The Story of Rolf a Viking Adventure Review
The Story of Rolf & the Viking Bow
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This is my to the lowest degree favorite Allen French book I've read. While the story and characters were very intriguing, I found myself not liking the fantasy elements. Different French's other story'due south, this book strays away from reality by featuring a ghost. It was a pretty creepy scene to, which disturbed me. As well there is an old lady who sometimes predicts the future. Though it could just be seen every bit expert guessing, she nevertheless bugged me. Overall, an enjoyable read, simply I will almost likely be skipping the ghost scene next time.
Simply despite the negative elements, I did bask the story. Rolf was a male child of corking integrity, and I loved seeing him stand up by his convictions.
I loved the ending. Fifty-fifty though I didn't hold with Rolf's method of dealing with his neighbor, he still handled it with grace.
Cannot recommend this highly enough. Staggeringly good.
Very well done, I thought a very unusual and unexpected plot line. Historical fiction at its best. Loved this quote from author annotation at Allen French in the afterward: "If a human being takes his work seriously, and himself not besides seriously, he has a practiced chance of doing something worth while."
Finished this story with a tear in my throat and a lump in my eye. Even better than I retrieve. Full review to come up!
A tale of betrayal, friendship, and redemption set in 1000 AD Republic of iceland. We wrapped upwards our study of history this year with the vikings. We all enjoyed this book, both the librivox reading and the bodily book.
A ripping story, well-written with a satisfying catastrophe.
The story is 1 set in Christian Iceland, in the years when still the pagan Vikings were a living retentivity, and life was much the aforementioned, save for the new faith. And it is this fourth dimension 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, merely in the sense of wanting to testify one of the interesting possibilities this circumstance created. Viking society was a lodge of laws, and considering of that it was litigious. Wherever in that location is the rule of law, at that place 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 information technology worked: how they chosen 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 laurels and law not but dominated their disputes but were likewise used to prolong them, making the cycle savage and in the end countless and dispiriting. Christianity ended the Viking historic period, and some of what is was—its celebrity and greatness—is admirably lamented in Beowulf. There is another saga retelling that laments the passing of the Vikings, merely from a infidel signal 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 laurels, shame and the rule of constabulary their proper identify in a organization 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. Information technology isn't about drama yous picture as a result of voluptuous description as much as it is near bare suggestions of feelings and crucial action, for which the terse fashion in which Sagas are told is admirably suited. It is minimal and Scandinavian, and for that affair Hebrew besides. The situations are dramatic enough, merely French doesn't really play the drama of atmosphere up as he might. Fifty-fifty the scene in a barrow with a ghost is not at all pilus-raising. What he focuses on are states of mind, motives and purposes, bits of dialogue. We're non used to that in a society of visual story telling. Merely I call back it is still compelling if your tastes can extend beyond what the movie theater oversupply wait. Information technology'southward a fleck more like curt verse—on the small calibration 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 habiliment. And what an entreatment to the moral imagination! I do not think, once you sympathize what he's doing, and how (not that it isn't obvious, it's just some people don't approximate books every bit literary artifacts all the time, oddly), that anybody could error him. French is much to be praised here for having produced a satisfying, interesting, and simply tale.
Rolf, son of Hiarandi the Unlucky, is a grapheme who exemplifies the result of Christ'south teachings upon the Icelandic people during their heroic age. The book is prepare 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 burn down on a unsafe betoken of his land, thereby challenging the accepted custom which places lucrative save at higher price than the saving of life. Still, the life that is saved that night, in the terminate, causes his own expiry and the unjust outlawing of his son Rolf. Rolf's response to this injustice creates a suspenseful, thought-provoking tale difficult to put downwardly. Candace read x/08--splendid, simply harder read since information technology was written in the early on 1900's.
I'm glad to see that I'm not the but one who loved (and was awed past) this story. I honestly never idea a whole lot of people read or remember it!
When I read it for the outset time, I was so in awe of the ability of the story's crucial lesson interwoven throughout. Here, in this work of historical fiction set in 1000s Republic of iceland, you come across and so clearly what havoc greed, unforgiveness, and hatred can wreak in the lives of others - equally well every bit how forgiveness and returning good for evil can practise simply the contrary.
If you are a lover of old-fashioned, good stories like Rolf and the Viking'due south Bow, I'd highly recommend this i to you. Trust me, you won't regret it. It will move you lot and cause y'all to want to cheer at the top of your lungs. And peradventure, if you lot're the more easily moved person, y'all had better have handy with you some tissues for when you lot read toward the end!
This was fun. Honestly amend than I idea it would be. Action & adventure, Icelanders, Vikings & Scots, long summers & common cold dark winters, the brave young & wise anile, a new religion & ghostly legends, assuming virtue & moral voids, laws & outlaws, swords & bows & cliffs & boats & shipwrecks & honor & family unit & forgiveness all lend to a wild coming of age tale nearly a male child named Rolf. The linguistic communication does take some getting used to. No one says annihilation they "quoth", and no ane strikes simply they do "smote," so the story is bang-up for the 10+ historic period grouping but some readers will likely need some back up until they go into the language equally the story goes on. Recommend!
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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/604065.The_Story_of_Rolf_the_Viking_Bow
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