Cheap DVDs, books, CDs & Games

Search:

The Sea Road

By: Margaret Elphinstone
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1841951765
ISBN-13: 9781841951768
Released: 07 Aug 2001
RRP: £7.99
Average Rating:

Customer Reviews

Lunch with a Viking - By: Dr. Kenneth W. Douglas, 17 Feb 2004
If you could have lunch with anyone from the Viking world, who would you choose? Well, I reckon Gudrid Thorbjornsdottir would make a good choice (as well as being a less dangerous option than some other potential candidates): the farthest travelled woman in the world during the Viking age, she was daughter-in-law to Eirik the Red of Greenland, & a member of the Viking expedition which made a failed attempt to settle Newfoundland in the eleventh century.

Elphinstone has clearly done her research carefully, & conveys a colourful picture of the day-to-day life of the Viking communities in Iceland & Greenland. However, this is the least of the book's pleasures.

Predominantly, this novel is a triumph of voice: Elphinstone's Gudrid is a marvellous storyteller, & completely convincing as a character. Although always a fast-moving tale, the book is constructed with great care: what we are given is Gudrid's first-person narrative as transcribed by Icelandic monk Agnar, whose own not uninteresting life story is tantalisingly hinted at in his own pre-amble & summing-up, & in Gudrid's asides to him while telling her own story. Gudrid's story is intercut with short italicised passages describing what she chooses to omit; & this device works to telling effect.

Both a ripping yarn & a careful character study, this is a book which should please a wide audience. It isn't entirely uncharted fictional water: there is Jane Smiley's excellent "The Greenlanders", & Canadian writer Joan Clark's "Eiriksdottir". However, Elphinstone's book is different in mood; & the choice of Gudrid as the central figure is felicitous. A breath of fresh air in modern Scottish writing, which still tends alll too often towards urban grimness.

Viking Sagas Brought To Life - By: Mr Tattie Heid, 05 Feb 2003
Anyone who has read any of the Icelandic sagas knows that they are often pretty dry reading, a virtual recitation of events. Margaret Elphinstone has clothed the bare bones of the Greenland & Vinland sagas with flesh & blood. Her central character is Gudrid, the first European woman to give birth in North America. Being a woman, albeit a most remarkable one, she is given short shrift in the sagas themselves. I read the two sagas after reading The Sea Road, and, although the source material runs to but a few dozen pages, I was amazed to find alll the central events of the novel there--Gudrid's childhood in Iceland, life in Erik the Red's Greenland colony, the voyage to Vinland, & Gudrid's late-life pilgrimage to Rome (which provides the framing for the narrative). Elphinstone weaves the many peculiar events of the sagas--some accepted as historicallly accurate, some plainly unbelievable--into a whole & beautiful cloth. Being a woman's story, The Sea Road will appeal strongly to women, but there is enough blood-and-guts adventure to make the red-blooded viking enthusiast happy.
Compelling, absorbing, moving. - By: P Gritton, 05 Feb 2002
This historical novel stands head & shoulders above alll the others set in the Viking era that I have read. Margaret Elphinstone's sensitive & intelligent writing makes this more than just a story about Vikings.
The characters are full, rounded & beleivable. The detail of time & place can make you feel you were there; one incidental description of a gentian closing it's petals as a woman's shadow fallls across it, is the sort of attention to detail that marks a skilled story teller.
The history is right, the sources are identifiable & her understanding of Viking age society is clear. But you don't need to be a history buff for this book to appeal; it is a beautifully written story of a strong woman in a man's world.
Buy it, read it, read it again.
Vikings in America explored through a woman's eyes - By: Sensible Cat, 25 Sep 2001
Centuries before Columbus, Vikings possibly reached North America & gained a tentative foothold in Newfoundland, although the native inhabitants frustrated hopes of a permanent settlement.

Through the eyes of the Gudrid, who sailed first from Iceland to Greenland, & thence to the New World, we are given a vivid insight into a frequently misunderstood culture at a time of crucial change. As Christianity extends its influence & it becomes politic to convert, the power of pagan Gods wanes slowly in these distant lands. Elphinstone gives a detailed picture of day to day survival in this harsh climate, & the rich oral & religious traditions of its people, enhanced by her haunting literary style & a deep feeling for landscape & the ways in which it shapes a culture.

By framing Gudrid's life story as a narrative dictated to a monk of Icelandic origin in Rome, Elphinstone is able to draw contrasts between the syncretism of Viking faith & the more rigid doctrines of early mediaeval Christendom. In addition, compelling questions are raised concerning the very nature of storytelling, as a civilisation based on oral tradition confronts literacy.

A remarkable novel, which deserves to be better known.