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Summary and Reviews of The Thrall's Tale by Judith Lindbergh

The Thrall's Tale by Judith Lindbergh

The Thrall's Tale

by Judith Lindbergh
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  • First Published:
  • Jan 19, 2006, 464 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Dec 2006, 464 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Set in Viking Greenland in AD 985, this dramatic historical novel focuses on the intertwined lives of three women straddling the pagan past and Christian future

Katla is a slave and daughter of a Christian woman captured in a Viking raid on Irish shores. Setting sail from Iceland with her master's household, she heads toward the distant promise of a new homestead in Greenland. Also on the ship is Thorbjorg the Seeress, a much maligned and persecuted healer and prophetess who is ever faithful to the call of her patron god, Odin.

Upon first arriving in Greenland, Katla is brutally raped by her master's son, Torvard. The child of this union is Bibrau: taciturn, reclusive, infused with the savagery of her conception and suspected by many to be a changeling. But the seeress Thorbjorg, following a vision from her god, takes Bibrau as her apprentice. The young girl becomes an adept at healing and Norse magic, but her bitterness perverts the wisdom Thorbjorg gives. As her power grows, Bibrau twists it to good or evil at her whim, inflicting her will on Thorbjorg's household, her mother and the tight-knit Greenland community.

The Thrall's Tale is a chronicle of love, hatred and revenge at a turning point in history when Christianity first penetrates the pagan Viking sphere. The schisms, alliances and sacrifices that result reflect the pain of a dying culture and the birth of a different world.

Excerpt
The Thrall's Tale

Einar owns me, the runes at my collarbone speak from the carved stone, smooth with wear. The amulet belonged to another before me, another thrall whose name is lost. They don't remember even how she died, only that she did about the time that I was born.

At my birth I was named for the fire burning beneath the mountain's ice, "Katla," and the string was tied, and so I have ever worn it. I have always been a slave.

Then why the unfamiliar sorrow that I am leaving the only land I've ever known, this land of my bondage? Yet I gaze about me almost mournfully as my master, Einar, stands upon the shore, tall among the circle of chieftains, setting the last of the plans before we see this place no more. The only one taller is Eirik Raude himself, his flaming head bright beside the others' mostly gray. It is he who planned this voyage to the great land to the west, beyond the open sea.

Serving at my master's banquet table two years ago at Yule, I heard ...

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!
INTRODUCTION

At the end of the tenth century, a Viking adventurer called Eirik the Red set sail for Greenland with twenty-five ships of Norse colonists. Eirik had already explored Greenland on a previous voyage, and he named the vast glacier-bound island Greenland to make it sound more inviting. Here, he claimed, was the ideal place for a Norse colony—fertile, clement in climate, empty of human inhabitants. Hundreds heeded his word and sailed with him. The crossing was stormy and many died in shipwrecks, but eventually fourteen Norse ships reached the rugged coast of Greenland. With Eirik as their leader, the settlers founded two colonies that flourished for several hundred years in this harsh northern environment.

In her first ...
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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

BookBrowse

One of the most notable aspects of The Thrall's Tale is the language used. It is as if Lindbergh has scraped away the Latin influences on the English language leaving behind the archaic syntax and vocabulary of the older Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse roots. The result is a moody, dark writing style, positively reeking with atmosphere and foreboding that, once one is used to it, evokes the bleak landscape and tough people to a tee...continued

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(Reviewed by BookBrowse Review Team).

Media Reviews

The Philadelphia Inquirer
The Thrall’s Tale is an epic of the first degree. . . . With a mother vs. daughter theme, murder, revenge, [and] a heartbreaking love affair . . . The Thrall’s Tale defines the genre [of historical fiction].

Library Journal
Inspired by the Norse sagas, this first novel by Lindbergh, who has published poetry and travel and cultural pieces in numerous journals, is thoroughly researched and beautifully executed. Highly recommended.

Booklist - Marta Segal
The Christian-pagan clash and mystical feminism have echoes of The Mists of Avalon, but the lack of a familiar background, landscape, or characters may make it intimidating for those not already interested in the time period.

Kirkus
A long, ill-shaped, bleak but atmospheric take of the Middle Ages.

Publisher's Weekly
Lindbergh's language is occasionally overwrought, but her well-researched and emotional evocations of characters in a time of religious and social upheaval are dramatic and entertaining.

Reader Reviews

Heather

The Thrall's Tale
I was very excited to start this book, and had high hopes for it, but ended up not finishing it.The atmosphere of the book was very dark, and although the plot was semi-interesting, the odd language the author chose to use was very off-putting. I am ...   Read More

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Beyond the Book



Greenland and ther Vikings

Greenland Then: There is evidence of habitation in Greenland up until about 200 AD, but then the islands appear to have been uninhabited until the Norse settlers from Iceland arrived led by Eric The Red. Around 1200 Inuit from North America migrated southwards and appear to have coexisted peacefully with the Norse. However, by the mid 14th century all signs of habitation by descendants of the Norse had disappeared, possibly due to famine brought on by the "Little Ice Age" (starting in the mid-13th century), possibly by other factors explored in chapters 6-8 of Jared Diamond's Collapse.

Greenland Now: Resettlement of Greenland by the Danes began in the 18th century. In 1953 Greenland was made an equal part of the Danish Kingdom and in ...

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Read-Alikes

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