The Story of Rolf & the Viking Bow

by Allen French

Rolf, son of Hiarandi the Unlucky, is a character who exemplifies the effect of Christ's teachings upon the Icelandic people during their heroic age. The book is set in Iceland in the days when Christianity has come to the island though the old customs still linger. Hiarandi, at the urging of his wife, does an unprecedented he lights a signal fire on a dangerous point of his land, thereby challenging the accepted custom which places lucrative salvage at higher value than the saving of life. However, the life that is saved that night causes his own death and the unjust outlawing of his son Rolf. Rolf's response to this injustice creates a suspenseful, thought-provoking tale difficult to put down.

Iceland, 1,000 A.D.
RL4.7
Of read-aloud interest ages 9-up

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, School, Medieval, Literature, Childrens, Classics

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1918

About the author

Allen French (28 November 1870-1946) was a historian and children's book author who did major research on the battles of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolutionary War. He was a founding member and president of the Thoreau Society.

Born in Boston, French attended Harvard University for his undergraduate education.

Several of his children's books were illustrated by painter Andrew Wyeth.

Reviews

[Mikayla · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my least favorite Allen French book I've read. While the story and characters were very intriguing, I found myself not liking the fantasy elements. Unlike French's other story's, this book strays away from reality by featuring a ghost. It was a pretty creepy scene to, which disturbed me. Also there is an old lady who sometimes predicts the future. Though it could just be seen as good guessing, she still bugged me.
But despite the negative elements, I did enjoy the story. Rolf was a boy of great integrity, and I loved seeing him stand by his convictions.
I loved the ending. Even though I didn't agree with Rolf's method of dealing with his neighbor, he still handled it with grace.

Overall, an enjoyable read, but I will most likely be skipping the ghost scene next time.

[Jake Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was surprisingly a very enjoyable read. The author, Allen French, presents a Medieval Icelandic tale that captures the beauty of the old Norse Saga. The story is rich with Icelandic culture and history, and even the prose is mixed with poetic verse at climatic moments to further reenact the Norse poet.

The other unique feature of the story is that it is set in the history of Iceland where Christianity had just recently entered the scene (early 11th century). The interactions between Christianity and paganism in their culture are very interesting.


The protagonist, Rolf, is a great character all the way through. Perhaps this is my reason for docking a star. The “heroic” figure in these ancient sagas (much like Beowulf) is designed to be more one dimensional, embodying virtuous ideals and morals without undergoing drastic character development. Rolf is the embodiment of meekness, patience under affliction, and long suffering. My only disliking was that the end of his story was predictable, while the major turn happened to someone else.

The character who actually undergoes character development and moral transformation is the son of Rolf’s enemy, Granni. Without spoiling anything, Granni goes from being spoiled, arrogant, and weak-hearted to being repentant, long-suffering, and meek, due much to Rolf’s influence.

What Allen French did with Granni’s character made the story much richer.

[Bibliobites Veronica]

Not sure how to rate this one. The story line itself was good, though a little back-and-forth, and it touched on some good themes of justice, honoring one’s parents, fortitude in hardship, and forgiveness. But the writing felt pretty bad - like the author could have used the advice I used to receive to “SHOW the reader, don’t tell them.” Also, the dialog (what little there was) was full of “thou wilt” and “shalt” which just didn’t seem to fit.

According to the back cover, the storytelling is supposed to be “direct,” as befits a (wannabe) epic saga. I guess it just didn’t completely work for me. I have two other Allen French books on my shelves, I wonder if they’re the same?

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well done, I thought a very unusual and unexpected plot line. Historical fiction at its best.

Loved this quote from author note at Allen French in the afterward: "If a man takes his work seriously, and himself not too seriously, he has a good chance of doing something worth while."

[Winnie Thornton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cannot recommend this highly enough. Staggeringly good.

[Suzannah Rowntree · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished this story with a tear in my throat and a lump in my eye. Even better than I remember. Full review to come!

[Abigail Whitcomb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Super readable and interesting! My 12 yo was a big fan too. I'll be looking for more from this author.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

So, I'm on a kick of reading books I own (a novel idea I tell you), and I bought a good handful of these living history library books from Bethlehem Books a couple years ago. Anyway, they're not all the same and I have only really enjoyed 1/2 of the ones I've read.
This book is a historical fiction adventure novel geared toward the upper middle grades. Probably a bit more toward boys. It was fine, but I definitely didn't love it.

[Kelli Sanders · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tale of betrayal, friendship, and redemption set in 1000 AD Iceland. We wrapped up our study of history this year with the vikings. We all enjoyed this book, both the librivox reading and the actual book.

[gloriabluestocking · Rating 4 out of 5]

A ripping story, well-written with a satisfying ending.

[Joel Zartman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story is one set in Christian Iceland, in the years when still the heathen Vikings were a living memory, and life was much the same, save for the new faith. And it is this time and what exactly the new faith meant for these people with the legacy of Viking civilization that Allen French wants to explore in his story. Not in a didactic or moralizing way, but in the sense of wanting to show one of the interesting possibilities this circumstance created.

Viking society was a society of laws, and because of that it was litigious. Wherever there is the rule of law, there is going to be the arbitration of law through litigation. So they gathered at their quarter gatherings and the Allthings and brought cases and disputed. Allen French shows in the story how it worked: how they called each other out, named witnesses, connived and fretted about this or that in the law, needed lawyers and counsel. If you read the sagas you will soon see how honor and law not only dominated their disputes but were also used to prolong them, making the cycle vicious and in the end endless and dispiriting. Christianity ended the Viking age, and some of what is was—its glory and greatness—is admirably lamented in Beowulf. There is another saga retelling that laments the passing of the Vikings, but from a pagan point of view: E.R. Eddison's Styrbiorn the Strong, a good tale. But what Allen French does so admirably is to show how Christianity subtly solved the problem of unending cyclical revenge by giving honor, shame and the rule of law their proper place in a system that includes repentance, forgiveness and amendment of life.

The telling is in the manner of Sagas, so it isn't so much about visual appeal and interior states externalized in dramatic settings. It isn't about drama you picture as a result of voluptuous description as much as it is about bare suggestions of feelings and crucial action, for which the terse style in which Sagas are told is admirably suited. It is minimal and Scandinavian, and for that matter Hebrew too. The situations are dramatic enough, but French doesn't really play the drama of atmosphere up as he might. Even the scene in a barrow with a ghost is not at all hair-raising. What he focuses on are states of mind, motives and purposes, bits of dialogue. We're not used to that in a society of visual story telling. But I think it is still compelling if your tastes can extend beyond what the movie theater crowd expect. It’s a bit more like short poetry—on the small scale and living in a few details. And so the lore of the setting shines forth: the manners and customs, the situations, weather, sunlight and rain, the food and clothing.

And what an appeal to the moral imagination! I do not think, once you understand what he’s doing, and how (not that it isn’t obvious, it’s just some people don’t judge books as literary artifacts all the time, oddly), that anybody could fault him. French is much to be praised here for having produced a satisfying, interesting, and just tale.

[Elizabeth Kennedy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was required reading for my daughter’s 5th grade Language Arts class, and so we completed the task together, taking turns reading aloud one chapter at a time. It is a marvelous story, with a narrative style much like that of the authentic Icelandic sagas written in the 12th and 13th centuries.

The author, Allen French, immersed himself in those complex Icelandic sagas and then produced this novel in the early 1900’s. His rendition of the heroic sagas exists in a much more widely readable format than that of their predecessors.

Authentic Icelandic sagas are comprised of terse, compact prose, and are full of obscure unfamiliar references which make the task of reading them no easy feat for the average modern reader. What is so extraordinary about The Story of Rolf and the Viking Bow is that the reader gets the full flavor of the heroic literary genre in a format that is as thrilling as it is readily assimilated.

This tale of triumph over adversity is one that the whole family can appreciate — that is to say, it is a novel appropriate for all ages that champions good morals, values, and ethics without proselytizing. Christianity is, of course, part of the storyline, as the setting of the novel is Iceland around 1010 A.D., roughly a generation or so after Christianity was introduced to the island.

Both my daughter and I found the novel to be highly engaging and delightful, difficult to put down, a story we didn’t want to end.

[Tony · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story is told in the style of Icelandic sagas and fits as a sequel to Njal's Saga. The book explores the themes of the rule of law, democracy vs. tyranny, and understanding Christian moral imperatives in the world that recently transitioned from paganism.

[Alyssa Bohon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant

Has the authentic feel of an ancient saga, written in spare and beautiful language, but also has a captivating and suspenseful plotline with a satisfying ending. Good stuff

[Nathan Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gotta love it when noble men suffer at the hands of cowardly, wicked men, and each get what they deserve in the end.

The style was fun, but I think the story suffered a bit with French's waxing and waning dedication to it. On the one hand, he is "retelling" an epic poem, and his characters speak and act as such. On the other hand, he is writing a modern novel, and this is meant to be a coming-of-age story. However, Rolf is not the one coming of age. He is the "Hero" of the story--that is, he remains relatively unchanged from the beginning to the end (i.e., he was already trustworthy and upright in the beginning, as he was in the end). Grani is the one actually coming of age, and he isn't introduced until about a third of the way through the book. The reader feels a bit like they were subjected to a bait and switch. There are certain points in the writing where the style changes from ancient to modern or lines which stand out from the text in a way that takes the reader out of the setting. At the end of the day, he should have mixed "epic poem" with "coming-of-age" in a more pleasing way, and kept his style consistent.

Would I want my son to read this? Absolutely. It operates under very strong moral principles and contrasts the actions and thoughts of weak and strong men.

[Candace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rolf, son of Hiarandi the Unlucky, is a character who exemplifies the effect of Christ's teachings upon the Icelandic people during their heroic age. The book is set in Iceland in the days when Christianity has come to the island though the old customs still linger. Hiarandi, at the urging of his wife, does an unprecedented thing. He lights a signal fire on a dangerous point of his land, thereby challenging the accepted custom which places lucrative salvage at higher price than the saving of life. However, the life that is saved that night, in the end, causes his own death and the unjust outlawing of his son Rolf. Rolf's response to this injustice creates a suspenseful, thought-provoking tale difficult to put down. Candace read 10/08--excellent, but harder read since it was written in the early 1900's.

[AT Demeter · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who loved (and was awed by) this story. I honestly never thought a whole lot of people read or remember it!
When I read it for the first time, I was so in awe of the power of the story’s crucial lesson interwoven throughout. Here, in this work of historical fiction set in 1000s Iceland, you see so clearly what havoc greed, unforgiveness, and hatred can wreak in the lives of others - as well as how forgiveness and returning good for evil can do just the opposite.
If you are a lover of old-fashioned, good stories like Rolf and the Viking’s Bow, I’d highly recommend this one to you. Trust me, you won’t regret it. It will move you and cause you to want to cheer at the top of your lungs. And perhaps, if you’re the more easily moved person, you had better have handy with you some tissues for when you read toward the end!

[Angie Schmidt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was fun. Honestly better than I thought it would be. Action & adventure, Icelanders, Vikings & Scots, long summers & cold dark winters, the brave young & wise aged, a new religion & ghostly legends, bold virtue & moral voids, laws & outlaws, swords & bows & cliffs & boats & shipwrecks & honor & family & forgiveness all lend to a wild coming of age tale about a boy named Rolf. The language does take some getting used to. No one says anything they “quoth”, and no one strikes but they do “smote,” so the story is great for the 10+ age group but some readers will likely need some support until they get into the language as the story goes on. Recommend!

[Anda P · Rating 3 out of 5]

The structure of this old Viking society was completely foreign to me and I found it very interesting. It occurred after the Icelandic people were introduced to Christ’s teachings. The rule of law kept the tribes from descending into tribal warfare by use of the court and the practice of “outlawing” or banishing a convicted criminal from the land. Without this system in place, I very much see how it could have been the Hatfields vs McCoys indefinitely.

The first half of the book was very tedious, it consisted of the foreshadowing of something bad and then that bad thing happening. It’s hard to follow a main character from defeat to defeat for this long.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book-felt very 'old legend'-ish in its telling, with its old language and terminology. On the surface it's a story about seeking vindication, but it's really about forgiveness. It got a little weird when a ghost was involved (which was a very short part, but maybe it was more like sleep-walking or hallucination and it wasn't really a ghost, but they thought it was), but otherwise, it felt more real, and less 'fantastical' of a story (I'm not really sure what it's intended to be), but there's some parts that you'd have to suspend your disbelief.

[Pam · Rating 5 out of 5]

Only the second book that I’ve read of the life of Norsemen, after Beowulf. Excellent read. I could hardly stand to put it down, and I loved finding out that so many of the characters in the book had really existed. The book did include a ghost and “prophecies” but it is clearly understood that it was part of the Norse tales. The character lessons and it were excellent. I did have to read it with the dictionary on my phone at hand, because I was unfamiliar with several of the terms, particularly those that were related to weaponry. I highly recommend this if you like historical fiction.

[Melanie Tillman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this to see if I would use it for my son for homeschool. I have decided not to. The plot didn't hold my attention at all, and I didn't feel connected to any of the characters. They were all pretty flat and uninteresting, actually. I didn't care at all what happened to them! The whole thing was told in a flat, unemotional way that just felt awkward. It also shifted verb tense constantly from present tense to past tense, sometimes within one paragraph. We're going to read a book of Norse mythology instead and skip this one

[Rebekah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok, I’m going to be honest, this was kind of boring. It picked up at the end, but in general I was not enthused about it. Now, I think this has more to do with the writing than the story. I mean, it’s an Icelandic saga, so the story is pretty cool, but the writing felt very old and stilted, and not in a way that could be excused because it’s from the 15th century (like Le Morte d’Arthur).

I read this for Philosophy Club, though, and we had some decent conversations about self-defence out of it.

[Darlene Nichols · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read with Malachi (2nd grade) for school. The story features a virtuous young man that acted courageously in the face of danger on several occasions and did not let his unjust circumstances change his deep convictions. His Christlike character lends well to the themes of forgiveness and redemption that ring throughout. It was a joy to read this with my son and share in the rich conversation that followed.

[Michelle Martini · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was our fall semester read aloud. We enjoyed the characters and the lessons, and the kids enjoyed speaking in “thou” and “thee” and “didst” language. I learned the power of narration: based on Grani’s attitude, I voiced him as a petulant child, so Daniel was shocked at the end of the book to realize he (Grani) and Rolf were roughly the same age. Oops.

[Phillip Hatfield · Rating 5 out of 5]

Icelandic Saga Novel

A great rollicking soap operatic tale of Vikings. I read it as I enjoy books involving archery.
A quick and very readable read although the book has a 1904 copyright and uses some old English to keep with the style of a Viking saga tale.
Highly recommend for kids and adults.

[Phoebe Chartowich · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the Old English language in this book! Our English class was talking about it and we all generally agreed that it would suck us in until it was jarring to break out of that sort of concentration. The story was cool too.

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was difficult to get into, and a struggle to read sometimes (when the witch speaks, for instance), but reading it left me feeling satisfied. I admired Rolf and his choices to be of good character in the face of hardship.

[Maggie · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could give a book 10 stars, I’d give all ten this novel. SO GOOD. I read it out loud to some fourth graders, and was reminded why I love it so much. When I Lord-willing have children, I will make sure they read this book.

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really well done. Written in the Saga style, which makes it lots of fun to read. A good message that isn’t belabored; a good story of friendship which gives a glimpse into how life was back ages ago in Iceland.