All the Horses of Iceland

"Every horse in Iceland, like every person, has ancestors who sailed here in a ship...their sturdy kin can be seen...working around farms and fjords...[these] little horses of the North, strong as oxen...". In the ninth century, in the city of Helmgard, Norse trader, Eyvind of Eyri, approached a "sub......more

This slim novel is a picaresque reimagining of events in the ninth century, fusing history and legend. The prose has a lilt and cadence that gives the narrative the aura of a fable. The core of the novel, though, is a chronicle of a time when Christianity was intersecting with pagan religions while......more

Enjoyed the way it captured the language of the sagas and similar medieval writing. Stoic and stilted in the best possible way. A couple of times I felt it got a bit bogged down with what I'm assuming was the author trying to justify her timeline or some minutiae of the steppe cultures. I just wasn't......more