Category: Daily Dispatch

Since we don’t really seem to be having winter this year – a dusting of snow this morning aside – I thought I would generate some cold comfort of my own by reading Frans G. Bengtsson’s “The Long Ships.” And let me tell you, the book is the most fun I’ve read in a long while.

If you’ve seen the 1964 movie, with Richard Widmark, Sidney Poitier, and Russ Tamblyn, I assure you it has very little to do with Bengtsson’s book. Almost nothing, in fact, beyond bringing Vikings into contact with Moorish culture, which happens fairly early in Bengtsson’s narrative. Orm’s adventures take him all over Spain, England, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Kievian Rus. Along the way, he and his men give thanks for their ship-luck, woman-luck, money-luck, fighting-luck, etc. Orm must be the luckiest hypochondriac in the Viking world. But he’s also one of the most rational and fair-minded.

During the course of his adventures, he encounters temperamental chieftains, kings of all dispositions, spirited princesses, intriguing courtiers, Irish acrobats, a Friar Tuck-like priest and another whose irresistibility to women proves to be his undoing. There are oaths, outrages, abductions, bold heists, blood feuds, bawdiness, and much high-spirited derring-do. I imagine Orm’s rambunctious best friend, Toke, as looking and behaving much like Ernest Borgnine in the 1958 film “The Vikings.”

But the tale is in the telling. It would take a lot of skill to capture the flavor of the book in a movie. Though certainly crammed with incident, it is Bengtsson’s sly and wry tone that really makes it, especially as the Vikings begin to assimilate Christianity. Much of the humor derives from the characters’ pragmatic, if at times morally-problematic view of the world. To Bengtsson’s credit, the characters behave like real people, as opposed to the stereotypes often put through the motions in this kind of action-packed narrative – even more impressive as the overall tone tends to echo the laconic spirit of the sagas.

Treachery is to be expected in Orm’s world; what’s remarkable is how much goodness he encounters. His own evolution in outlook seems to mirror larger themes in the novel, as civilization begins to take its first tentative steps from a more impulsive era, marked by greed, lust, and revenge, to glimmers of a wiser, more ethical, humanist age.

In some respects, Bengtsson’s Vikings behave in a more enlightened manner than some of the author’s own neighbors at the time of the novel’s writing, as we see in their dealings with the Sephardic Jew Solomon, who plays an important role in the Spanish segment of the book. There’s no mistaking the Vikings for feminists, though they do respect some of the female characters for their strength, resilience, and wisdom. Others, they fear for their wrath. There aren’t a lot of women among the main characters, but Orm’s love interest, Ylma, is well-realized. Also, after a warrior, the Vikings respect no one more than a poet. Who knew?

The foreword to the paperback edition issued by New York Review Books is by Michael Chabon, who holds the distinction of not only being a Pulitzer Prize winner, for his outstanding novel “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay,” but also a lifelong champion of pulps and comics. I do not pretend to be fluent in Swedish, but the translation by Michael Meyer is flavorful and flows wonderfully.

Bengtsson lived from 1894 to 1954. He himself did quite a bit of translating, producing Swedish-language editions of “Paradise Lost,” “The Song of Roland,” and “Walden.” He was also a poet, an admirer of Chaucer, with a marked fondness for antiquated forms. In addition, he wrote a two-volume biography of Charles XII of Sweden. “The Long Ships,” published in Sweden in two parts (as “Red Orm at Home and on the Western Way,” in 1941, and “Red Orm at Home and on the Eastern Way, in 1945), is his only novel.

Scrolling through the reader reviews I found online, on sites such as Amazon and Goodreads, I find that some did not find it as gripping or peculiarly charming as I did, though the vast majority of reviewers seem to love it. So the book is not for everyone, perhaps. There’s probably a better chance you’ll enjoy it if you’re not the kind of person who reads historical fiction expecting it to reflect 21st century values.

The reviews I really don’t understand are from readers who describe it as “boring.” This is one rip-roaring yarn. Like Alexandre Dumas, only without the courtliness, and with lots and lots of Vikings.

“The Long Ships” receives my enthusiastic endorsement. For 500 pages of picaresque Viking adventure, amusingly rendered, it’s a tough one to beat.