Northlanders, Book Three

Blood in the Snow
written by Brian Wood
art by Dean Ormston (#9-10), Vasilis Lolos (#17), Danijel Zezelj (#18-19) and Davide Gianfelice (#20)

The third collection in Brian Wood's stellar series Northlanders assembles Wood's shorter and stand-alone episodes early in its run.  The first, "Lindesfarne," narrates the famous raid on the rich Saxon monastery in 793 A.D. by Norse pillagers from the perspective of a young boy Edwin, raised by a brutal and zealous father in the shadow of the rich monastery.  In his mind, factions of gods—his father's weak, distant, joyless Jehovah and his dead mother's wild, terrible Germanic pantheon—battle for followers and power.  Abused by his father, whose religious fervor cultivated by monks after the untimely death of his mother in childbirth he blames for that abuse, Edwin turns to Woden and his followers, the viking invaders, who he thinks have arrived to save him, an answer to his prayer to the mighty god.  Edwin directs the Norsemen to the oppressive monastery and, after the massacre which orphans him, wins a place among the invaders by wounding their leader in single combat to first blood.  But years later, leader of his own raiding parties and faithful to his heathen gods, he remains a Saxon outcast among his Norse peers, still a victim of the ruling and religious factions which wrecked his childhood.

In "The Shield Maidens," three women—Grettr, Thyra, and Lif—living in the ninth-century Danelaw flee from Saxon invaders seeking to reclaim land north of Humber River.  Having fled their villaige with Thyra's husband's hoard, they make their stand in an abandoned Roman fort near the tide plain against a siege of Saxon warriors.  The women's perspective is welcome here.  Though women had played key roles in earlier storyarcs, they were fundamentally about men.  The strength of the Norse women as well as their vulnerabilities remain foreign to the men.  The threat of rape and slavery as well as death is unknown to their abusers, and their ingenuity at escape is unexpected.  "They were in a full panic, and if this is what viking was like, I forgave my husband his long absences" (Blood in the Snow, "The Shield Maidens": 109 [19: 11]).  Its ending is also a welcome respite from violence.  Having weathered the onslaught and improbably escaped their Saxon attackers, the three women reconvene in triumph and grateful for the mercy of their fates.

"The Viking Art of Single Combat" is a one-shot that narrates a duel between champions Snorri the Black and Egil Sleggja, a practice abstracted from centuries of custom and distilled into a single narrative.  Though each fighter receives characterization—Snorri, the crude bastard son of the lord with only legitimate daughters, and Egil, second son to the lord, once a leader but now dim and brain-damaged from an arrow to the head—this episode's interested in the anthropology of the duel, the archaeology of its weaponry, and the psychology of a culture of violence.  It's refreshingly non-judgmental about any of it.  There's a bleakness and a futility to the feuding cycle, but there's a conscious recognition of its place in a hard world, an unfair one, one that favors Loki over Thor.  "Little consolation to the conquered, but the gods only made one Earth.  Probably to laugh their asses off while we fight over it.  So be it" (Blood in the Snow, "The Viking Art of Single Combat": 67 [17: 15]).  Quite honestly, "The Viking Art of Single Combat" may be one of Northlanders' quirkier issues, but it's also one of its finest.

Blood in the Snow's other one-shot, "Sven the Immortal," revisits characters from Northlanders' first story-arc Sven the Returned.  Sven, now an old man, an exile living with his wife Enna and their two children on Faroe, is the subject of famous songs sung about his return to Orkney, his vengeance against his abusive, usurping uncle, and his fight against the Saxons.  As such, he is a target for fame-mongers, foolish young men seeking to aggrandize their own reputations by killing a legend.  The men find him far fiercer than they anticipated.  They lose a "holmgang" and kidnap Enna to force his hand in the face of their humiliation.  But these men never return home; none survive.  It's a fine conclusion to a collection that gives a satisfying story to one of Northlanders' most charismatic figures.

Collects Northlanders #9-10, 17-20:  "Lindesfarne" Parts 1 and 2, "The Viking Art of Single Combat," "The Shield Maidens" Parts 1 and 2, and "Sven the Immortal"

ISBN:  978-1401226206