Status Updates From Northlanders, Vol. 3: Blood...

"Wealth dies. Friends die. On day you too will die. But the thing that never dies is the is the judgement on how you have spent your life." - Havamal, The Way of the Norseman

"He who has a little knife, needs a long arm." - Geitir, Saga of the Vopnafirthings

"He who has a little knife, needs a long arm." - Geitir, Saga of the Vopnafirthings

"Wealth dies. Friends die. One day you too will die. But the thing that never dies is the judgment on how you have spent your life." - Havamal, The Way of the Norseman.

No page numbers in this one ... oh well ...

Part 1:
The award for worst parent EVER goes to ... THIS GUY (one of those oh-so-wonderful Christians)! Man, I'd like to have a word with him. And when I say "word" I mean I want to hurt him. Very much. Repeatedly.

Oh, and the third story? "Shield Maidens"? Another story full of ahistorical anti-Christian preaching, selective reinterpretations of Norse pagan mythology, and authorial hypocrisy. Also, shallow 3rd-wave feminism. "Christians are evil and they alone want to oppress women! Now please ignore that I earlier had the pagan women complaining about how their pagan husbands beat them and oppressed them..."

UGH. The final story, "Sven the Immortal" is a sort of epilogue for the first volume in the series, and it alone -- out of ALL OF THE STORIES IN THIS BOOK -- actually works. It's solid. I didn't like "Sven the Returned" and it made me rethink that.

Ugh. Revisionist history, the bane of every historian. The first story is the worst, as it relies less on facts and history and more on modern prejudices. Because, of course, the ancient NORSEMEN would refer to "the white Christ"; they and their gods weren't white as rice, right? And of course, the attitudes of medieval Catholics would be those of Calvinism and a modern atheist vision of Evangelicals, right? FEH.