"Footsteps in the Dew" by Marsali Taylor

 

A historical murder mystery set in an exciting period of Viking history.

1150. Shetland. Rannveig, the eldest daughter, has taken the place of her dead mother helping her father run their small farm with sidelines in fishing and pottery. A stranger is found dead in a nearby stone circle. Clues include a footprint and a bead from a broken necklace. Whodunnit? Members of the old paganism, still celebrating Thor even though the country is supposedly pagan? Or was the stranger a spy for one of the three kings who rule Norway in a supposedly harmonious triumvirate? And why was silver stolen from father's hiding place and then put back? 

Rannveig's investigation progresses against a background of Vikings and crusaders. The setting is perfect and includes such archaic processes of justice as the ordeal by bier-right - when the dead man's body is wrapped in white cloth and laid in the church and each man from the locality must in turn place his hand on the body and swear his innocence and the body is watched to see whether it will bleed indicating guilt - and the steeple run in which a man and his accuser must race for the steeple and the first one to touch it is innocent and the loser is hanged but the kinsfolk and friends of either man can impede either runner. 

It's a story which is full of local colour and it also contains the Marsali Taylor trademark pitch-perfect descriptions:

• "The grassy hill sparkled with morning dew ... as if an angel had sprinkled curled shavings of silver over the green blades." (Ch 1)
• "The amber sun shone on the shorn field, strengthening the hay, sealing the goodness in." (Ch 4) 'Shone on the shorn', what wonderful assonance!
• "The turning point between summer and winter was haustblót, the great harvest feast, held three weeks after the autumn equinox, as the dark ate away at the daylight, and the hills turned from their royal purple to rusted pink. On the lower ground, the marsh grass darkened to olive, and the bog asphodel made patches of burnt orange among the bleaching grasses. The wild geese creaked overhead, dark wings spread against the pale sky." (Ch 4) Not only a description from which a painter could create a painting, but also the dark eating the daylight and the geese creaking overhead. Wow!
• "Rannveig was reminded of the way he had walked up the hill after they had told him Midder was dead, as if his feet were too heavy to life." (Ch 9)

I thoroughly enjoyed this murder mystery which reminded me of childhood favourites such as The Woolpack by Cynthia Harnett and the Henry Treece series of Viking books including Viking's Dawn, The Road to Miklagard, and Viking's Sunset. 

Marsali Taylor is also the author of the Shetland Sailing Mysteries, a series of murder mysteries starring intrepid sailor and amateur investigator Cass Lynch. The series so far is:

• Death on a Shetland Longship
• The Trowie Mound Murders (Buried in a Shetland Tomb)
• A Handful of Ash (The Shetland Night Killings)
• The Body in the Bracken (Grave of a Shetland Sailor)
• Ghosts of the Vikings (The Shetland Poisonings)
• Death in Shetland Waters
• Death on a Shetland Isle
• Death from a Shetland Cliff
• The Shetland Sea Murders
• A Shetland Winter Mystery
• Death in a Shetland Lane
• Death at a Shetland Festival

May 2025, 135 pages

This novel was originally written in 2015, serialised in the magazine Shetland Life.

My paperback edition was issued in 2020

This review was written by the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Road to Miklagard" by Henry Treece

 The sequel to Viking's Dawn.

Harald Sigurdson sets off a-viking in charge of his own ship. He travels to Ireland, seeking fabled treasure. Battles and adventures ensue. With a variety of companions including Haro, Radbard and Giant Grummoch, Harald's travels take him to Jebel Tarik (Gibraltar) and thence to Miklagard (the Viking name for Byzantium, also known as Constantinople, now Istanbul). 

This is a classic picaresque except that the main character is not a humorous trickster who survives on his wits but a defiant fighter whose main strategy is to threaten and bluster. Strangely, this seems to work. He is, perhaps, a typical Viking hero but I found him charmless.

There is a great deal of action in this book which presumably appealed to the young me (I first read this book as a pre-teen). The chronology moves in spurts: some days are treated in great detail, in other places weeks pass in a paragraph. This made the narrative feel jumpy and the adult me thought that much of the story was treated superficially. This, combined with my adult reaction to the character, made me rather indifferent to the story.

But I loved it as a kid!

One magic moment:

• "The black beetle climbs up the table-leg, but there is a hand waiting to crush him when he reaches the top." (Ch 8)

This book is followed by the third in the trilogy: Viking's Sunset.

A fast-paced adventure story for boys' a quick and easy read. August 2021; 223 pages

Other books by Henry Treece:

• Horned Helmet: more Vikings
• Legions of the Eagle: Romano-British adventure
• The Golden Strangers: A story from prehistory

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Dragon Slayer" by Rosemary Sutcliff

This is a retelling of the story of Beowulf, "for children of ten years and over." It is a short book, as befits the original, and the story is beautifully told. I was intrigued that the author makes no concessions in terms of language. She makes assumptions that the reader will be able to understand, for example, that a 'targe' is a shield. Furthermore, she deigns to dispense with adjectives and adverbs, so that her prose is as rich as poetry. Perhaps this is only possibly in a short form such as this - perhaps that is how poets get away with it - but the result is a simple tale, told with beauty.

Here is an example:

"In single file, for the track was too narrow to walk abreast, Beowulf and his comrades followed the old Warden on his horse up from the head of the fjord,a grey mailed serpent of men, the forged rings of their battle-sarks ringing as they moved. On the crest of the ridge where the wind-shaped trees fell back, the track changed abruptly into a paved road, and there they checked, with the sea wind humming against their mailed shoulders. Behind them was the way home, the fjord running out between its nesses to the open sea, and the war-boat lying like a basking seal among the brown sea-wrack and the drift-wood on the high tide line." (C 2)

In this paragraph we have a multiplicity of words that a ten year old might encounter for the first time: fjord and battle-sark and nesses and sea-wrack. We have long sentences with multiple parts. We have the wonderful word-play of rings and ringing anmd the super description of the trees as wind-shaped and the wind as humming. It offers no concessions and it achieves beauty.

Also interesting is the pacing of the story. There is a brief introduction, explaining the peril, and then the hero sets off on his journey. But the meat of the story, the battles against the troll-ogre Grendel and his Dam, is quite early on. In the final story, the battle between the old Beowulf and the fire-dragon, the pace is more leisurely. Once the author knows she has hooked her audience, she can take her time to weave her charms to hold them spell-bound.

Other memorable moments:

• "Before even a King makes merry, it is as well that he should know who may hear the laughter in the dark outside." (C 1)
• "The years went by and the years went by, bringing as they passed great changes ... Fifty times the wild geese flew south in the autumn, fifty times the birch buds quickened in the spring." (C 8) Showing the intelligent use of repetition; also, I think, synecdoche.
• "Heat played over its scales so that they changed colour, green and blue and gold, as the colours play on a sword-blade heated for tempering." (C 9): A metaphor belonging perfectly to the context of this story.
• "For ten days they laboured, building it high and strong for the love that they had borne him, and on the tenth day the great howe of piled stones stood finished, notching the sky." (C 9) I love 'notching'

A superb introduction; now I want to re-read the original.

June 2020; 108 pages

"Ragnarok" by A. S. Byatt

Byatt tells the story of a thin girl, evacuated with her mother during WWII and missing her airman father, who reads two books: Pilgrim's Progress and Asgard and the Gods. This last tells her the story of the Viking Gods, of Odin and Thor and Baldur and Loki, of wolves and sea serpents and bareserk warriors, of frost and forests and night.

Byatt has written a poem in prose form. Her images are intense and lyrical, her descriptions of seaweed and hedgerows are colourful and fresh. The great thing about the Norse Gods, which she brings out, is how vulnerable they are. Odin is one-eyed having sacrificed the other eye to buy prophesies from the head of Mimir, Tyr the hunter has his hand bitten off by Fenrir the wolf, Loki is captured and tied and has poison dripping into his face, Baldur is killed. And they are doomed. The world will end at Ragnarok and all of time is hurrying towards this finish.

This is a book filled with wonderful writing, fabulous, haunting characters (Hel, goddess of the underworld, has a face and a body which is half alive and half dead) and mysteries. What was the word whispered by Odin into the ear of his dead son? What will come after the destruction of Ragnarok?

Byatt has written a beautiful book. November 2015; 171 pages

Also reviewed by A S Byatt: Possession a delightful, Booker winning novel about a literary researcher tracing the details of an unknown and illicit Victorian love affair.