on the rock was a bluish-white spider."
She is possessed of a "heart of ice". She has become a "Bride of Nothingness" : "I think Someone Else is asking through you; I think I see Him in your eyes."
Even when her Ice-Shirt is melted, she chooses to replace it with another, rather than to embrace good. It is she who leads the journey to settle North America (then called "Vinland" or "Vineland").
Death is her companion, and she wields a mighty axe herself. Inevitably, they are repulsed by the Micmac Indian inhabitants and the freezing cold, and they return vanquished to Greenland and Iceland: "They are all dead now." Yet, Vollmann brings them vividly to life.
The environment might be inhospitable, but it is not malicious ("I don’t think a river wants anything, except to be itself"), the problem is the people.
Vollmann assembles and displays them like flowers. While there is much good and beauty in the tale ("The girls leaped across a rushing stream, carrying the flowers in their mouths"; "A beautiful girl lay smiling and picking yellow flowers and singing, ‘Ai-ya, la-la-la...’"), the characters are haunted by Death Kraken, Hell-Vipers, Black Hands and Demon-Spawn.
Ultimately, one flower stands out: "I have often noticed that when cut roses in a vase begin to droop there remains one to stand awhile; looking away from those bowing crimson bells that once companioned it, it drinks the light as long as it can, although its narrow-tongued underleaves have already lost their strength." It is Freydis who dominates the arrangement.
A thousand years later, Vollmann replicates the journey of these early settlers. His mission is not just to learn about these Viking descendants, but to understand what became of the America they departed. What was their legacy? What is their influence on what they left behind? "Do we carry our landscapes with us locked in our ice-hearts, and can we fit them over what was there, just as we can clothe ourselves forever in the stiff and crackling cloaks that lie in the churchyard permafrost...?"
SOUNDTRACK:
David Bowie - "Queen Bitch"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5P63q...
David Bowie - "Queen Bitch" [Live on the Old Grey Whistle Test]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8oGyG...
R.I.P. Mick Ronson, "The Spider with the Platinum Hair"
Graham Parker – "You've Got to be Kidding"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be2amZ...
"Hey hey yeah la la la la Oh oh la la la la la la la la la la.la la..."
The Warlocks - "Song For Nico"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izts_H...
The Warlocks - "Song For Nico" [Live]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46jgxy...
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - "Don't Leave Me Here"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNB7iJ...
This book was my first introduction to WTV and means a lot to me personally.
I met my wife, F.M.Sushi, in 1990 and we got married in 1993. She was originally from Hobart in Tasmania, and in 1992 she suggested we go there for a quick trip. It was the first time I'd ever been to Tasmania and she was proud to show me around.
Tasmania is the smallest state in Australia, but it has always had an amazing literary culture. It might be the cold climate that is good for reading in winter.
I spied a second hand copy of this novel for $6 [bargain!] at Rapid Eye Books in Battery Point and couldn't resist it.
I had never heard of WTV at the time, but many things about the book appealed to me.
First, it had chapter titles and sub-headings throughout the text. This style has captivated me since encountering my first novel by the Australian author David Ireland.
Second, it had lots of maps, which was irresistible for someone who wanted to be a cartographer up until age 13.
Thirdly, I decided it was time I brushed up on Icelandic myths.
This latter reason is also possibly behind my 21 year long apprehension to actually read the book. Something about Icelandic myths terrifies me.
The times, they are a changing, though.
As F.M. Sushi continually reminds me, it's not a bargain if you never ever read it. It's an indulgence.
I owe it to F.M. Sushi. I owe it to Tasmania. I owe it to the Tasmanian who read it and passed it on. I owe it to Bill.
And so now I have read it.
How Freydis and Blue-Shirt Brought the Frost to Vinland
"Of Eirik the Red it is written…that he had three sons by Thjodhild: Leif, Thorstein and Thorvald. Freydis was his bastard daughter. She was married to a rich man at Gardar. Of all these it is necessary to write, and of Thorstein’s wife, Gudrun...," of whom Thorstein remarks "I never tire of your face."
The first third of the novel is almost encyclopaedic in scope and style. The historic figures of eleventh century Norway, Iceland and Greenland are presented to us in wiki dry fashion. William ("the Blind", he of the pen drawings and maps) insinuates himself into the text occasionally, to no real good effect, until he introduces us to Freydis, who is the real star of the show, at which point Vollmann really populates the myths and legends with authorial power and creativity.
Freydis is a "Queen Bitch...who has already once played us false." On their wedding day, her husband, Thorvard, "gave her a pale blue dress which came from foreign parts. It was the most beautiful dress that she had ever owned. Freydis put it on and looked at her reflection in a slow-flowing stream. She laughed and laughed all alone. Then she rushed into the hills to masturbate."
She has no need of any man other than the Blue-Shirt, a demon who she encounters in the ice: "...her will sent her forward to cut footholds in the ice. She crossed it, she clung to it; it brushed her elbow, her cheek...Thus, Blue-Shirt first caressed her...There was a rock in the middle of it, and on the rock was a bluish-white spider."
She is possessed of a "heart of ice". She has become a "Bride of Nothingness" : "I think Someone Else is asking through you; I think I see Him in your eyes."
Even when her Ice-Shirt is melted, she chooses to replace it with another, rather than to embrace good. It is she who leads the journey to settle North America (then called "Vinland" or "Vineland").
Death is her companion, and she wields a mighty axe herself. Inevitably, they are repulsed by the Micmac Indian inhabitants and the freezing cold, and they return vanquished to Greenland and Iceland: "They are all dead now." Yet, Vollmann brings them vividly to life.
The environment might be inhospitable, but it is not malicious ("I don’t think a river wants anything, except to be itself"), the problem is the people.
Vollmann assembles and displays them like flowers. While there is much good and beauty in the tale ("The girls leaped across a rushing stream, carrying the flowers in their mouths"; "A beautiful girl lay smiling and picking yellow flowers and singing, ‘Ai-ya, la-la-la...’"), the characters are haunted by Death Kraken, Hell-Vipers, Black Hands and Demon-Spawn.
Ultimately, one flower stands out: "I have often noticed that when cut roses in a vase begin to droop there remains one to stand awhile; looking away from those bowing crimson bells that once companioned it, it drinks the light as long as it can, although its narrow-tongued underleaves have already lost their strength." It is Freydis who dominates the arrangement.
A thousand years later, Vollmann replicates the journey of these early settlers. His mission is not just to learn about these Viking descendants, but to understand what became of the America they departed. What was their legacy? What is their influence on what they left behind? "Do we carry our landscapes with us locked in our ice-hearts, and can we fit them over what was there, just as we can clothe ourselves forever in the stiff and crackling cloaks that lie in the churchyard permafrost...?"
SOUNDTRACK:
David Bowie - "Queen Bitch"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5P63q...
David Bowie - "Queen Bitch" [Live on the Old Grey Whistle Test]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8oGyG...
R.I.P. Mick Ronson, "The Spider with the Platinum Hair"
Graham Parker – "You've Got to be Kidding"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=be2amZ...
"Hey hey yeah la la la la Oh oh la la la la la la la la la la.la la..."
The Warlocks - "Song For Nico"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izts_H...
The Warlocks - "Song For Nico" [Live]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46jgxy...
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - "Don't Leave Me Here"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNB7iJ...
December 2, 2014
It was all unspeakably grand and beautiful. The world was still being created here.Let's consider story for a moment. Let's consider the beginning, where belief has not yet turned to mythos and faith is sequestered by time, place, and persona. There is heat, and cold, a micro view of the inevitability of history birthing conflict through contact. Right now, there is the diaspora of culture, centuries of mixing and melding that the modern world can now afford to hazily view as all having occurred under a single people, a single label, a single story. Right now, for now, common knowledge has not yet self inoculated with fear of the Other.
Right now is not our now; to know, we must dream.
There's a great deal of fact here, amongst all the 'artistic license' and 'personal experience' and all those other words the realm of objectivity and of effective argument would be caught dead wearing. Effective argument, you say? This is a story, not a debate. Here, we can relax, take off the lens of fact checking and put up our feet on the highly decorated pedestal of Fiction. But sit up for a moment. Take up that mobile unit of comfortable padding, and take off the gilt. There's carving there, for '... carving itself had still some sacredness, as on Thorvald's bench-boards, where the wood-rings and ring-spirals met each other in splendid confusion upon the plain of wooden darkness, so that each bench-board seemed to depict a night-lit boneyard: - the unsprung wood bones of Eirik's grandfathers, frozen in their clatter even though snakes and hoops and vertebrae pierced each other through; and these bones were loam for the new, as figures of birds and warriors sprouted from the wood.'
All of that? A smidgen of fact, and a whole lot of lies. Think back to your nonfiction, with its bibliographical lists (by what means), its accredited writers (how much is that piece of paper really worth), its systematic inclusion and far weightier exclusion throughout the millenia of just what we are willing to do to make ourselves believe. The authors are objective? Better to disprove the concept of entropy. We are calibrated and in turn calibrate, but not that much.
The world-circle was embroidered on it, from Jötunheim to Wineland the Good, so that upon going into his bed King Harald felt as if he were clothing himself in the whole world (for he did not think that that was also what dead men did, when they were covered in earth).What do the walking dead and Vikings have in common? Along with a burgeoning slice of the entertainment market, a predilection for death, the death, the flesh of humanity cowering in one festering corner and Ragnarök mounting the other. No undead here (or maybe a few, you never can tell), but what with the Inuit and Skraeling, Jenuaq and Norse, Amortortak turned Blue Shirt turned Hel turned, turning, turn. Today's audiences crave a defined mortality, while I desire a thought of women as people, men as people, the Other as people, all crafting a mortality out of their own concourse. Not always nice, these people, but always a history, always a culture, always the ties that bind of their own formation. Never a label.
You have your age old manuscripts, you have your personal interactions, you have the land. Somewhere in there is the winner, the loser, and the blood. The Dream Shirt you'll have to weave on your own.
But where corpses were buried secretly, there the grass grows thick; such signs (and there are ever so many others!) may be read by those to whom truth is more important than beauty.
November 3, 2013
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
T. S. Eliot, in the Four Quartets.
Still from Chris Marker's "Sans Soleil"
My paternal grandparents owned, for most of my father's life and for all of mine (or at least, until their death in my mid-teens), a slate-roofed cottage deep in the mountains of North Wales. It passed to my father in their will, and only left the family once my parents retired, sold it, along with their home down south, and moved permanently into the Snowdonia National Park. Therefore, for much of my life, most of my holidays were spent wandering by Llyn Idwal and Tryfan, through the Gwydir Forest, climbing (how many hundreds of times?) Cader Idris, following thin mountain rivers to the rocky shore. I loved spending long afternoons clambering amongst the ruins of Castell-y-Bere, built by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd in the thirteenth century, to guard what was once a major route through the mountains. From this fortress Llywelyn journeyed south to meet with all the Welsh princes near the town of Machynlleth, attempting to form a governing body for Wales, an achievement he outlasted by just a few years. Castell y Bere was strengthened by his grandson, Llywelyn the Last, but has long since fallen into disrepair and desuetude.
I was, from the age of about 7, obsessed with Norse, Germanic and Celtic mythology. I had children's editions of the tales, full of wonderful drawings of Loki, Freya, Odin, Arawn. I loved the tales of the Mabinogion, and the stories of Ragnarok, stories riven with ice and heather, long dark nights and short, dark days. I would read these legends and then leave my attic room and walk up the gorse-strewn hillside, explore the abandoned slate-mines, the old old forests, and imagine echoing wolf-calls shimmering somewhere in the gloom.
I have always felt these were my stories, my history, that they were in my blood, manifesting in my red hair, my pale skin. I have always felt a much stronger connection to deserts of ice, rather than those sandy, semetic deserts we heard of in school, and in church. The Nordic gods, and the Nordic myths, felt so much more authentically human, truer, than those of Judaic ancestry.
And so, for all these reasons, it was probably inevitable that I would fall rapidly for this book, and for Volmann's voice, shape-shifting and leaping freely through time. I am less than halfway through as I write this, and my admiration is increasing with every page.
_________________________
I finished this novel in the air, halfway across the North Sea, with the evening coming in fast outside the window. And I am writing this in a hotel room in Leiden, travel-tired. It is a remarkable work, not least because he truly has found a way to re-New the mythology of our Northern European past, to allow its re-enactment to illuminate those parts of the human experience that only dreams, myths and the fantastical can reach.
He is a great writer, truly, primarily because of the inexhaustible reach of his ambitions, and though I may still have reservations, concerns, about some of his work, and about some of his views expressed in interview and in prose, that does nothing to diminish the depth of respect and, frankly, awe I feel for his intelligence and his literary talent.
I have every intention of following William the Blind to the end of his Dream-Journey and, from there, who knows...
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
T. S. Eliot, in the Four Quartets.
Still from Chris Marker's "Sans Soleil"
My paternal grandparents owned, for most of my father's life and for all of mine (or at least, until their death in my mid-teens), a slate-roofed cottage deep in the mountains of North Wales. It passed to my father in their will, and only left the family once my parents retired, sold it, along with their home down south, and moved permanently into the Snowdonia National Park. Therefore, for much of my life, most of my holidays were spent wandering by Llyn Idwal and Tryfan, through the Gwydir Forest, climbing (how many hundreds of times?) Cader Idris, following thin mountain rivers to the rocky shore. I loved spending long afternoons clambering amongst the ruins of Castell-y-Bere, built by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, Prince of Gwynedd in the thirteenth century, to guard what was once a major route through the mountains. From this fortress Llywelyn journeyed south to meet with all the Welsh princes near the town of Machynlleth, attempting to form a governing body for Wales, an achievement he outlasted by just a few years. Castell y Bere was strengthened by his grandson, Llywelyn the Last, but has long since fallen into disrepair and desuetude.
I was, from the age of about 7, obsessed with Norse, Germanic and Celtic mythology. I had children's editions of the tales, full of wonderful drawings of Loki, Freya, Odin, Arawn. I loved the tales of the Mabinogion, and the stories of Ragnarok, stories riven with ice and heather, long dark nights and short, dark days. I would read these legends and then leave my attic room and walk up the gorse-strewn hillside, explore the abandoned slate-mines, the old old forests, and imagine echoing wolf-calls shimmering somewhere in the gloom.
I have always felt these were my stories, my history, that they were in my blood, manifesting in my red hair, my pale skin. I have always felt a much stronger connection to deserts of ice, rather than those sandy, semetic deserts we heard of in school, and in church. The Nordic gods, and the Nordic myths, felt so much more authentically human, truer, than those of Judaic ancestry.
And so, for all these reasons, it was probably inevitable that I would fall rapidly for this book, and for Volmann's voice, shape-shifting and leaping freely through time. I am less than halfway through as I write this, and my admiration is increasing with every page.
_________________________
I finished this novel in the air, halfway across the North Sea, with the evening coming in fast outside the window. And I am writing this in a hotel room in Leiden, travel-tired. It is a remarkable work, not least because he truly has found a way to re-New the mythology of our Northern European past, to allow its re-enactment to illuminate those parts of the human experience that only dreams, myths and the fantastical can reach.
He is a great writer, truly, primarily because of the inexhaustible reach of his ambitions, and though I may still have reservations, concerns, about some of his work, and about some of his views expressed in interview and in prose, that does nothing to diminish the depth of respect and, frankly, awe I feel for his intelligence and his literary talent.
I have every intention of following William the Blind to the end of his Dream-Journey and, from there, who knows...
June 4, 2016
4.5 stars
The first of Vollmann’s Seven Dreams series about the American people, landscape and continent, and about the relationships between Native Americans and those moving to the continent. This novel charts the movement of people of Norse origin to Iceland Greenland and finally to the coast of America. It reads like a saga and Vollmann has used contemporary sources and has drawn from the Heimskringla and especially the Flatyjarbok (a saga from a fourteenth century Icelandic source).
There is a certain fantasticalness about it and the New York Times review describes it thus;
“Imagine a performance of Wagner's ''Ring'' cycle directed by Sam Peckinpah, with a new libretto by J. R. R. Tolkien and occasional music by Aaron Copland.”
The saga follows refugees from the Norse lands like Eirik the Red who settled initially in Iceland and focusses on two of his daughters Freydis and Gudrid. There are demons and trolls and lots of magical occurrences but underneath are age-old and modern tensions. The human impetus to explore and to colonise and to spread; the effects on native peoples and tensions between the two. Vollmann indicates that the peoples from the Old World took with them to the new world greed and the will to power and also the frost and ice. He seamlessly weaves together scraps of historical information and narrative fiction and then intersperses it with snapshots of his own experiences of travelling in the areas in question for his research. The end of the novel skates over several hundred years of history and mistreatment of the peoples of the lands. There is a sense of old myth; Cain vs Abel if you will. An unspoilt idyll ruined by those from outside/overseas. It’s possible the arrival of the Norse peoples can be seen as the Fall, original sin. Vollmann does refer to the Norse visits and explorations as the beginning of a process of degradation.
There are lots of references and an extensive glossaries, but the whole is rather effective. One of the things I like about Vollmann, from the limited amount of his work I have read, is the way he looks in difficult places and gives a voice to those who have no voice. I found the ending a little unsatisfactory, but that’s my opinion. However if you like myth and saga this may appeal, but as always with Vollmann there is more to it than meets the eye.
The first of Vollmann’s Seven Dreams series about the American people, landscape and continent, and about the relationships between Native Americans and those moving to the continent. This novel charts the movement of people of Norse origin to Iceland Greenland and finally to the coast of America. It reads like a saga and Vollmann has used contemporary sources and has drawn from the Heimskringla and especially the Flatyjarbok (a saga from a fourteenth century Icelandic source).
There is a certain fantasticalness about it and the New York Times review describes it thus;
“Imagine a performance of Wagner's ''Ring'' cycle directed by Sam Peckinpah, with a new libretto by J. R. R. Tolkien and occasional music by Aaron Copland.”
The saga follows refugees from the Norse lands like Eirik the Red who settled initially in Iceland and focusses on two of his daughters Freydis and Gudrid. There are demons and trolls and lots of magical occurrences but underneath are age-old and modern tensions. The human impetus to explore and to colonise and to spread; the effects on native peoples and tensions between the two. Vollmann indicates that the peoples from the Old World took with them to the new world greed and the will to power and also the frost and ice. He seamlessly weaves together scraps of historical information and narrative fiction and then intersperses it with snapshots of his own experiences of travelling in the areas in question for his research. The end of the novel skates over several hundred years of history and mistreatment of the peoples of the lands. There is a sense of old myth; Cain vs Abel if you will. An unspoilt idyll ruined by those from outside/overseas. It’s possible the arrival of the Norse peoples can be seen as the Fall, original sin. Vollmann does refer to the Norse visits and explorations as the beginning of a process of degradation.
There are lots of references and an extensive glossaries, but the whole is rather effective. One of the things I like about Vollmann, from the limited amount of his work I have read, is the way he looks in difficult places and gives a voice to those who have no voice. I found the ending a little unsatisfactory, but that’s my opinion. However if you like myth and saga this may appeal, but as always with Vollmann there is more to it than meets the eye.
March 13, 2018
Imagine an ärkāik, ornate and elaborate mosaic, each intricate facet symbolising a story-fragment of the Greenlander's quest to North America. Twist your imagination further, if you will, and see the mosaic start to turn'n'twist; rotate'n'tumble, shape-shifting in undulating Rubik's transformation.
For therein lies William The Blind's sprawling, Tolklien'esque travelogue; his reshaping, retelling of the Icelandic histories; the medieval Norse sagas and of the Viking's habitation of North America.
The Ice Shirt is a fantastical smelting pot of history and fabulist tale telling writ large; writ epic and panoramic with shifts-in-time from 900 to 1985 in time-twisting moments of travelogue. The landscape comes to life as character; character's lives shape-shift from primal beings to bear, wolf, crow and horse; witches plunder men's hearts and family bloodlines bleed out across the craggy anarchic prose.
It's the first novel in William T. Vollmann's Seven Dreams series. As far as I am aware there are a two medieval epics, Erik's Saga and the Graenlendinga Saga which both tell the tale of Viking landings upon Vinland - I've yet to actually read the Greenlander Saga.
Amid the violent flux of shape-shifting story telling, of violent and panoramic landscapes, are two women Greenlanders. Freydis and Gudrid. To quote the inner sleeve jacket:
'Freydis and Gudrid rivalry is implacable. Daughter to The bastard Erik the Red, Freydis wants supreme power in the new country, and will stop at nothing to get it. Some call her a witch. Gudrid is Christian, and so must put distance between her and the shape-changers of the Norse past. Having mastered the art of marrying well, she aches to seize the richest treasures of the land ahead, which shimmers in a perpetual summer of wild grapes. And Freydis is ready to stop her with magic frost'
Freydis and Gudrid's grisly feuds in Norway spill Westward to Iceland and onto Greenland, and stake a territory across the horizon - and into the next volume… Fathers & Crows: the conflicts between French Jesuit missionaries in New France (Canada) and the native Huron and Iroquois peoples in Canada and present-day New York state.
WTV's stylistic reforging of these nomadic Icelandic folk begins with each character's inner dreams and perceptions. Their inner worlds are as rich and visceral as the lithe, grisly and gargantuan landscapes; the tumultuous seas and monolithic mountain sides. Family histories and folklore are woven through disorienting moments of sleep and waking.
WTV's descriptive style of writing paints vivid apocalyptic scenery, sculpted and decorated with intricate character details and projects the narrative across a lush living dreamscape, landscape and historyscape©.
This is a book to climb into, to drink-up, to gorge and feast on; a place to inhabit and revel in.
It's spirited folklore and history interwoven and mingled with epic vistas of beautiful, scraggy violent landscapes; giants, bears, changelings and skraelings, Kings and Queens, brothers and sisters, kinfolk and stranger - all of this swept up in a gushing, tugging, clawing, windswept, screeching elemental saga. Glorious sensory overload...
...onward and Westward into Fathers and Crows.
For therein lies William The Blind's sprawling, Tolklien'esque travelogue; his reshaping, retelling of the Icelandic histories; the medieval Norse sagas and of the Viking's habitation of North America.
The Ice Shirt is a fantastical smelting pot of history and fabulist tale telling writ large; writ epic and panoramic with shifts-in-time from 900 to 1985 in time-twisting moments of travelogue. The landscape comes to life as character; character's lives shape-shift from primal beings to bear, wolf, crow and horse; witches plunder men's hearts and family bloodlines bleed out across the craggy anarchic prose.
It's the first novel in William T. Vollmann's Seven Dreams series. As far as I am aware there are a two medieval epics, Erik's Saga and the Graenlendinga Saga which both tell the tale of Viking landings upon Vinland - I've yet to actually read the Greenlander Saga.
Amid the violent flux of shape-shifting story telling, of violent and panoramic landscapes, are two women Greenlanders. Freydis and Gudrid. To quote the inner sleeve jacket:
'Freydis and Gudrid rivalry is implacable. Daughter to The bastard Erik the Red, Freydis wants supreme power in the new country, and will stop at nothing to get it. Some call her a witch. Gudrid is Christian, and so must put distance between her and the shape-changers of the Norse past. Having mastered the art of marrying well, she aches to seize the richest treasures of the land ahead, which shimmers in a perpetual summer of wild grapes. And Freydis is ready to stop her with magic frost'
Freydis and Gudrid's grisly feuds in Norway spill Westward to Iceland and onto Greenland, and stake a territory across the horizon - and into the next volume… Fathers & Crows: the conflicts between French Jesuit missionaries in New France (Canada) and the native Huron and Iroquois peoples in Canada and present-day New York state.
WTV's stylistic reforging of these nomadic Icelandic folk begins with each character's inner dreams and perceptions. Their inner worlds are as rich and visceral as the lithe, grisly and gargantuan landscapes; the tumultuous seas and monolithic mountain sides. Family histories and folklore are woven through disorienting moments of sleep and waking.
WTV's descriptive style of writing paints vivid apocalyptic scenery, sculpted and decorated with intricate character details and projects the narrative across a lush living dreamscape, landscape and historyscape©.
This is a book to climb into, to drink-up, to gorge and feast on; a place to inhabit and revel in.
It's spirited folklore and history interwoven and mingled with epic vistas of beautiful, scraggy violent landscapes; giants, bears, changelings and skraelings, Kings and Queens, brothers and sisters, kinfolk and stranger - all of this swept up in a gushing, tugging, clawing, windswept, screeching elemental saga. Glorious sensory overload...
...onward and Westward into Fathers and Crows.
March 31, 2015
(Would you, reader, rather be a sheep or a bird? I say that the sweet sheep have no cares, and for that reason their stupidity is to be prized.)
Bill asks me this early, on page 9, in the Ice-Text, also known as The Book of Flatey 1382 and also known merely as A Historical Note, which is after the Preface but a bit before 1, THE CHANGERS, or, How the Bear-Shirt was lost, and the Ice-Shirt was found.
But I didn't answer Bill right away. I don't so easily dismiss the self-indulgent, being, well, generally self-indulgent myself. I'm wary of authors who think imaginative formatting of text is somehow as important as one really good verb. Yet, such playfulness didn't get in the way in Argall and Fathers and Crows and I'm committed to reading all Seven Dreams.
So I put on my Open-Minded-Shirt and sallied forth into the world of Saga and Legend and Dreams. We have to go from Norway (with hints of Ireland) to the Islands, to Iceland and Greenland. But then we are in San Francisco and Bill is watching two transvestites transform. I am hoping there will be a point to this later on.*
I actually liked the insertions of Vollmann, circa 1987, as he walked in the footsteps of the Greenlanders and the Skraelings, even as I'm pretty sure they never made it to San Francisco. Speaking of which, Vollmann includes a passage called Pinpointing their Landfall which states:
From the astronomical observations that they took, we know they must have landed in New Jersey. But other scholars, some of even greater repute than I, say that the Greenlanders stayed at Cape Cod, in Maine, in Newfoundland, in North Carolina.
Setting aside the fact that Vollmann gives better self-indulgence than self-deprecation, New Jersey? And, And, he doesn't mean it. Aaaargh.
It is in Iceland, not New Jersey, - I think - where Vollmann tells us that the mud has the consistency of diarrhea.
That kind of thing.
(Meanwhile a little fly clung to the inside of my windowpane; the fly had been trying to escape, because it did not know that rain was falling. If I let the fly out, would it have died?)
That kind of thing.
I know, I know, I know. This is going to get me kicked out of all the cool clubs. I still like Vollmann. I will read, and relatively eagerly, the rest of the Seven Dreams. Because in the end, it wasn't the politics, the formatting, the Back to the Future that I didn't like. It was the telling of this story in myth and fable. I like it better when he gets into the Voice of the Time he is writing about. As he did with John Smith and Champlain. And, oh, the cover illustration on the hardbound edition is spectacular.
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
*You would have to put on The Hermaphrodite-Shirt and be told:
Was a woman something she was supposed to be? But she had not started out being one, and she did not want to be one. She did not necessarily want not to be one, but she wanted to be several things. A woman was not all she was.
That kind of thing.
Bill asks me this early, on page 9, in the Ice-Text, also known as The Book of Flatey 1382 and also known merely as A Historical Note, which is after the Preface but a bit before 1, THE CHANGERS, or, How the Bear-Shirt was lost, and the Ice-Shirt was found.
But I didn't answer Bill right away. I don't so easily dismiss the self-indulgent, being, well, generally self-indulgent myself. I'm wary of authors who think imaginative formatting of text is somehow as important as one really good verb. Yet, such playfulness didn't get in the way in Argall and Fathers and Crows and I'm committed to reading all Seven Dreams.
So I put on my Open-Minded-Shirt and sallied forth into the world of Saga and Legend and Dreams. We have to go from Norway (with hints of Ireland) to the Islands, to Iceland and Greenland. But then we are in San Francisco and Bill is watching two transvestites transform. I am hoping there will be a point to this later on.*
I actually liked the insertions of Vollmann, circa 1987, as he walked in the footsteps of the Greenlanders and the Skraelings, even as I'm pretty sure they never made it to San Francisco. Speaking of which, Vollmann includes a passage called Pinpointing their Landfall which states:
From the astronomical observations that they took, we know they must have landed in New Jersey. But other scholars, some of even greater repute than I, say that the Greenlanders stayed at Cape Cod, in Maine, in Newfoundland, in North Carolina.
Setting aside the fact that Vollmann gives better self-indulgence than self-deprecation, New Jersey? And, And, he doesn't mean it. Aaaargh.
It is in Iceland, not New Jersey, - I think - where Vollmann tells us that the mud has the consistency of diarrhea.
That kind of thing.
(Meanwhile a little fly clung to the inside of my windowpane; the fly had been trying to escape, because it did not know that rain was falling. If I let the fly out, would it have died?)
That kind of thing.
I know, I know, I know. This is going to get me kicked out of all the cool clubs. I still like Vollmann. I will read, and relatively eagerly, the rest of the Seven Dreams. Because in the end, it wasn't the politics, the formatting, the Back to the Future that I didn't like. It was the telling of this story in myth and fable. I like it better when he gets into the Voice of the Time he is writing about. As he did with John Smith and Champlain. And, oh, the cover illustration on the hardbound edition is spectacular.
_____ _____ _____ _____ _____
*You would have to put on The Hermaphrodite-Shirt and be told:
Was a woman something she was supposed to be? But she had not started out being one, and she did not want to be one. She did not necessarily want not to be one, but she wanted to be several things. A woman was not all she was.
That kind of thing.
November 20, 2025
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2025...
"Cabe señalar, dice una fuente autorizada, que el término islandés para azul (blá-r) tenía una gama de significados mucho más amplia que su contraparte homóloga en inglés. Denotaba todos los tonos de azul y negro y no solo se usaba para describir el color del cielo despejado, sino también el del cuervo."
Relectura de una novela que leí hará dos o tres años y que en su momento me voló la cabeza. No sé si merece la pena reeditar una reseña que releída, me parece que destaca lo importante de un texto que es un híbrido entre novela histórica, crónica de viajes, autoficción, documental, mitología y no sé cuantos ingredientes más. Ya en la reseña destaqué que Vollmann es único a la hora de plasmar mundos pasados dotándolos de nuestro presente más actual. No es mi intención volver a a lo mismo porque la crónica está ahí, pero sí que es cierto que la traducción de José Luís Amores me ha hecho profundizar en cuestiones que en su momento quizás no ví porque estaba muy ocupada desentrañando el inglés.
>"¿Qué hay tras esa montaña?, dijo Gudrid.
¿Por ahí? Nada más que niebla, hielo, piedras y trols."
En el universo de Vollmann, los nórdicos están imbuidos de una especie de maldición a la que denominarán camisa de hielo: son distantes, resistentes, incapaces de escapar al peso de su destino en el que hielo funcionará como catalizador. Es cierto que el hielo también podrá romperse, derretirse, y es aquí donde Vollmann crea su mitología.
"Al bajar a tierra, los skraelings los miraron asombrados. Hasta entonces nunca habían visto a nadie como los groenlandeses. Les parecían personas gigantes, con piernas tan anchas como.las de un oso. Las mujeres, aunque más bajas, les parecieron muy envaradas y altivas; sus cabellos eran una maravilla dorada. Los skraelings no entendian de donde procedía aquella gente tan alta."
(...)
Y así los groenlandeses se quedaron todas las pieles de los skraelings y los skraelings recibieron un poco de leche y unos pedazos de tela roja. (¿Quién puede decir quién hizo el intercambio más ventajoso? Pues ahora todos están muertos).
(...)
Y ya pensaremos en los skraelings cuando sepamos cómo son. Quizás podamos quemarlos todos y quedarnos con sus tierras."
La camisa de hielo no es solo una novela histórica sino un proyecto incomensurable sobre la maldición de la colonización. El choque cultural y lo que conllevará de transformación es sobre lo que reflexionará Vollmann en una imaginación desbordante donde pone mucho de su cosecha y sin embargo, no nos olvidemos que aquí hay mucho de crónica de viajes y que Vollmann decidió pisar los lugares que visitaron sus personajes en el pasado, así que consigue transmitirnos este choque cultural casi como ninguna otra novela histórica. Aquí las numerosas camisas de las que hablará Vollmann no son una prenda física sino un ropaje simbólico, una metáfora de lo que será la identidad, el cambio y la transformación vital de sus personajes en continuo movimiento, movimentos migratorios, invasores e invadidos, colonizadores y nativos; la reflexión de Vollmann no es otra cosa que una vuelta a nuestro mundo de ahora. Cuando los nórdicos llegan a Vinland, el hielo —su cultura, su violencia, su racionalidad— empieza a extenderse sobre el Nuevo Continente, lo que conoceremos mucho más tarde como el continente americano. Este será el primer sueño, el comienzo del proceso colonial que, en la serie de Vollmann, se repetirá con otras conquistas. Esperando como agua de mayo el Segundo Sueño.
"Así como una Camisa de Hielo rígida por la escarcha solo se puede poner o quitar con gran dificultad, la desnudez es de una honestidad tan severa que resiste la brillante falacia de las telas.
(...)
En suma, el Pueblo conocía las distintas camisas, pero no todo el mundo podía ponérselas."
♫♫♫Ó Valhalla - Skald♫♫♫
Os dejo con la crónica que escribí en su día.
------------
https://kansasbooks.blogspot.com/2023...
"I am maddened by the impossibility of describing Vineland, how it was in the Sun's light with golden trees rising higher and higher the farther Gudrid went into the forest, golden trees that Freydis could never have found, for the landscape around us is but a shadow of the landscape within us..."
“Cuando escribí The Ice-Shirt podría haber escrito algo como "You Bright and Risen Angels" sin haber ido nunca a ninguno de esos lugares y hubiera estado bien, pero la tarea que me propuse fue representar la realidad, pero representarla a través de símbolos y esbozos poéticos. Lo importante era que yo sabía que la realidad iba más allá de mí. Hay tanto ahí fuera que sabía que mi arte solo se podía ampliar y enriquecer en lugar de permanecer solo en mi cabeza, así que me volví loco cuando fuí consciente. Entonces, fue cuando sentí que quería ir a Groenlandia e Islandia, lo cual hice. Fui a Terranova, donde estaba el asentamiento vikingo y fui a las Islas Baffin, y sentí que comprendía estos increíbles paisajes que los vikingos debían haber visto con una emoción muy parecida”. (Entrevista de William T. Vollmann con Ben Bush, 2006)
“The Ice-Shirt” es el primer volumen de la serie de los Siete Sueños, un conjunto de novelas históricas, cada sueño, una novela diferente, creadas por William T. Vollmann sobre el choque que se produjo entre los colonos europeos y los pueblos indígenas durante la colonización de América del Norte. Cada novela de la serie está centrada en un momento diferente de la historia de América y esta novela concretamente fue la primera en publicarse también cronológicamente hablando, aunque de las cinco novelas hasta ahora publicadas, algunas de ellas incluso se publicaron fuera de secuencia, desordenadamente. A día de hoy quedan todavía los volúmenes cuarto y séptimo por publicar.
"Wadling ashore, the Skraelings stared at them astonished. They had never seen anyone like the Greenlanders before. To the Skraelings they seemed great big people, with wide legs like bears. The women, though smaller, seemed very stiff and straight to the Skraelings, their hair was a golden wonder. The Skraelings could not understand where these tall people had come from."
En esta la primera novela de la serie, Vollmann se centra en la llegada en el siglo X de los nórdicos o vikingos a Groenlandia y más tarde a América del Norte y para ello el autor se sirve de varias sagas nórdicas y mitos inuit que entrecruza con la poca información que se conserva aún hoy en día sobre aquella época. Lo que hace Vollmann en este texto histórico supone un enfoque muy diferente a lo que habíamos estado acostumbrados en novela histórica porque no solo toma estos mitos inuit y sagas vikingas, las esboza y las transmuta en novela recreándolas con los pocos datos históricos que conservamos, sino que convierte esta travesía a su vez en una especie de diario de viaje sobre la Groenlandia de ahora. Vollmann interrumpe el pasado de vez en cuando para ponernos frente a frente con el presente con lo que esto conlleva de choque para el lector, el impacto es brutal en el sentido de que puede resultar hasta anticlimático el hecho de que estemos sumergidos en un mito inuit en conexión con la naturaleza y de repente pase al presente más desesperanzador, dándonos una perspectiva de lo que ha hecho la civilización con los primeros moradores de esta tierra helada: siguen buscando desesperadamente esa conexión con la naturaleza pero el hombre blanco lo ha estropeado todo. Es algo que hace continuamente Vollman, pasado, presente y vuelta al pasado, en una especie de bucle, o círculo que lo completa. De alguna forma Vollmann manda a paseo esa literatura histórica acartonada y cerrada y la envuelve de una cierta originalidad: no le importa tanto ser fiel a los eventos históricos como en dotarlos de emoción, poesía y atmósfera.
"They wandered east, naming the islands, which then became alive, but they themselves had no name; they had not yet become Inuit...The People: their nature, was not fixed in them. They followed the animals, singing their songs, bending themselves on all fours like reindeer when they shot their bows. They crossed the ice without fear, brothers and sisters helping each other, never taking each other."
[...]
"His hunting often took him north, where there was still ice. What a feeling of freedom to walk along the shore-ice. Every step took him further away from her.”
Mitos, sagas, diario de viaje, periodismo a pie de calle, poesía y atmósfera… esta es la mezcla explosiva de lo que Vollmann entiende por novela histórica y realmente creo que el conjunto final es sorprendentemente fresco y original porque cuando Vollmann recrea estas sagas islandesas, las trata como un texto totalmente histórico, no como la literatura casi sobrenatural de la época, les da tanta credibilidad que convierte esta novela tanto en una novela de aventuras como en un texto poético cuando narra por ejemplo los mitos inuit del hermano mayor y del hermano menor, ¡qué maravilla! ("Then she ran away into the snow. As she ran, she began rising into the air”) o cuando él mismo sin cortarse el pelo asume la personalidad del bardo nórdico, William the Blind (una autoreferencia a lo corto de vista que es) y de esta forma se convierte oficialmente en un narrador de la época. Vollmann se camufla y metamorfosea cambiando e intercambiando estilos y registros sin ruborizarse minimamente por algunas libertades que en novela histórica estarían fuera de contexto.
"And he knew that he should not love her, for shed had been someone else whom he had been supposed to love differently.
- What is loneliness? Does the lonely space between two rocks vanish when spanned by a spiderweb?"
Quizás lo que me ha resultado más interesante en esta novela es la forma en la que Vollmann nos recuerda continuamente, que aunque sea una novela histórica, al insertar esos interludios de sus propios viajes a Islandia y Groenlandia, nos está haciendo hincapié que realmente este podría ser un texto eminentemente periodistico y de No Ficción. Es una novela con muchísimos personajes en plena evolución, y sin embargo, justo en el momento en que el lector se encuentra más sumergido en pleno siglo X. Vollmann sorprende al lector con momentos del presente, marcando de esta forma una distancia con ese pasado y nos viene a decir que este podría ser un texto completamente contemporánea y modernísimo…, lo que a Vollmann le interesa es el choque que supuso la civilización para los indigenas y cuando más claro nos queda este hecho no es tanto por los eventos del pasado, sino poniéndonos frente a frente con los inuit del presente. Ya lo he comentado en otras reseñas suyas, no conozco a ningún otro autor que tenga esta capacidad de integrarse en la historia que nos está narrando, de camuflarse con sus personajes y de vivir y transmitir esa pasión por la escritura y por lo que nos está narrando.
"It always seemed to her that she heard voices in the wind: sometimes the laughing talk of two women, other times a man's whistled tune, but the melody proved always to be the cries of birds, and where the woman's voices came from she could never tell. The crumpled icefalls were motionless and blue."
[...]
"What is it about my life that strangles me?, she wondered.""
[…]
"He could not understand how she could be so easily enter these states of feeling so intensely that he must always be reacting to her, as opposed to having feelings of his own and the image of those winter nights which he preserved when he closed his eyes was of her lying motionless beside him on the skins, a single anger-tear rolling down her round cheek, as she told him endlessly of her hatred, smilling bitterly."
Y por otra parte el mundo que es capaz de recrear aquí Vollman me ha resultado completamente fascinante. Todo este conglomerado de voces, de personajes, de viajes, con dos mujeres guías que conducen de alguna forma esta novela en parte novela de aventuras, resulta hasta enganchante. Personajes que Vollmann extrapola de unas sagas vikingas y que convierte en seres de carne y hueso, totalmente reales, emocionantes por la forma en la que casi parecen personajes del aquí y del ahora. Gudrid y Freydis, dos mujeres rivales, la noche y el día, que solo por ellas mismas ya merece la pena el viaje que ha supuesto esta novela maravillosa y arriesgada. Vollmann derriba estereotipos y encorsetamientos literarios y se monta su propia novela histórica, diferente, original y totalmente viva. El próximo sueño: Fathers and Crows.
"There were islands as numerous as stars, so that men went dreaming from archipielago to constellation, wind-blown and wave-tossed to flowery little coasts where they were defeaned by the booming of waterfalls that no one had ever heard before."
"Here ends the First Dream."
January 19, 2014
He was considered a man of foremost reputation. There he stayed for the remainder of his life, telling the story of WINELAND THE GOOD to all who asked to hear it. His listeners marveled at his luck and courage, and said that they had no wish to journey to such places.
However, I’ll continue my journey towards the next dream or Europe Central; or to meet The Royal Family.
Read
April 8, 2023Video review: https://youtu.be/kvT9tu6k1PY
July 27, 2015
Preface
List of Maps
Ice-Text: The Book of Flatey (1382)
--The Ice-Shirt
In the Ice (1532-1931)
Note
Orthographic Notes
I Glossary of Personal Names
II Glossary of Dynasties, Races and Monsters
III Glossary of Places
IV Glossary of Texts
V General Glossary
A Chronology of the First Age of Vinland
Sources and a Few Notes
Acknowledgements
List of Maps
Ice-Text: The Book of Flatey (1382)
--The Ice-Shirt
In the Ice (1532-1931)
Note
Orthographic Notes
I Glossary of Personal Names
II Glossary of Dynasties, Races and Monsters
III Glossary of Places
IV Glossary of Texts
V General Glossary
A Chronology of the First Age of Vinland
Sources and a Few Notes
Acknowledgements
Read
June 24, 2013Among the saga-inspired novels I have been reading for my project, William T. Vollmann’s The Ice-Shirt manages to be simultaneously the one closest to the original sagas and the most contemporary one; it also is by far the most original and innovative and promises to be the beginning of an outright masterwork.
The masterwork in question is Seven Dreams, a series of seven novels (four of which having been published as I am writing this) dealing with the encounters between native American Indians and Europeans. The Ice-Shirt is the first volume in that series, and it’s about Norse and Inuit, about how Europeans first came to Vinland and how they immediately began to change it to fit their own preconceptions. It is a retelling of several sagas and few Inuit myths, a historical novel and a travelogue about modern-day Greenland, it is fantastic and journalistic, fiction and non-fiction, entirely subject and very matter-of-fact. It’s not like anything else I have read and for me marks the discovery of what might very well be one of the greatest living novelists.
Yes, I’m gushing a bit, but The Ice-Shirt is astonishing on so many levels that I do not even know where to start. Maybe with the sheer ambition of Vollmann’s project which seems to aim for nothing less than re-inventing the historical novel. Traditionally, historical novels have aimed to make history come alive for the reader and claimed a more vivid and immediate access to lived history than was possible to historical science, relying not on dry numbers and reports but on memorable characters and a rousing tale. This is both the appeal and the problem at the heart of the historical, as writers ineluctably had to invent things, create fictional characters, imagine events, make up thoughts and dialogue for historical characters - all of which became somewhat problematic with modernism and the crisis of representation that brought with it an increasing awareness that the fictional nature of those tales undermines their claims to present history, that they give the reader not the historical truth but just made-up tales. Vollmann is very aware of this problem, he calls his novel “a pack of lies” in the first few pages, and he is not being coy but means it seriously.
The Ice-Shirt is not a postmodern novel either, however – there is a tradition of the postmodern historical novel, starting (as far as I can see) with John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor, that gleefully embraces its fictional nature, abandons all pretense of presenting a plausible historical plot and focuses on language and structure instead – John Barth writing a whole novel in 17th century English in The Sot-Weed Factor, or Umberto Eco approaching the Middle Ages by way of a Sherlock Holmes narrative in The Name of the Rose. Which does avoid the problems inherent in representation, but has a distinct (and possibly unavoidable) tendency to fall into the other extreme of over-emphasizing fiction with the inherent danger of subsuming historical language into a general language-game and thus ending up with a historical novel that has nothing historical about it.
The Ice-Shirt (and, I assume, William Vollmann’s entire Seven Dreams sequence) does neither of those things (or maybe both, depending on your own perspective), but marks an entirely new approach to the historical novel. That approach distinguishes itself from the traditional historical narrative by not aiming to be a representation of historical events but instead mainly basing itself on a text, and sets itself apart from the postmodern approach by treating that text consistently as truth, no matter how outlandish its claims might appear to a modern-day reader.
In The Ice-Shirt, that text are the Icelandic sagas, and the first of many astounding things Vollmann does in this novel is that he takes them utterly at face value, treats them like they were a factual historical document, supernatural elements and all. This means that for a large part The Ice-Shirt is a retelling of Icelandic sagas (mainly the two Vinland sagas, but with elements of some others thrown in, like the Ynglinga saga); Vollmann even goes so far as to assume the persona of an Nordic bard, William the Blind (which is an interesting choice of name and alludes, I assume, not just to his bad eyesight). As he also adopts the style and tone of the sagas (showing, here as in other places, an almost uncanny stylistic versatility), the novel might easily have drifted towards becoming a mere pastiche of the sagas – but even a cursory look at a random page will show that it is very far from being derivative.
Vollmann never lets his readers forget that they are reading work written from a contemporary perspective by a contemporary author. One – and the most obvious – way in which he achieves this is by interspersing passages describing his own travels in Iceland – those serving the double function by marking the distance to the past, but also to underline that Vollmann is essentially writing non-fiction here. Or maybe it would be more correct to say that The Ice-Shirt is a novel written with a non-fictional attitude. It does not at all read like a novel, even a multiple-character, protagonist-less novel like Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer or his USA trilogy. The narrative reaches from mythical pre-history to the end of the 20th century, encompassing a multitude of characters and voices; and while it eventually comes to focus on the Norse colonization of Greenland and the tale of Freydis Eiriksdottir in particular, it still swerves in several different directions and different times. It is like Vollmann was willfully ignoring or intentionally breaking every single rule ever made in regard to novel plotting (and I would not be surprised if that was exactly what he did) – and yet, The Ice-Shirt nowhere comes even close to being the amorphous mess it by all rights should be, because Vollmann keeps it all together on the level of theme and motif, weaving a very tight web of images from whose interrelations rises a complex edifice of metaphors and symbols.
Vollmann bases his novel on a documented historical discourse rather than a more or less imaginary version of events, the sagas themselves rather than what they might be referring to, but at the same time does not dismiss the claim of that discourse to veracity from an advanced 21st-century point of view. Instead, he takes the sagas by their word and in this way shows us the sagas and the world they originate from in an entirely new way and also gives us an entirely new form of historical novel, one that is aware of all the problems and complexities of writing about history as any postmodern historical novel but at the same time manages to give us a sense of that history as vivid and intense as any tradionalist historical novel. The Ice-Shirt is by no means an easy to read novel – it demands a considerable amount of concentration and attention by its readers and does not reward them with the pleasures a well-rounded story arc conveys, or even just of things falling into place. With all its formal and linguistic brilliance, the novel remains a very messy affair, but I think it is precisely by virtue of this tension that it achieves a degree of immersion which to the best of my knowledge is unprecedented in the historical novel genre. I am very keen on reading more of Vollmann’s Seven Dreams sequence (and in fact am, as I’m writing this, almost halfway through Fathers and Crows) and starting to suspect that the series might well turn out to be one of the major literary achievements of your time.
The masterwork in question is Seven Dreams, a series of seven novels (four of which having been published as I am writing this) dealing with the encounters between native American Indians and Europeans. The Ice-Shirt is the first volume in that series, and it’s about Norse and Inuit, about how Europeans first came to Vinland and how they immediately began to change it to fit their own preconceptions. It is a retelling of several sagas and few Inuit myths, a historical novel and a travelogue about modern-day Greenland, it is fantastic and journalistic, fiction and non-fiction, entirely subject and very matter-of-fact. It’s not like anything else I have read and for me marks the discovery of what might very well be one of the greatest living novelists.
Yes, I’m gushing a bit, but The Ice-Shirt is astonishing on so many levels that I do not even know where to start. Maybe with the sheer ambition of Vollmann’s project which seems to aim for nothing less than re-inventing the historical novel. Traditionally, historical novels have aimed to make history come alive for the reader and claimed a more vivid and immediate access to lived history than was possible to historical science, relying not on dry numbers and reports but on memorable characters and a rousing tale. This is both the appeal and the problem at the heart of the historical, as writers ineluctably had to invent things, create fictional characters, imagine events, make up thoughts and dialogue for historical characters - all of which became somewhat problematic with modernism and the crisis of representation that brought with it an increasing awareness that the fictional nature of those tales undermines their claims to present history, that they give the reader not the historical truth but just made-up tales. Vollmann is very aware of this problem, he calls his novel “a pack of lies” in the first few pages, and he is not being coy but means it seriously.
The Ice-Shirt is not a postmodern novel either, however – there is a tradition of the postmodern historical novel, starting (as far as I can see) with John Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor, that gleefully embraces its fictional nature, abandons all pretense of presenting a plausible historical plot and focuses on language and structure instead – John Barth writing a whole novel in 17th century English in The Sot-Weed Factor, or Umberto Eco approaching the Middle Ages by way of a Sherlock Holmes narrative in The Name of the Rose. Which does avoid the problems inherent in representation, but has a distinct (and possibly unavoidable) tendency to fall into the other extreme of over-emphasizing fiction with the inherent danger of subsuming historical language into a general language-game and thus ending up with a historical novel that has nothing historical about it.
The Ice-Shirt (and, I assume, William Vollmann’s entire Seven Dreams sequence) does neither of those things (or maybe both, depending on your own perspective), but marks an entirely new approach to the historical novel. That approach distinguishes itself from the traditional historical narrative by not aiming to be a representation of historical events but instead mainly basing itself on a text, and sets itself apart from the postmodern approach by treating that text consistently as truth, no matter how outlandish its claims might appear to a modern-day reader.
In The Ice-Shirt, that text are the Icelandic sagas, and the first of many astounding things Vollmann does in this novel is that he takes them utterly at face value, treats them like they were a factual historical document, supernatural elements and all. This means that for a large part The Ice-Shirt is a retelling of Icelandic sagas (mainly the two Vinland sagas, but with elements of some others thrown in, like the Ynglinga saga); Vollmann even goes so far as to assume the persona of an Nordic bard, William the Blind (which is an interesting choice of name and alludes, I assume, not just to his bad eyesight). As he also adopts the style and tone of the sagas (showing, here as in other places, an almost uncanny stylistic versatility), the novel might easily have drifted towards becoming a mere pastiche of the sagas – but even a cursory look at a random page will show that it is very far from being derivative.
Vollmann never lets his readers forget that they are reading work written from a contemporary perspective by a contemporary author. One – and the most obvious – way in which he achieves this is by interspersing passages describing his own travels in Iceland – those serving the double function by marking the distance to the past, but also to underline that Vollmann is essentially writing non-fiction here. Or maybe it would be more correct to say that The Ice-Shirt is a novel written with a non-fictional attitude. It does not at all read like a novel, even a multiple-character, protagonist-less novel like Dos Passos’ Manhattan Transfer or his USA trilogy. The narrative reaches from mythical pre-history to the end of the 20th century, encompassing a multitude of characters and voices; and while it eventually comes to focus on the Norse colonization of Greenland and the tale of Freydis Eiriksdottir in particular, it still swerves in several different directions and different times. It is like Vollmann was willfully ignoring or intentionally breaking every single rule ever made in regard to novel plotting (and I would not be surprised if that was exactly what he did) – and yet, The Ice-Shirt nowhere comes even close to being the amorphous mess it by all rights should be, because Vollmann keeps it all together on the level of theme and motif, weaving a very tight web of images from whose interrelations rises a complex edifice of metaphors and symbols.
Vollmann bases his novel on a documented historical discourse rather than a more or less imaginary version of events, the sagas themselves rather than what they might be referring to, but at the same time does not dismiss the claim of that discourse to veracity from an advanced 21st-century point of view. Instead, he takes the sagas by their word and in this way shows us the sagas and the world they originate from in an entirely new way and also gives us an entirely new form of historical novel, one that is aware of all the problems and complexities of writing about history as any postmodern historical novel but at the same time manages to give us a sense of that history as vivid and intense as any tradionalist historical novel. The Ice-Shirt is by no means an easy to read novel – it demands a considerable amount of concentration and attention by its readers and does not reward them with the pleasures a well-rounded story arc conveys, or even just of things falling into place. With all its formal and linguistic brilliance, the novel remains a very messy affair, but I think it is precisely by virtue of this tension that it achieves a degree of immersion which to the best of my knowledge is unprecedented in the historical novel genre. I am very keen on reading more of Vollmann’s Seven Dreams sequence (and in fact am, as I’m writing this, almost halfway through Fathers and Crows) and starting to suspect that the series might well turn out to be one of the major literary achievements of your time.
April 27, 2018
Another excellent experience with Vollmann's Seven Dreams series. Majority of this one is in the 4-5 star range, although there are a couple of stretches that go off the deep end into the world of Vollmann's weird imagination. Freydus' venture down Yggdrasil and the short chapter on the history of the Greenland Skraelings were not really to my taste, but those were just short detours.
The history of the Old Kings in the beginning chapter was a lot of fun even though it requires keeping track of a lot of names, and the competition between Freydus and Gudrid in Vinland in the back half of the novel make this required reading for Vollmann fans.
The Ice Shirt ranks up there with Fathers and Crows but remains a notch below Dying Grass. Drying Grass stands out for the cool structure and the fact that Vollmann toned down the weirdness in that one.
The Rifles, while still pretty good, brings up the rear so far in this series. Only Argall remains tbr- let's hope Vollmann is hard at work on the remaining two Dreams.
The history of the Old Kings in the beginning chapter was a lot of fun even though it requires keeping track of a lot of names, and the competition between Freydus and Gudrid in Vinland in the back half of the novel make this required reading for Vollmann fans.
The Ice Shirt ranks up there with Fathers and Crows but remains a notch below Dying Grass. Drying Grass stands out for the cool structure and the fact that Vollmann toned down the weirdness in that one.
The Rifles, while still pretty good, brings up the rear so far in this series. Only Argall remains tbr- let's hope Vollmann is hard at work on the remaining two Dreams.
February 16, 2016
The Anytime Ogres...Play Yesterday's Hits!
I’ll admit that for the first 150-pages or so, The Ice Shirt wasn’t doing anything for me. Chalk it up to my inner (read: Teutonic) killjoy: any time ogres and trolls come up, I just check out. There were flashes of brilliance, but I was exasperated by the seemingly endless cataloging of Nordic names and associative deeds, none of which were having any affect on me. It started to feel like, what I imagine, a lot of those fannypackers in the Fantasy aisle rub on each other prior to reenacting the Battle of Helm’s Deep at the local park.
Well, I’m also man enough to admit when I’m wrong and, by golly, was I wrong. I couldn’t look past my own preconceptions to see that all of the ‘prologue’ was necessary world-building to get into the meat of the story. Once there, it’s a glorious thing. The Ice Shirt functions as an exquisitely grotesque allegory about how Europeans first ‘infected’ North America. (The longish descent of Freydis to visit HEL is the closest thing America has to an Inferno to call its own.) Vollmann’s decision to interject the retelling with modern, first-person anecdotes is a masterstroke as it humanizes this most fantastical of stories. Thus, when WTV is unshackled from the Norse narrative, his prose returns to its normal tonic root of G(enius)-major. It’s no mean feat and a high-wire act that only the most gifted of writers could even conceptualize, much less pull off.
Plus, there are, ya know, ogres and trolls and stuff…
I’ll admit that for the first 150-pages or so, The Ice Shirt wasn’t doing anything for me. Chalk it up to my inner (read: Teutonic) killjoy: any time ogres and trolls come up, I just check out. There were flashes of brilliance, but I was exasperated by the seemingly endless cataloging of Nordic names and associative deeds, none of which were having any affect on me. It started to feel like, what I imagine, a lot of those fannypackers in the Fantasy aisle rub on each other prior to reenacting the Battle of Helm’s Deep at the local park.
Well, I’m also man enough to admit when I’m wrong and, by golly, was I wrong. I couldn’t look past my own preconceptions to see that all of the ‘prologue’ was necessary world-building to get into the meat of the story. Once there, it’s a glorious thing. The Ice Shirt functions as an exquisitely grotesque allegory about how Europeans first ‘infected’ North America. (The longish descent of Freydis to visit HEL is the closest thing America has to an Inferno to call its own.) Vollmann’s decision to interject the retelling with modern, first-person anecdotes is a masterstroke as it humanizes this most fantastical of stories. Thus, when WTV is unshackled from the Norse narrative, his prose returns to its normal tonic root of G(enius)-major. It’s no mean feat and a high-wire act that only the most gifted of writers could even conceptualize, much less pull off.
Plus, there are, ya know, ogres and trolls and stuff…
December 9, 2013
“Any shirt, be it of ever so many colors, is but a straitjacket, which is why I see no beauty, nor hear of any, except among the the naked. The clouds are as hard as stones, and we all dream one black dream.” Says our narrator William the Blind. Then, after adding that he will now dream seven, he admits this first, The Ice-Shirt, “is no more than a pack of lies”, from which I infer that it is by the blinding of our own serk (shirt) that we believe that the world we see, the “one black dream”, is anything but–a pack of lies. Such is my tendency–to infer grand human fallacy–the pallor of the lens before my reading eye.
It is a troublesome business, accounting for that last lost star. Because after the quotes above, which were reaped from the preface, I was more than primed to walk some five-star country. Because much of it was.
From the beginning this book had a course all its own: Blood, as a river, carrying ego through veins, through generations, and spilling as it goes, and so nourishing the black soil–
“But where corpses were buried secretly, there the grass grows thick; such signs (and there are ever so many others!) may be read by those to whom truth is more important than beauty.”
–to the rising of wood, tall dark beams that rail against the sky for the housing of nightmare and theater as it is written–for it is blood that it is written in.
Vollmann with his great writerly fist is reaching back into history and myth and challenging us to see, where we would have truth and magic exist mutually exclusive from one another, a flaw in our sight itself. Enter ‘shirt’ –maybe the first thing that caught your attention upon reading the title. ‘Shirt’ here seems to mean power; and not only by wearing it, but also by wanting and knowing of its power, one is pulled into a certain perception. So as I was saying, Mr. Vollmann seems to be suggesting, in the best of ways, that truth and magic are mutually exclusive only in our seeing–by the tragic wearing of our certainty-shirt. And he is doing this by connecting (for us, “those to whom truth is more important than beauty”) that past and its magic to our present and its certainty (or so I presumed; I hoped; I hope–as said, there are six more dreams;) through the blood common throughout. So that even if we don’t have any power over the blood writing, we can see it as it is, and believe if we must, that if our certainty shirt comes off, its shedding will be done by a power, if not our own, one to which we are akin (akin - related by blood; I must point out).
It’s getting meta in here, so take off all your serks. (Forgive me. Where are the GR censors when you need them?)
We have creation myth and kings and witches and warriors and metamorphoses and greed and war and rape and incest and plotting and Vikings and Skraelings and ice mountains and goblins and gold and the like.
“ ‘That was man’s work!’ they shouted to each other. But they were answered only by the sound of trickling blood.”
Families live and die in a sentence. Sentences are spells written in books that are as alive and forgotten as the land which they and we all live upon and off of.
“Oh, that game of Changing! The players did not really want to be anything; they only wanted to be what they were not. Nobody saw that change came of its own, unfolding as was ordained, so that one would be as ungracious to rush it as to stay it–”
But humans are nothing if not ungracious. Read: They’ll take their magic for granted. They’ll carry their blood over the sea. To spill on new lands and paint the new world red. And so it is. And so they make their magic black. They awaken the One Black Dream.
It is a phenomenal book to make you realize that it is not how you think it is. But the quotes carrying this line of thinking seem to run thin as the book goes on. That it didn’t exactly finish what it started is perhaps something someone who’s read only the first of seven cannot say.
The book didn’t have to decide on a style. Who am I to say that Bill Vollmann circa 1987 is Clark Kent to William the Blind’s Superman? And indeed it is interesting to think that you or I could find a human skull whilst hiking through Iceland. But despite the author’s own adventures, it felt a bit superfluous to jump a thousand years ahead in order to suggest that there is still magic in the world, or to remind the reader that this is the same world and we are carrying that same blood. That is to say that I would have preferred to realize these things by the guiding of William the Blind.
Also in some weird way superfluous is the seemingly requisite descent into hell. It is simply that here needs no descending; we’ve been in hell all along. I’ll save you another rant on mutual exclusivity. I understand, you want to pay your way. But listen when the man bends down and says, ‘the requisite has already been met by the gentleman in the corner.’ I mean, hell is much more interesting if it is more than demons and decay and pain and sex all passing as if from a window of a train. Hell is more interesting if one mightn’t even know one is in it–i.e. this the ONE BLACK DREAM. I guess I prefer my devil tricky.
And what is a curiosity more than criticism is the muted role of Christianity. I’m not demanding any more or less. It is just interesting how it creeps in. For some reason one expects that, whenever a white person is slaying a native, the Jesus-loving comes to the forefront. And yet here, it is obvious that the momentum that is doing this slaying is in place beforehand, almost as if waiting for that most-handy invoking of the good lord’s work to catch up with it. And surely it must in the dreams to come. While the said blood is spreading through the world, Christianity is spreading through the blood.
I realize I may seem to be a little harsh. But it is one star. And it is my review. I hope you see that it is better for the honesty. I’ll take the blame. It is my tendency, my hang-up, my projecting. It is my style to be, and wish others to be, less prolific and more exacting, always cutting to the bottom line.
“indeed, it remained to answer the more elementary question of which shirts, once put on, could come off;”
It is a troublesome business, accounting for that last lost star. Because after the quotes above, which were reaped from the preface, I was more than primed to walk some five-star country. Because much of it was.
From the beginning this book had a course all its own: Blood, as a river, carrying ego through veins, through generations, and spilling as it goes, and so nourishing the black soil–
“But where corpses were buried secretly, there the grass grows thick; such signs (and there are ever so many others!) may be read by those to whom truth is more important than beauty.”
–to the rising of wood, tall dark beams that rail against the sky for the housing of nightmare and theater as it is written–for it is blood that it is written in.
Vollmann with his great writerly fist is reaching back into history and myth and challenging us to see, where we would have truth and magic exist mutually exclusive from one another, a flaw in our sight itself. Enter ‘shirt’ –maybe the first thing that caught your attention upon reading the title. ‘Shirt’ here seems to mean power; and not only by wearing it, but also by wanting and knowing of its power, one is pulled into a certain perception. So as I was saying, Mr. Vollmann seems to be suggesting, in the best of ways, that truth and magic are mutually exclusive only in our seeing–by the tragic wearing of our certainty-shirt. And he is doing this by connecting (for us, “those to whom truth is more important than beauty”) that past and its magic to our present and its certainty (or so I presumed; I hoped; I hope–as said, there are six more dreams;) through the blood common throughout. So that even if we don’t have any power over the blood writing, we can see it as it is, and believe if we must, that if our certainty shirt comes off, its shedding will be done by a power, if not our own, one to which we are akin (akin - related by blood; I must point out).
It’s getting meta in here, so take off all your serks. (Forgive me. Where are the GR censors when you need them?)
We have creation myth and kings and witches and warriors and metamorphoses and greed and war and rape and incest and plotting and Vikings and Skraelings and ice mountains and goblins and gold and the like.
“ ‘That was man’s work!’ they shouted to each other. But they were answered only by the sound of trickling blood.”
Families live and die in a sentence. Sentences are spells written in books that are as alive and forgotten as the land which they and we all live upon and off of.
“Oh, that game of Changing! The players did not really want to be anything; they only wanted to be what they were not. Nobody saw that change came of its own, unfolding as was ordained, so that one would be as ungracious to rush it as to stay it–”
But humans are nothing if not ungracious. Read: They’ll take their magic for granted. They’ll carry their blood over the sea. To spill on new lands and paint the new world red. And so it is. And so they make their magic black. They awaken the One Black Dream.
It is a phenomenal book to make you realize that it is not how you think it is. But the quotes carrying this line of thinking seem to run thin as the book goes on. That it didn’t exactly finish what it started is perhaps something someone who’s read only the first of seven cannot say.
The book didn’t have to decide on a style. Who am I to say that Bill Vollmann circa 1987 is Clark Kent to William the Blind’s Superman? And indeed it is interesting to think that you or I could find a human skull whilst hiking through Iceland. But despite the author’s own adventures, it felt a bit superfluous to jump a thousand years ahead in order to suggest that there is still magic in the world, or to remind the reader that this is the same world and we are carrying that same blood. That is to say that I would have preferred to realize these things by the guiding of William the Blind.
Also in some weird way superfluous is the seemingly requisite descent into hell. It is simply that here needs no descending; we’ve been in hell all along. I’ll save you another rant on mutual exclusivity. I understand, you want to pay your way. But listen when the man bends down and says, ‘the requisite has already been met by the gentleman in the corner.’ I mean, hell is much more interesting if it is more than demons and decay and pain and sex all passing as if from a window of a train. Hell is more interesting if one mightn’t even know one is in it–i.e. this the ONE BLACK DREAM. I guess I prefer my devil tricky.
And what is a curiosity more than criticism is the muted role of Christianity. I’m not demanding any more or less. It is just interesting how it creeps in. For some reason one expects that, whenever a white person is slaying a native, the Jesus-loving comes to the forefront. And yet here, it is obvious that the momentum that is doing this slaying is in place beforehand, almost as if waiting for that most-handy invoking of the good lord’s work to catch up with it. And surely it must in the dreams to come. While the said blood is spreading through the world, Christianity is spreading through the blood.
I realize I may seem to be a little harsh. But it is one star. And it is my review. I hope you see that it is better for the honesty. I’ll take the blame. It is my tendency, my hang-up, my projecting. It is my style to be, and wish others to be, less prolific and more exacting, always cutting to the bottom line.
“indeed, it remained to answer the more elementary question of which shirts, once put on, could come off;”
August 19, 2021
This Seven Dreams thing WTV has going on is just the best! More on this to come…
November 16, 2015
4.5 rounded up.
Usually when I give a book 5 stars (or 1 star) I feel the need to justify my reasons. The problem is I don't know why I loved this book so much. I didn't even like it at first. Here's how my reading went:
OMG so excited to start this book!
Part I and II WTF am I reading and why do I care about all these meaningless kings this is a possible DNF
Beginning of part III - Ok this is getting better and making more sense and reading more like a novel.
Halfway in part III - Holy shit this good.
End - Wow I really want to give this 5 stars
This book has a bit of everything - history, sagas, myths, and just some really beautiful descriptions of the world at the beginning of time. In the beginning I had a really hard time wrapping my brain around history in the 30,000 BC time period. While I wouldn't have wanted to live then it must have really cool to see the world forming.
This was the first volume in a seven volume series. I plan on continuing with the next one at some point.
Usually when I give a book 5 stars (or 1 star) I feel the need to justify my reasons. The problem is I don't know why I loved this book so much. I didn't even like it at first. Here's how my reading went:
OMG so excited to start this book!
Part I and II WTF am I reading and why do I care about all these meaningless kings this is a possible DNF
Beginning of part III - Ok this is getting better and making more sense and reading more like a novel.
Halfway in part III - Holy shit this good.
End - Wow I really want to give this 5 stars
This book has a bit of everything - history, sagas, myths, and just some really beautiful descriptions of the world at the beginning of time. In the beginning I had a really hard time wrapping my brain around history in the 30,000 BC time period. While I wouldn't have wanted to live then it must have really cool to see the world forming.
This was the first volume in a seven volume series. I plan on continuing with the next one at some point.
September 1, 2022
If you looked at all my Vollmann ratings, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking that I found all the work of his that I’ve read (dispiritingly little, considering the sheer number of pages this dude has generated) equally satisfying. The fact of it is, I find most of them equal parts compelling and infuriating, for different reasons. If we lay aside the nonfiction Rising Up & Rising Down (the abridged; you know I’d read the 3,000 pager, but I don’t have the estimated $10,000,000 of disposable income required to buy it), I tend to find Vollmann’s work lacking in either cohesiveness or development. You Bright And Risen Angels had enough thrilling passages to eke its way out of four-star purgatory, but it’s so laden with “is there an editor in the house?” moments that about a third of it was a chore for me to read. On the other hand, both the lengthy Europe Central and even Whores for Gloria (far and away the man’s slimmest work) had pages upon pages that just seemed like more to me. They both have a lot of astute and evocative writing, but Central could’ve probably gotten by as a five, six-hundred pages novel, while Whores made for a fine longer short story.
Yet there’s a lot to recommend about Vollmann. He has a strong sense of the currents of history, plus he can really make a sentence dance. On top of that, he can weave quite a tale, as long as his loom isn’t jammed up. It doesn’t get jammed up at all over the course of this novel, nor do things spin out of control. No, The Ice-Shirt is the tightest Vollmann novel I’ve had the pleasure of reading. And what a story it tells. This novel concerns the first meetings of the Vikings with the indigenous peoples of North America; where all the tragedy with colonialism began, one might say. The bulk of it concerns two big migrations: the movement of Erik the Red (Eirik in the novel) and his supporters, first from Norway to Iceland, and then from Iceland to Greenland. The second part concerns the Vikings’ failed settlement Vinland (New Brunswick to us modern folk). It hones in on the power struggle between Freydis Eiriksdotter (no points for guessing who the Eirik in question is), a pagan, outsider, and all-around badass, and the Christian Gudrid, an ostensibly sweet pillar of the community capable of some serious machinations. The novel’s major subplot features Vollmann (or maybe a fictionalized Vollmann; it’s hard to tell with him) living with some indigineous Greenlanders, whose continued bitterness toward Denmark is understandable given their circumstances.
But Vollmann is Vollmann. He likes to sprinkle a lot into the stew. Sometimes, as in Angels, he ruins the flavor by trying to include a little too much of everything. Here, I’m happy to report the stew tastes good. Vollmann is liberal with the mythology here. It takes Vollmann a while to even get us to Erik the Red, let alone Freydis. Vollmann first treats us to a half-story, half-legend about the ancient kings of Norway, who wore the “bear-shirts” and could allegedly turn into bears. He also gets into a terrifying Greenlandic creation myth that gets into questions of gender identity and power structures. There’s also the late-’80s Greenland timeline. The cool thing is, all of these tie together pretty nicely. The myths have particular resonance as the story goes on; Vollmann being Vollmann, he takes substantial liberties with the history, and some of Freydis’ later actions seem to imply that the Norse and Greenlandic gods had power in this universe. Which is, y’know, really fucking cool, and which lends the proceedings the flavor of myth (helped along by the porse), but which also deepens the story. This is, make no mistake on it, Vollmann’s take on the Norse saga, and he does pretty well for himself.
Am I ready to quite give this five stars? Well, I’d like to leave that door open. I’ve still got quite a few unread Vollmann books on my shelf and on my tablet, and now that black plague 2.0 has us all locked down anyway, I’ve got plenty of reading time. Which is kinda what happens when your nine-to-five follows the school schedule and every school in your home state (metro Detroit goodreaders where ya at) shuts down. So we’ll see. But this is the closest I’ve come to giving a Vollmann book full marks, and it brought my interest in him back big-time, an interest that had flagged over the years. I still have four more of the Seven Dreams to read and he’s still got two to write; I’ll now be awaiting those with the same eagerness that fantasy fans are waiting for the last two Song of Ice and Fire books. I can never quite count this guy out.
Yet there’s a lot to recommend about Vollmann. He has a strong sense of the currents of history, plus he can really make a sentence dance. On top of that, he can weave quite a tale, as long as his loom isn’t jammed up. It doesn’t get jammed up at all over the course of this novel, nor do things spin out of control. No, The Ice-Shirt is the tightest Vollmann novel I’ve had the pleasure of reading. And what a story it tells. This novel concerns the first meetings of the Vikings with the indigenous peoples of North America; where all the tragedy with colonialism began, one might say. The bulk of it concerns two big migrations: the movement of Erik the Red (Eirik in the novel) and his supporters, first from Norway to Iceland, and then from Iceland to Greenland. The second part concerns the Vikings’ failed settlement Vinland (New Brunswick to us modern folk). It hones in on the power struggle between Freydis Eiriksdotter (no points for guessing who the Eirik in question is), a pagan, outsider, and all-around badass, and the Christian Gudrid, an ostensibly sweet pillar of the community capable of some serious machinations. The novel’s major subplot features Vollmann (or maybe a fictionalized Vollmann; it’s hard to tell with him) living with some indigineous Greenlanders, whose continued bitterness toward Denmark is understandable given their circumstances.
But Vollmann is Vollmann. He likes to sprinkle a lot into the stew. Sometimes, as in Angels, he ruins the flavor by trying to include a little too much of everything. Here, I’m happy to report the stew tastes good. Vollmann is liberal with the mythology here. It takes Vollmann a while to even get us to Erik the Red, let alone Freydis. Vollmann first treats us to a half-story, half-legend about the ancient kings of Norway, who wore the “bear-shirts” and could allegedly turn into bears. He also gets into a terrifying Greenlandic creation myth that gets into questions of gender identity and power structures. There’s also the late-’80s Greenland timeline. The cool thing is, all of these tie together pretty nicely. The myths have particular resonance as the story goes on; Vollmann being Vollmann, he takes substantial liberties with the history, and some of Freydis’ later actions seem to imply that the Norse and Greenlandic gods had power in this universe. Which is, y’know, really fucking cool, and which lends the proceedings the flavor of myth (helped along by the porse), but which also deepens the story. This is, make no mistake on it, Vollmann’s take on the Norse saga, and he does pretty well for himself.
Am I ready to quite give this five stars? Well, I’d like to leave that door open. I’ve still got quite a few unread Vollmann books on my shelf and on my tablet, and now that black plague 2.0 has us all locked down anyway, I’ve got plenty of reading time. Which is kinda what happens when your nine-to-five follows the school schedule and every school in your home state (metro Detroit goodreaders where ya at) shuts down. So we’ll see. But this is the closest I’ve come to giving a Vollmann book full marks, and it brought my interest in him back big-time, an interest that had flagged over the years. I still have four more of the Seven Dreams to read and he’s still got two to write; I’ll now be awaiting those with the same eagerness that fantasy fans are waiting for the last two Song of Ice and Fire books. I can never quite count this guy out.
Read
April 19, 2013My review was erased. Just as well. It would not be fair to give the book a star-rating since in the end it turned out to be not my type of book. Vollmann is a great writer. My own tastes-obsessions are in literary fiction where the interiority of characters and their development are explored. History, and as it turns out historical fiction, fall flat. It is a genre problem for me and is no knock on this writer or book. Obviously, it is very well written and for anyone who is interested in a unique blend of history and fiction this will be a good read.
Read
February 9, 2021Vollmann inaugura con La camicia di ghiaccio un progetto ambizioso, visionario e interessantissimo: quello di narrare la storia americana attraverso l'epopea di Sette Sogni. Sogni, e infatti la narrazione procede capricciosamente alternando fonti, speculazione, reportage, finzione; la linea temporale è incerta e balza avanti e indietro, tra passato e presente; il contenuto è più "visuale" che mai, i veri protagonisti della scena sono i ghiacciai, le foreste, l'oceano, la tempesta; i personaggi sono i grandi eroi delle saghe norrene, ma anche i troll, le streghe, i corvi, gli dei...
E poi c'è Vinland, terra di promesse e di mistero, il primo sogno. «Voglio qui raccontare la storia di come venne consumata la rugiada e di come arrivò il gelo». Così l'autore spiega la sua opera, prima di vestire i panni di William il Cieco, che ci accompagnerà per mano attraverso il viaggio.
Si capisce la profondità del progetto osservando l'intreccio di saghe (prime fra tutte, la Saga di Eirik il Rosso e il Flateyjarbók) e viaggi agli estremi del mondo, tanto che la lettura diventa spesso fonte di sapere. Ma quello che ho soprattutto scoperto leggendo La camicia di ghiaccio, è che esiste un autore capace di usare la prosa in modo brillantemente anticonvenzionale.
Venendo alle note dolenti, io ad un certo punto, una volta esaurito l'entusiasmo iniziale, ho faticato tantissimo a concentrarmi, perché mi sembrava di essere persa, proprio come la Freydis di Vollmann si smarrisce dentro se stessa. La sensazione è diventata quella di essere a un punto morto, di non riuscire ad arrivare in vetta. Forse, per quanto mi riguarda, avrebbe giovato un taglio considerevole alla mole del libro. O forse devo ancora addentrarmi meglio nel sentiero degli altri sogni per capire diverse cose, chissà.
Per concludere: credo che il romanzo si meriti di diritto le sue quattro stelle e che l'autore vada letto di più, per cui prendete questo come giudizio oggettivo. Io, per mia esperienza di lettura personale, sottolineo la mia più tiepida valutazione a tre stelle. Ritengo molto probabile che questa sarà una di quelle valutazioni che riconsidererò in futuro a seconda del capriccio, del resto anche la mia lettura è passata da un entusiasmo senza limiti alla voglia costante di passare a leggere altro... 😅
PS, La camicia di inchiostro:
menzione d'onore alla veste grafica data da Minimum Fax! questo è uno di quei libri la cui contemplazione è un piacere per gli occhi.
E poi c'è Vinland, terra di promesse e di mistero, il primo sogno. «Voglio qui raccontare la storia di come venne consumata la rugiada e di come arrivò il gelo». Così l'autore spiega la sua opera, prima di vestire i panni di William il Cieco, che ci accompagnerà per mano attraverso il viaggio.
Si capisce la profondità del progetto osservando l'intreccio di saghe (prime fra tutte, la Saga di Eirik il Rosso e il Flateyjarbók) e viaggi agli estremi del mondo, tanto che la lettura diventa spesso fonte di sapere. Ma quello che ho soprattutto scoperto leggendo La camicia di ghiaccio, è che esiste un autore capace di usare la prosa in modo brillantemente anticonvenzionale.
Venendo alle note dolenti, io ad un certo punto, una volta esaurito l'entusiasmo iniziale, ho faticato tantissimo a concentrarmi, perché mi sembrava di essere persa, proprio come la Freydis di Vollmann si smarrisce dentro se stessa. La sensazione è diventata quella di essere a un punto morto, di non riuscire ad arrivare in vetta. Forse, per quanto mi riguarda, avrebbe giovato un taglio considerevole alla mole del libro. O forse devo ancora addentrarmi meglio nel sentiero degli altri sogni per capire diverse cose, chissà.
Per concludere: credo che il romanzo si meriti di diritto le sue quattro stelle e che l'autore vada letto di più, per cui prendete questo come giudizio oggettivo. Io, per mia esperienza di lettura personale, sottolineo la mia più tiepida valutazione a tre stelle. Ritengo molto probabile che questa sarà una di quelle valutazioni che riconsidererò in futuro a seconda del capriccio, del resto anche la mia lettura è passata da un entusiasmo senza limiti alla voglia costante di passare a leggere altro... 😅
PS, La camicia di inchiostro:
menzione d'onore alla veste grafica data da Minimum Fax! questo è uno di quei libri la cui contemplazione è un piacere per gli occhi.
May 10, 2023
Questo pazzo pazzo Vollmann, che amo così tanto, ha fatto sette sogni. Nel primo sogno, La camicia di Ghiaccio, ci ha portato alle origini del mito americano, costruendo una narrazione mitologica attraverso le due maggiori saghe nordiche medievali. E detto così voi direte ma chi se ne frega; e non potrei che darvi ragione. Se non fosse che Vollmann, conosciuto in questo mondo come WILLIAM IL CIECO, ha esplorato quegli stessi luoghi che racconta, ci ha rischiato la vita, e li ha riportati su carta in tutta la loro vividezza. Si può dire di tutto a Vollmann, ma non si può negare la straordinaria abilità descrittiva con cui compone i suoi libri, ibridi dense di atmosfere piene. Nei suoi libri ci entri, li attraversi in tutti gli stili e modi narrativi che decidono di adottare, come camicie sempre diverse alternate senza soluzione di continuità, e non ci esci fino alla parola FINE.
Tutte le implicazioni filosofiche contenute all’interno del primo volume dei Seven Dreams (la barbarie razzista, la colonizzazione egoista, il cambiamento climatico, l’incapacità di rifuggire alle camicie che indossiamo, la nostra presunzione nel pensare che l’umanità viva un continuo progresso etc. etc.) vengono nascoste delicatamente sotto la terra rugiadosa della passione con cui Vollmann imbastisce la sua storia. Vollmann guarda all’uomo senza porre alcun giudizio, lo ritrae e ce lo espone, dandoci carta bianca sui pesi morali e sui luoghi reconditi che raggiungiamo con i nostri pensieri. Le sue sono “solo storie”, fantasticherie pomeridiane per ungere i calcagni.
Anche questa è una storia, o meglio, una ricostruzione, sotto forma di sogno, della Storia di Wineland (il Nord America), realizzata da un bardo ingannatore: “visto che il mio testo altro non è che un cumulo di bugie, [queste] non possono fare alcun male”. Anche se il testo è pieno di elementi simbolici, questo è solo un romanzo, una mera opera di finzione, dove tutto è falso, dove tutto è vero, e dove l’autore (o il suo alter-ego) ci sussurra all’orecchio di prestare attenzione, ma al tempo stesso di farci ingannare da un patto narrativo che non riusciamo a leggere per intero, ma di cui dobbiamo fidarci per raggiungere la parola FINE.
Io la soglia l’ho varcata, e mi sono fidato quando Lui mi ha detto che la Storia è solo un lungo elenco di azioni deplorevoli, ma che se questa Storia ha un fine, “allora il nostro erodere alberi e tribù deve essere servito a qualcosa”; sennò, questo fine, sarà bene inventarlo.
Tutte le implicazioni filosofiche contenute all’interno del primo volume dei Seven Dreams (la barbarie razzista, la colonizzazione egoista, il cambiamento climatico, l’incapacità di rifuggire alle camicie che indossiamo, la nostra presunzione nel pensare che l’umanità viva un continuo progresso etc. etc.) vengono nascoste delicatamente sotto la terra rugiadosa della passione con cui Vollmann imbastisce la sua storia. Vollmann guarda all’uomo senza porre alcun giudizio, lo ritrae e ce lo espone, dandoci carta bianca sui pesi morali e sui luoghi reconditi che raggiungiamo con i nostri pensieri. Le sue sono “solo storie”, fantasticherie pomeridiane per ungere i calcagni.
Anche questa è una storia, o meglio, una ricostruzione, sotto forma di sogno, della Storia di Wineland (il Nord America), realizzata da un bardo ingannatore: “visto che il mio testo altro non è che un cumulo di bugie, [queste] non possono fare alcun male”. Anche se il testo è pieno di elementi simbolici, questo è solo un romanzo, una mera opera di finzione, dove tutto è falso, dove tutto è vero, e dove l’autore (o il suo alter-ego) ci sussurra all’orecchio di prestare attenzione, ma al tempo stesso di farci ingannare da un patto narrativo che non riusciamo a leggere per intero, ma di cui dobbiamo fidarci per raggiungere la parola FINE.
Io la soglia l’ho varcata, e mi sono fidato quando Lui mi ha detto che la Storia è solo un lungo elenco di azioni deplorevoli, ma che se questa Storia ha un fine, “allora il nostro erodere alberi e tribù deve essere servito a qualcosa”; sennò, questo fine, sarà bene inventarlo.
March 25, 2015
Experiencing The Ice-Shirt was like listening to a grandpa tell his stories of an adventure he had traveling through some uncharted, icy lands filled with monsters, warriors, and gods(many, many gods). As a reader of the history you are hooked and believe all the words that are told. WTV can definitely make you believe anything he writes; Of course the Inuits are created from two boys, one turning into a women(this was one of my favorite parts). The comparison to men transitioning into women was great:
"[T]his woman, then, finished brushing her hair and suddenly yawned, and her face fragmented into a hundred lumps for a moment, becoming again a man's face, and then she licked her lips and smiled and became a woman again." San Francisco 1987
His way of showing the different "shirts" people wear is miraculous.
I agree with some points in other review, I wish their were equal representation of both the Viking and the Inuit stories, but do understand the lack of written material.
"We're Rich in Viking Heritage, We're Uncommon Good Fun and...
We're Very Affordable."
Iceland Vacation Planner brochure(1987)
The novel read (like many other reviews stated) as a travel log. You cannot but want to travel to all of these places and see the different scenery and wear the different shirts. I want to eat some deer cooked on a hot stone and drug through salt. I thank you WTV for your dedication and love for these types of stories.
Now, who wants some whale fat?
"[T]his woman, then, finished brushing her hair and suddenly yawned, and her face fragmented into a hundred lumps for a moment, becoming again a man's face, and then she licked her lips and smiled and became a woman again." San Francisco 1987
His way of showing the different "shirts" people wear is miraculous.
I agree with some points in other review, I wish their were equal representation of both the Viking and the Inuit stories, but do understand the lack of written material.
"We're Rich in Viking Heritage, We're Uncommon Good Fun and...
We're Very Affordable."
Iceland Vacation Planner brochure(1987)
The novel read (like many other reviews stated) as a travel log. You cannot but want to travel to all of these places and see the different scenery and wear the different shirts. I want to eat some deer cooked on a hot stone and drug through salt. I thank you WTV for your dedication and love for these types of stories.
Now, who wants some whale fat?
Read
January 16, 2023The only kind of historical fiction that makes sense to me—a dream grounded in the real. Vollmann's method of storytelling here is classical, oracular, not postmodern or metafictional. I loved The Ice-Shirt for its material qualities as much as its narrative ones: it's a beautiful, chaotic object, cluttered with William The Blind's hastily scribbled maps and portraits that closely resemble Raymond Pettibon's drawings. Its exhaustive indexes, glossaries, and footnotes are of as much importance as the main text and make clear that, despite its grand historical sweep, this story is a projection of one man's consciousness. Occasionally this led to the book feeling shapeless or unrefined, but I quickly forgot about this after I'd finished reading.
It's hard to believe WTV is just out there walking around somewhere.
It's hard to believe WTV is just out there walking around somewhere.
December 17, 2015
The Ice-Shirt is the first Dream/Volume of Vollmann’s “Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes” series. It covers from roughly 200CE to 1430CE, and is primarily concerned with the interactions between the Vikings and the native North American people. It is a combination of historical fiction and myth, weaving together the myriad myths and sagas of the Vikings with the myths of the Inuits and the Mi'kmaws (Micmacs in the book). The subtitle of the series “A Book of North American Landscapes” in imminently appropriate, as the book extensively covers the geography of the places visited – almost travelogue-esque – but also conveys the double meaning of “landscape”; in that the historical “lay of the land” is covered here (and ostensibly in future volumes; obviously I’ve yet to read them).
Vollmann speaks a bit, in one of the Appendices, about his conflation of historical fact / historical fiction / myths and legends from multiple cultures:
Finally, here are some resources that I found helpful as I read this book – Vollmann discusses his sources in the back of the book (also very helpful), but the summaries and texts are good as well if you want to dive in deeper:
Greenland Saga (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenla...
Greenland Saga (original text): http://www.sagadb.org/graenlendinga_s...
Flateyjarbók (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flateyj...
Flateyjarbók (translation and original – the formatting on this site is atrocious though; the English translation follows the Icelandic in each section): http://www.northvegr.org/sagas%20annd...
Eirik the Red’s Saga (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of...
Eirik the Red’s Saga (translation): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17946/...
Eyrbyggja saga (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyrbygg...
Eyrbyggja saga (translation): http://www.sagadb.org/eyrbyggja_saga.en
Heimskringla (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimskr...
Heimskringla (translation): http://www.wisdomlib.org/scandinavia/...
“Eskimo Folk Tales”: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28932...
Inuit Legend repository: http://www.native-languages.org/inuit...
Within that resource, the Sun Sister and Moon Brother myth contained in The Ice-Shirt: http://www.native-languages.org/inuit...
Mi'kmaw Creation Story (Micmac): http://www.muiniskw.org/pgCulture3a.htm
*I could not find a source for Vollmann’s Inuit creation myth of Elder Brother and Younger Brother – Vollmann references this as “The Origin of Nunivak Island in his source notes, but I can’t find a copy of the myth online*
Vollmann speaks a bit, in one of the Appendices, about his conflation of historical fact / historical fiction / myths and legends from multiple cultures:
It may be of interest to the reader to know what use I have made of my sources. My aim in Seven Dreams has been to create a “Symbolic History” - that is to say, an account of origins and matamorphoses which is often untrue based on the literal facts as we know them, but whose untruths further a deeper sense of truth. - Did the Norsemen, for instance, really come to the New World bearing ice in their hearts? - Well, of course they did not. But if we look upon the Vinland episode as a precursor of the infamies there, of course they did. In this Dream I have done several things which, narrowly speaking, are unjustified - which is to say that I consider them perfectly in order.Much of the book – there are a handful of modern day sections mostly concerning Vollmann’s travels as he gathered information for this book – is written in a style very close to that found in the Sagas and Myths he is incorporating. In fact, the specific style in which he writes this book is one of its greatest strengths, and is also probably it’s most off-putting aspect to some readers (I'm obviously not one of them). The book does in fact read like a translation of an ancient text:
New ClothesBoth in presentation and in execution it excels, and the scope of Vollmann’s knowledge and ambition drive the narrative along with unrelenting force.
To the boy Snorri, who was now two years old, the world smelled of pinelogs and peat; and he laughed without understanding at the red eyes of the long-fire winking so merrily at him; his mother, who adored him, often smothered him in her arms, for she was not nearly so hard-pressed by her tasks here as in Greenland; the country was kinder and so was she. Once he was playing with a twig just outside the doorway when he heard a marvelous noise that made him clap his hands; it was the sound of a sentry’s horn, for the Skraelings were coming to trade. But his mother, instead of being overjoyed by the noise as he was, snatched him quickly into the house and bolted the door. For the first time, something sad and heavy stirred inside the boy’s bowels like a snake. But he soon forgot it, because the fire flickered at him so brightly. Now he heard the strange Skraeling voices (for the People of KLUSKAP, as they always did, pointed at the chests of these Jenuaq crying: “Muskunamu’kwesik!” - in truth the white people’s hearts were so icy-blue!), and he listened because his mother was listening; he watched her draw back her lips in disgust saying, “Skraelings!” and the boy jumped up and down in delight at the odd word and said: “Skraelings! Skraelings!”
Finally, here are some resources that I found helpful as I read this book – Vollmann discusses his sources in the back of the book (also very helpful), but the summaries and texts are good as well if you want to dive in deeper:
Greenland Saga (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenla...
Greenland Saga (original text): http://www.sagadb.org/graenlendinga_s...
Flateyjarbók (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flateyj...
Flateyjarbók (translation and original – the formatting on this site is atrocious though; the English translation follows the Icelandic in each section): http://www.northvegr.org/sagas%20annd...
Eirik the Red’s Saga (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saga_of...
Eirik the Red’s Saga (translation): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17946/...
Eyrbyggja saga (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyrbygg...
Eyrbyggja saga (translation): http://www.sagadb.org/eyrbyggja_saga.en
Heimskringla (wiki summary): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimskr...
Heimskringla (translation): http://www.wisdomlib.org/scandinavia/...
“Eskimo Folk Tales”: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28932...
Inuit Legend repository: http://www.native-languages.org/inuit...
Within that resource, the Sun Sister and Moon Brother myth contained in The Ice-Shirt: http://www.native-languages.org/inuit...
Mi'kmaw Creation Story (Micmac): http://www.muiniskw.org/pgCulture3a.htm
*I could not find a source for Vollmann’s Inuit creation myth of Elder Brother and Younger Brother – Vollmann references this as “The Origin of Nunivak Island in his source notes, but I can’t find a copy of the myth online*
April 1, 2019
La Camicia di Ghiaccio rappresenta il primo libro del ciclo dei Sette Sogni, uno dei più ambizioni progetti letterari mai pensati. L’idea di Vollmann è quella di raccontare la storia del paesaggio americano, di quanti vi hanno messo piede, a cominciare dai primi colonizzatori: non Colombo e le sue caravelle, ma i Norvegesi di Erik il Rosso. «Credo che il punto di partenza fondamentale sia stato la lettura delle Metamorfosi di Ovidio. Da Ovidio ho mutuato l’idea che nel nostro continente si siano succedute diverse ere, ognuna delle quali meno mitica della precedente». Sette sono i sogni a cui corrispondono le Sette età di Vinlandia La Buona. «Ogni età fu peggiore di quella che la precedette, perché noi pensammo di dover migliorare qualunque cosa scoprissimo».
Nell’accingermi a leggere le pagine di questa epopea ho prestato particolare attenzione anche all’introduzione di Vollmann, dove scrive che «noi non fummo certo da rimproverare, non più dei bacilli che attaccano e annientano un organismo vivente; perché se la storia ha un fine, allora il nostro erodere alberi e tribù deve essere servito a qualcosa». E’ fondamentale capire che Vollmann intraprende questo viaggio privo delle false credenze e dei pregiudizi tipici della cultura europea: egli ha una visione della storia sprovvista di morale; prova misericordia e compassione per il più debole, ma comprende il più forte: perché qualcuno deve sempre avere la meglio, è una costante di natura.
La Camicia di Ghiaccio parte, quindi, dall’inizio di questo «immenso processo di degradazione» del mito americano, del primo impatto dei nativi con gli esploratori stranieri. Gli storici sono sempre più propensi a credere che questo sbarco precolombiano raccontato sotto forma di favola nelle due saghe nordiche medievali più importanti, la Saga dei Groenlandesi e quella di Erik il Rosso, sia effettivamente accaduto, grazie anche a dei ritrovamenti in stile scandinavo rinvenuti in Canada. Nelle saghe nordiche viene raccontata di questa accidentale scoperta e del breve quanto disastroso tentativo di colonizzazione. La chiamarono Vinlandia, ossia “il paese dell’uva”, proprio per l'abbondante presenza di grappoli d’uva. La chiamarono anche la Buona, perché il clima era mite e perché «non c’era ghiaccio in inverno, e l’erba quasi non appassiva». Quella terra, però, era già occupata da un popolo di selvaggi che gli scandinavi iniziarono a truffare mentre mercanteggiavano e ad uccidere. Dopo un primo periodo di relativa calma, dove gli scambi di merce la fecero da padrone, i nativi cominciarono a non accettare più i soprusi subiti e si ribellarono, costringendo gli scandinavi a tornare da dove erano venuti. Vinlandia fu dunque libera di vivere in tranquillità per altri cinque secoli, trascorsi i quali venne riscoperta per trasformarsi nuovamente.
La storia che ci narra William il Cieco (pseudonimo che usa lo stesso Vollmann per chiamarsi), inizia da molto lontano: ci racconta di maghe fatali, regni perduti e dimenticati, guerre e tradimenti, lotte fratricide, il pallido ricordo di eden perduti, un rapporto di comunione e identità con gli animali della foresta, giuramenti calpestati, vendette, faide familiari, creature mitiche, antiche razze nate prima che il primo uomo venisse a calpestare la terra, fino ad arrivare all’approdo sulle coste americane di alcuni vichinghi, chi spinto dalla fuga dal proprio paese natio, chi spinto da cupidigia.
Anche se gli scandinavi uscirono sconfitti dallo scontro con i nativi, essi lasciarono comunque un segno della loro presenza, una macchia incancellabile. Vinlandia venne infangata. Gli invasori europei la infettarono, la inquinarono e avvelenarono con tutto quello che già aveva corrotto il Vecchio Mondo.
Il male, per Vollmann, ha un aspetto: l'inverno. «Voglio qui raccontare la storia di come venne consumata la rugiada e di come arrivò il gelo» scrive Vollmann. Il ghiaccio (inteso soprattutto come metafora della corruzione umana) muta l'aspetto di Vinlandia, comincia a plasmarla per farle assumere la forma di oggi: corruzione morale e ambientale, malvagità, razzismo e quant'altro hanno qui origine.
Vollmann si dimostra un funambolico narratore, per cui risultano affascinanti anche le sanguinarie gesta dei Re Norvegesi, grazie al fatto che l’autore non si è limitato a raccontarci una storia, ma l’ha toccata con mano, recandosi più volte sui luoghi di cui ci parla: i siti vichinghi di L’Anse-aux-Meadows a Terranova, i resti della fattoria di Erik il Rosso in Islanda, le rovine norvegesi in Groenlandia e la vasta distesa ghiacciata dell’Isola di Baffin.
La bellezza della scrittura di Vollmann non è immune da noia, talvolta, ma è largamente accettata se il risultato è un libro di tale fascino artistico, stilistico e tematico: Vollmann ci racconta di storie fantastiche come se stessero accadendo proprio sotto i suoi occhi, nello stesso momento in cui ce ne scrive; l’invenzione non sta nelle vicende di cui ci parla, ma nel collante mitico usato per il montaggio di tutta la storia. Vollmann non fa mai mistero di questo, tuttavia nulla toglie al libro, anzi, lo rende ancor più intrigante se possibile. Perché tutto ciò di cui lui scrive ha inciso profondamente nell’evoluzione del paesaggio americano e della sua storia, fino ai giorni nostri.
Nell’accingermi a leggere le pagine di questa epopea ho prestato particolare attenzione anche all’introduzione di Vollmann, dove scrive che «noi non fummo certo da rimproverare, non più dei bacilli che attaccano e annientano un organismo vivente; perché se la storia ha un fine, allora il nostro erodere alberi e tribù deve essere servito a qualcosa». E’ fondamentale capire che Vollmann intraprende questo viaggio privo delle false credenze e dei pregiudizi tipici della cultura europea: egli ha una visione della storia sprovvista di morale; prova misericordia e compassione per il più debole, ma comprende il più forte: perché qualcuno deve sempre avere la meglio, è una costante di natura.
La Camicia di Ghiaccio parte, quindi, dall’inizio di questo «immenso processo di degradazione» del mito americano, del primo impatto dei nativi con gli esploratori stranieri. Gli storici sono sempre più propensi a credere che questo sbarco precolombiano raccontato sotto forma di favola nelle due saghe nordiche medievali più importanti, la Saga dei Groenlandesi e quella di Erik il Rosso, sia effettivamente accaduto, grazie anche a dei ritrovamenti in stile scandinavo rinvenuti in Canada. Nelle saghe nordiche viene raccontata di questa accidentale scoperta e del breve quanto disastroso tentativo di colonizzazione. La chiamarono Vinlandia, ossia “il paese dell’uva”, proprio per l'abbondante presenza di grappoli d’uva. La chiamarono anche la Buona, perché il clima era mite e perché «non c’era ghiaccio in inverno, e l’erba quasi non appassiva». Quella terra, però, era già occupata da un popolo di selvaggi che gli scandinavi iniziarono a truffare mentre mercanteggiavano e ad uccidere. Dopo un primo periodo di relativa calma, dove gli scambi di merce la fecero da padrone, i nativi cominciarono a non accettare più i soprusi subiti e si ribellarono, costringendo gli scandinavi a tornare da dove erano venuti. Vinlandia fu dunque libera di vivere in tranquillità per altri cinque secoli, trascorsi i quali venne riscoperta per trasformarsi nuovamente.
La storia che ci narra William il Cieco (pseudonimo che usa lo stesso Vollmann per chiamarsi), inizia da molto lontano: ci racconta di maghe fatali, regni perduti e dimenticati, guerre e tradimenti, lotte fratricide, il pallido ricordo di eden perduti, un rapporto di comunione e identità con gli animali della foresta, giuramenti calpestati, vendette, faide familiari, creature mitiche, antiche razze nate prima che il primo uomo venisse a calpestare la terra, fino ad arrivare all’approdo sulle coste americane di alcuni vichinghi, chi spinto dalla fuga dal proprio paese natio, chi spinto da cupidigia.
Anche se gli scandinavi uscirono sconfitti dallo scontro con i nativi, essi lasciarono comunque un segno della loro presenza, una macchia incancellabile. Vinlandia venne infangata. Gli invasori europei la infettarono, la inquinarono e avvelenarono con tutto quello che già aveva corrotto il Vecchio Mondo.
Il male, per Vollmann, ha un aspetto: l'inverno. «Voglio qui raccontare la storia di come venne consumata la rugiada e di come arrivò il gelo» scrive Vollmann. Il ghiaccio (inteso soprattutto come metafora della corruzione umana) muta l'aspetto di Vinlandia, comincia a plasmarla per farle assumere la forma di oggi: corruzione morale e ambientale, malvagità, razzismo e quant'altro hanno qui origine.
Vollmann si dimostra un funambolico narratore, per cui risultano affascinanti anche le sanguinarie gesta dei Re Norvegesi, grazie al fatto che l’autore non si è limitato a raccontarci una storia, ma l’ha toccata con mano, recandosi più volte sui luoghi di cui ci parla: i siti vichinghi di L’Anse-aux-Meadows a Terranova, i resti della fattoria di Erik il Rosso in Islanda, le rovine norvegesi in Groenlandia e la vasta distesa ghiacciata dell’Isola di Baffin.
La bellezza della scrittura di Vollmann non è immune da noia, talvolta, ma è largamente accettata se il risultato è un libro di tale fascino artistico, stilistico e tematico: Vollmann ci racconta di storie fantastiche come se stessero accadendo proprio sotto i suoi occhi, nello stesso momento in cui ce ne scrive; l’invenzione non sta nelle vicende di cui ci parla, ma nel collante mitico usato per il montaggio di tutta la storia. Vollmann non fa mai mistero di questo, tuttavia nulla toglie al libro, anzi, lo rende ancor più intrigante se possibile. Perché tutto ciò di cui lui scrive ha inciso profondamente nell’evoluzione del paesaggio americano e della sua storia, fino ai giorni nostri.
October 24, 2015
Don't read this book unless you're prepared to spontaneously grow a beard.
Christopher Columbus and his impeccable PR agency have successfully infiltrated the American consciousness, becoming the name most people immediately think of when asked who first discovered America. However, many have recognized the Norseman Leif Erikson as being the one who first discovered what is now Newfoundland, hundreds of years before Columbus was ever born. Why hasn't Erikson's name become as ubiquitous as Columbus? Is it because he technically discovered Canada, and Americans are contractually obligated to view Canada as inferior? MAYBE.
At any rate, this book mixes historical fact with Vollmann-ian fiction, telling epic Norse tales of the times when Christianity and expansion were in, and the belief in gods like Thor and Odin were on the way out. That being said, Vollmann starts off by spending a good deal of time on the mystical aspects of Norse history. In the beginning, Gods roamed the Earth, demons lurked in everyday objects, and great Kings could turn into wolves.
Slowly, the age of Gods transitions into the age of Men. The bulk of The Ice-Shirt tells of Erikson's immediately family, who tried to create the first settlement in this new strange land. The narrative is colored with wonderful imagery -- ice and snow, purples and grays, a world fully alive and realized due to Vollmann interspersing the story with jumps in time to his own travels of the region in 1987. It's an effective technique. Vollmann clearly spent a lot of time in the area where most of these legends reportedly took place, and the story is all the better for it.
Vollmann's reimagining of these legends is great fun, and reads like he's right there with you, sitting by a fire, telling stories of times past, much in the way that people must've told stories back then. His enthusiasm for the subject matter is contagious.
This is essentially Wolf Hall for the Norse time period. If you have any interest at all in that era, or saw Marvel's Thor and thought it was pretty cool, you should definitely check this out.
Christopher Columbus and his impeccable PR agency have successfully infiltrated the American consciousness, becoming the name most people immediately think of when asked who first discovered America. However, many have recognized the Norseman Leif Erikson as being the one who first discovered what is now Newfoundland, hundreds of years before Columbus was ever born. Why hasn't Erikson's name become as ubiquitous as Columbus? Is it because he technically discovered Canada, and Americans are contractually obligated to view Canada as inferior? MAYBE.
At any rate, this book mixes historical fact with Vollmann-ian fiction, telling epic Norse tales of the times when Christianity and expansion were in, and the belief in gods like Thor and Odin were on the way out. That being said, Vollmann starts off by spending a good deal of time on the mystical aspects of Norse history. In the beginning, Gods roamed the Earth, demons lurked in everyday objects, and great Kings could turn into wolves.
Slowly, the age of Gods transitions into the age of Men. The bulk of The Ice-Shirt tells of Erikson's immediately family, who tried to create the first settlement in this new strange land. The narrative is colored with wonderful imagery -- ice and snow, purples and grays, a world fully alive and realized due to Vollmann interspersing the story with jumps in time to his own travels of the region in 1987. It's an effective technique. Vollmann clearly spent a lot of time in the area where most of these legends reportedly took place, and the story is all the better for it.
Vollmann's reimagining of these legends is great fun, and reads like he's right there with you, sitting by a fire, telling stories of times past, much in the way that people must've told stories back then. His enthusiasm for the subject matter is contagious.
This is essentially Wolf Hall for the Norse time period. If you have any interest at all in that era, or saw Marvel's Thor and thought it was pretty cool, you should definitely check this out.
May 1, 2011
Pretty engaging, when it was talking about Freydis and co. in the 1200's, but the 1987 travelogue portions really didn't feel like they had a place, and they distracted from what I considered to be the main story. Also, the ending disappointed; you could call Vollmann a master of anticlimax, and maybe you'd be right...or you could say The Ice-Shirt falls apart at the end. Which I do.
April 4, 2019
"Will you tell the Museum" I said
He shook his head. "It's better here."
- from the frist dream, The Ice-Shirt by William T. Vollman.
He shook his head. "It's better here."
- from the frist dream, The Ice-Shirt by William T. Vollman.
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