Blood of the North

Product Description Just as Pressfield's GATES OF FIRE and Renault's THE KING MUST DIE breathed life into the world of the ancient Greeks, so Mirsky's BLOOD OF THE NORTH conjures up the rime ice and smoky fires of the Norse world, as those fearless adventurers braved harsh seas and sudden storms to seek new lands. Here is a tale of "first contact" between two very different cultures and of how things really were when Europeans took their first tentative steps across the Atlantic . . . and into history. Firmly grounded in the saga literature of old Iceland, this book resonates with the voice and spirit of a long lost medieval world . . . yet it's also a world which is barely removed from the pioneering tradition of our own American west. From the Author Actually, this book is a re-issue of one I did a couple of years back although it has now been updated and includes an entirely new afterword by me, placing the tale in its historical context. I wrote the book largely because I'd always loved the old Icelandic sagas and wanted to give contemporary readers a taste of their special tone and flavor. Of course, the saga "voice" I used is somewhat archaic and so some folks may be a little put off by the unfamiliar literary conventions (oddly formalistic dialogue, an emphasis on speech and action in the narrative in lieu of heavier reliance on descriptive prose, and a marked lack of the subjective "point of view" which we moderns have come to expect in our books). Still, for those with a yearning for risk-taking, or who just love a little adventure set in a bygone world, it is my fondest hope that this book will be for them. About the Author A product of Brooklyn College with a BA in philosophy, Stuart W. Mirsky, like many writers before him, became enamoured of 12th century Icelandic prose early on, finding both inspiration and a writer's education in these frequently under-appreciated medieval masterpieces. A student, for many years, of the oriental martial arts, he has travelled, written for various publications, and today earns his keep as a municipal bureaucrat in a major northeastern American city. "This is no great drawback," he avers, "as many quite respectable writers, in this and other genres, have paid the bills in this way." Still, he admits he wouldn't mind earning a living from his pen if things should finally go that way. In the summer and fall of 2000, Mirsky served as coordinator for New York City's Viking Sail 2000 event commemorating the first Norse sailings to North America a thousand years ago. In October of that year he was awarded the Leif Ericsson Millennial Silver Medallion for contributions to the cause.