Praise for Lars Walker’s Novels

It is refreshing to read popular fantasy built on a foundation of solid research and love of the medieval Icelandic sagas. . . . Amazing. . . . This reader welcomes more fiction from Walker’s pen.

Dale Nelson, Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity

Action, excitement, and the sheer fun that reading can be. . . . Deeply, profoundly Christian . . . but in a bold, battling way.

Gene Edward Veith, Author, The Spirituality of the Cross

Not for spiritual sissies. . . . Rowdy action and a realistic look at the human and spiritual costs of religious and cultural conversion.

Rita Elkins, Florida Today

West Oversea is a gripping Viking saga. Lars Walker understands the unique Norse mindset at the time of the Vikings’ conver-sion to Christianity, and he tells a tale of seafaring adventure and exploration of new worlds that will keep you on the edge of your chair – and make you think.

Dr. John A. Eidsmoe, Colonel, Alabama State Defense ForcePastor, Assn. of Free Lutheran Congregations

Constitutional Law ProfessorAuthor, Christianity and the Constitution

I cannot give a high enough recommendation to Lars Walker’s Norse saga. You will not be disappointed. You will be blessed.

Hunter Baker, writing in The American Spectator onlineAuthor, The End of Secularism

In this Erling Skjalgsson saga as told by his faithful companion, Father Aillil, Walker takes us from Norway, to Iceland, to America, to Greenland and back. This book is not only a delightful tale of adventure and bravery, but there is also an undercurrent of com-mentary on contemporary culture and values.

Rev. Paul T. McCain, Publisher, Exec. Dir.,Editorial Division, Concordia Publishing House

Ventura, California2009

Welcome to Nordskog Publishing’s inaugural fiction book in a new series of ! As our on-

going series of “meaty, tasty, and easily digestible theological offerings” continues with excellence, we have pride and joy in now presenting, under the imprint , fiction books that are exciting, thrilling, enjoyable, and fun, and which ring out the admonition of the Apostle Paul, in his epistle, to think on those things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous and praiseworthy. . . . “And if you do, the God of peace shall be with you” (Philippians 4:8-9).

West Oversea is an ideal book to begin our new series. Lars Walker’s fiction story is based upon true, historical facts at the turn of the second millennium. Many of the novel’s characters are based upon real Vikings, men who were courageous and indeed noble. This story is about my paternal ancestors, the Vikings, during the time of much of Norway’s conversion to Christianity, and it is ideal for our initial fiction offering.

My great grandparents and grandfather, Andrae (Arne) Nordskog, immigrated from Norway to America (New York)

Publisher’s Foreword

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in the late nineteenth century. As a boy, I grew up in our home listening to the famous Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg’s (1843-1907) Piano Concerto in A minor (la mineur-a-Moll), “The Song of Norway,” and I am listening to it now, even as I write this Foreword. My Italian mother, Elinor, used to say regarding my dad, Bob, “I’ve taken a liking to a Viking.” My dad used to relate the old story of how “10,000 Swedes were chased through the weeds by one Norwegian.”

American historian and my good friend Dr. Marshall Foster (founder-president of The World History Institute) gives us some quick snapshots of the Norwegians - who were traders as well as warriors - in the latter years of the first millennium after Christ’s resurrection.

Guthrum, the Viking king, took almost all of England by force, but was later defeated in 878 by Alfred the Great (a Chris-tian king of England), who became his godfather and educated him and his leaders in the Christian faith. Erik the Red was a wild Viking who was convicted of murder and exiled first to Iceland and then to Greenland. His son, Leif Eriksson, was sent back to Norway near the end of the tenth century and converted to Christianity. He later returned to Greenland to convert the settlers to Christ, and eventually made a voyage to explore new lands to the west which had previously been seen by other Norsemen. These lands, we now know, were part of North America. Norwegian king Olaf Trygvesson, who died early in the eleventh century, tore down idols in the country and forcibly converted the pagan Norwegians to Christianity.

* * *Lars Walker’s third novel about the Vikings begins in the

year 1001. King Olaf Trygvesson is dead, but his sister’s hus-band, Erling Skjalgsson, carries on his dream of a Christian Norway that preserves its traditional freedoms. Rather than do a dishonorable deed, Erling relinquishes his power and lands.

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He and his household board ships and sail west to find a new life with Leif Eriksson in Greenland.

This voyage, though, will be longer and more dangerous than they ever imagined. It will take them to an unexplored country few Europeans have seen. Demonic forces will pursue them, but the greatest danger of all may be in the dark secret carried by Father Aillil, Erling’s Irish priest. You won’t want to put this book down. Read on!

– Tusen Takk, Gerald Christian Nordskog, Easter, 2009

Gerald Christian Nordskogpublisher

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Chapter 1

I liked Konnall the merchant the moment I met him. For one thing he was an Icelander with an Irish name. For

another I liked his long, dour face that never smiled or spent the least effort to make itself pleasant. When you’re a priest, people are forever pulling their holy faces with you, and I get weary dwelling among the masks.

“Lots of Irish in Iceland,” Konnall said to me as we sat in the light summer evening outside Erling’s booth. We were again at the Gula-Thing, the great regional assembly. People sat all around, on the ground or on stones or log benches, drawn like flies to honey by the promise of one of Erling Skjalgsson’s feeds.

“Not just thralls either,” said Konnall. “Plenty of Irish Norse from Dublin moved west in the old days, before the land filled up. A lot of them had Irish mothers; my own mother’s father came from Donegal. And there was a bit of a woman-dearth at first, so many men took thralls to wife, most of them Irish.”

“That would be why so many Icelanders are skalds, singers of songs,” said I. “’Tis the music in the Irish blood.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Konnall. “I can’t sing a note myself. But I’ll say this – the sweetest human voice I ever heard belonged to an Irishwoman. She was a thrall in Greenland.”

4 Lars Walker

“You’ve been to Greenland? Leif Eriksson’s home?”“Aye, the gable of the world. It’s not an easy voyage, but you

can name your price for meal there.”“What’s it like?”“Like Iceland, but more so. Night all day in the winter, day

all night in the summer. You can’t grow much of anything but grass, and the people live on meat and butter and fish for the most part.”

“I’d like to see such a place, if I didn’t have to cross the sea to do it.”

“You’re not a sailor?”“I’ll sail anywhere, so long as I can keep one foot on shore.

I have to travel by ship now and then – I sailed here with Erling, for example. But the shorter the better, if I get my way.”

Konnall began to recite:

“If I had arms like the sun at dawnI’d stretch them o’er the sea.And all I loved and bid farewellI’d draw back home to me.”

“What was that?” I asked.“Just a snatch of a song. I heard it in Greenland, as it hap-

pens.”“Who sang it?”“The thrall girl. The one I spoke of before.”I reached and took him by the shirt. It was an offense to

touch a man so, but I cared not. “What was her name?” I asked.He looked startled. “I don’t recall. She was just a thrall.

She had the sweetest voice that ever came from human throat though.”

“Was her name Maeve?”“It might have been. I think it was.”“What did she look like?”

5West Oversea

“I’m not sure I recall. I didn’t pay a lot of attention. Dark hair, I think.”

“Blue eyes?”“I couldn’t say. Why do you ask?”“My sister’s name was Maeve. She was stolen by Vikings.

She used to sing that song, in a voice to break a man’s heart.”I excused myself and went inside the booth where Erling sat

with his kinsmen and some great folk he meant to woo. I broke in on their talk.

“I’m going to Greenland,” I said.Erling looked at me for the time it took to blink thrice.“That’s very interesting, Father,” he said, “and I’ll be pleased

to hear more about it later on. But just now I’m doing business with these men.”

“Is this the famous Father Aillil?” asked one of the guests, a stout ruffian with a scar under one eye. “The one who went through the iron ordeal and rebuked Olaf Trygvesson to his face?”

“He, or his brother,” said Erling with a smile.“Much of a tale for a man without walnuts.” “This is Gunnar Valbjornsson from Saevereid,” said Erling.“Happy to meet you,” I lied.“May Father Aillil join our talk?” Erling asked the man.“’Tis naught to me,” he answered, with an unwelcoming look,

so I found a place on the bench and joined them straightaway.Gunnar looked at me through the corner of his eye as he said

to Erling, “Svein Forkbeard of Denmark is the most powerful king in the north. He may take England one day.”

“He killed Olaf,” said Erling.“Olaf was very pretty, and he swung a sweet sword. But he

was ever a rash fool and I swore him loyalty only because I was middling sure he wouldn’t last long. I was right.”

“So you’re content to bow to a Danish king?”

6 Lars Walker

“Danish or Norse, what matters it? I’ve never thought of myself as a Norwegian, except when I’m overseas. I’m a Horder; a man of Hordaland. That’s my country. If a king sits in Nidaros, he’s an outlander to me. If I have to have an overlord, and that seems to be the way the world beats nowadays, I’d as soon have one too far off to keep a close eye on me.”

“This is just my point,” said Erling, eyes blazing, clenching a fist. “You want to keep your independence, your rights as a Norseman. I erred in supporting Olaf. I thought we could have a high king and still keep our rights. It doesn’t work. Kings are men. Men are greedy. When you give them some power, they want more. They think it’s God’s will.”

“That’s the fault of the priests,” said Gunnar with a glance my way.

“Harald Finehair had the same thought in his time, and he walked the old paths,” said Erling.

“Be that as may be, kings are there. Svein Forkbeard lives. He sits in the high seat in Denmark and he’s set Erik Haakonsson as jarl over west Norway. I’d like to wish it away and go back to the old days. I’d like to be twenty winters old again, too.”

“Kings are not gods. Jarls are not gods. They rule because men let them. Don’t you see? That’s the marvel of it. All we need do is say no. If all of us say no, there’s nothing Erik or Svein or the Emperor of Constantinople can do to make us fall in line. But I can’t do it alone. I need you and all the others to stand with me.”

“And you’ll lead us?”“Yes.”“Then how are you different from a king or a jarl? Why

should I believe you aren’t full as power-sick as they?”“I call myself hersir, as you do. Not jarl. Not king. A hersir

doesn’t rule beyond his own fences. Anything more he does by leave of his fellows.”

7West Oversea

“So you say.”“So I say. It’s the word of Erling Skjalgsson.”Gunnar took a drink from his horn and wiped his mouth.

“I’ll think about it,” he said.Erling and I got no chance to talk under four eyes that night.

It was a feast like any other, even if most of the feasters sat under the sky, and he had host’s duties. A man earns power in Norway through courage and shrewdness and luck and family ties, but he also earns it by keeping a good table and feasting his friends, and those he’d like for friends, and even his enemies if he can get them. ’Tis a noble thing, seen aright. Erling cared little for wealth in itself. Wealth only gave him the means to feed his followers and friends, and make them rich gifts. Any way of living that teaches a man to value giving over getting must have some virtue in it.

So I wearied of politicking in time (it didn’t take long) and went out into the evening. I’ve never grown used to the Nor-wegian summer twilight. The silver light just lingers like an unwanted guest and, like an unwanted guest, keeps you up when you’d sooner be sleeping. In any case, the booth was full of feasters and my bed was there. Little sleep I was getting at this Thing. I wondered if I could find somebody less well-friended than Erling to take me in, Helge of Klepp, perhaps.

I wore my heavy cloak, for the air was chill, and I had on my priest’s robes, which get drafty. Most days I dressed in shirt and trousers like other men with but my tonsure and the wooden crucifix on my breast to tell my office, but at a Thing, especially this one, Erling wanted every man in his best. The Gula-Thing always begins the first Thursday after Easter, which fell on St. Justin’s day that year – the Year of Our Lord 1001 – so it was but a little past mid-April. From the woods I heard gray thrushes trilling, welcome law-singers sent by God Himself telling us that winter was outlawed awhile. Crusty snow still lay here and there

8 Lars Walker

under the trees that hedged the Thing-stead.This Thing-stead sat on its slope like a cushion on a great,

broken chair. At its foot was the fjord, where scores of long-ships, knarrs and smaller boats rode at their moorings. The mountains at the top were the chair’s back. The pale light bled the bright colors out, making all gray and black, shaded in green and blue.

“Father Aillil?” said a voice.I turned to see a tall old man approaching me. He was lean

and richly dressed in a gray cloak and a blue cap.“I am that animal,” said I.“I was in Erling’s booth when you came in earlier. Is it true

you mean to sail to Greenland?”“That’s my intent. I’ve made no arrangements.”“But you mean to go.”“If I don’t I’ll go mad and jump in the sea, like a lemming.”“Then will you do me a service and earn my friendship?”“Whose friendship is that, if I may ask?”“Pardon me, I forgot to say. I am Oddvin Oddleifsson, of

Onarheim on Tysness Island. I’m the chief man of my family.”I’d reckoned that anyone invited to Erling’s feast was prob-

ably somebody when he was at home, and his clothing said the same.

“And what good is it a poor priest could do for a great man like yourself?”

From under his cloak he brought a casket, about the size of two fists, shaped like a house. It seemed to be made of ivory and silver.

“Take this to the far-most sea and drown it there,” he said.I looked at the thing without reaching for it. “It looks a fine

piece of work, and costly.”“Costly indeed. It could cost a man his soul. That’s why I’d

be quit of it for good and all.”

9West Oversea

I took a step back. “If that’s the way of it, I’d as soon not. There’s lots of sea about – why not drop it in yourself?”

“That was my thought. But then I knew it must go west oversea. When I saw you tonight, I knew you for the man to take it.”

“How?”“Because I’d seen you take it.”“Are you drunk?”“Of course I’m drunk. I’ve been feasting with Erling. But it’s

not the mead that speaks now.”I sighed. “Well, it’s been a pleasure making your acquaintance.

I’ll just be leaving you –”“Stay! I said I saw you taking the casket. I spoke truth.”“No, you didn’t, friend. Here am I, and there are you with the

object. You’ll notice I’m not taking it. You’ll notice I’m walking away from you.”

“You’ll be back shortly. I’ll wait here.”“Have a nice time, and God bless you.”“You’ll be back after the dead bird bites you.”I hastened away. God spare me from magic and madmen.I nearly ran into three men – two big bullyboys and man in a

hooded cloak the color of dried blood. He turned quickly away as I sidestepped, and I got a glimpse of a reddish beard.

They went by without a word.I hadn’t gone ten more steps when something solid, yet

ticklish, smacked me on the side of the face and I slipped on some sheep berries and fell on my back (the landowner used the Thing-stead as a meadow).

I sat up and saw a dead raven lying beside me. There was shouting and the sound of feet running off.

“North-under with those boys!” said a voice. A burly man approached me. “Forgive us Father, it was my sons having a lark. They killed a raven and were playing catch with it. You walked

10 Lars Walker

straight between them, I’m afraid. I’d told them to take their game someplace where it wouldn’t bother folks.”

“’Tis no matter,” said I, getting up and putting my hand to my cheek. I felt something wet. It was red on my hand. I took it for the raven’s blood.

“Begging your pardon, Father, but you’re cut a bit. You must have caught the bird’s beak.” The man tore a strip of linen from his undershirt for me to hold against it. “Good luck for you it didn’t catch you in the eye.”

I thanked the man, who apologized again, and turned and went back to Oddvin Oddleifsson.

“How’d you do that?” I asked. “Are you some kind of war-lock?”

“I didn’t make it happen,” he said. His bush-browed eyes were sad. “I but saw it.”

“How can that be?”“’Tis the casket. Or rather, ’tis what’s in it.”“And what’s in it?”“There are rocks here that look sittable. Let’s rest and I’ll

tell you all.”We sat on some large, rounded rocks and he said, “Do you

know the tale of how Odin got his wisdom?”“I care little for your Norse-god stories. We’ve better ones

in Ireland.”“The tale goes that Odin went to the well of Mimir the giant

to get a drink of the water of wisdom.”“And?”“He got his drink. It gave him the gift to see the future. But

he had to pay a price.”“And this price was . . . .”“One of his eyes. He plucked it out with his own fingers, and

it fell in the water and looked back up at him.”“And what has this to do with you and your casket?”

11West Oversea

“Odin was not always a god. There was a time when he was a man; a man with a real body. Real hands. Real feet. Real eyes.”

“Yes?”“I’m still learning about Christianity. But I’ve marked that

every church has a piece of a saint’s body.”“A relic, yes.”“Heathens have relics, too.”I recoiled. “Are you saying this is –”“The Eye of Odin.”“And this knowledge of things to come –”“The eye rested in the well of wisdom many generations. A

bold man found it and stole it. It passed from hand to hand over the years, until it came to my family. I had it from my father. I used it for my own purposes, as he did; but, to speak truth, it always frightened me, and I misliked the dreams it gave me. Now that I’m a Christian, I’d be rid of it.”

“If what you say is true, this must be a valuable thing to have.”

“I’ve made much profit from it. But it’s cost me, too.”“Can it tell you anything you wish to know?”“No. It tells me only what it chooses. Can an eye think; have

intentions? I don’t know why it tells me some things and not others.”

“Does it foretell good things or evil? Or both?”“Both. Sometimes in a dream, sometimes in a waking vision,

which is a part of what I fear.”“What do you fear?”“I fear it will tell me of my own death. Can you imagine

lying in bed, fighting off sleep, worried that you’ll dream your death?”

I shivered head to foot. “And you wish me to take it?”“A Christian priest is the perfect choice. Your Christ-magic

will protect you from –”

12 Lars Walker

“I have no magic!” I said. “We don’t work that way.”“Are you saying the White Christ is helpless against the old

magic?”“Not at all –”“Then what do you fear?”“See here,” said I. “A thing like this should be destroyed. It

should be burned in fire, or smashed with stones.”“Don’t you think I’ve tried? This thing will not burn, even

in a forge. We’ve rolled great boulders over it without making a dent. You can’t destroy it. It’s best taken away.”

I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I’ve had concourse enough with magic. I’ve sworn off dealing with it. Find another priest. Find another way.”

“You will take it, Father. I’ve seen you do it.”“Have you not heard, man? The Devil is a liar. He’s lied to

you in this.”I left him then, chock-full of my own virtue. The feast at

Erling’s had broken up at last. I got a few heartbeats of sleep.

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About the Author

Lars Walker is a native of Kenyon, Minnesota, and lives in Minneapolis. He has worked as a crabmeat

packer in Alaska, a radio announcer, a church secretary and an administrative assistant, and is presently librarian and bookstore manager for the schools of the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations in Plymouth, Minnesota.

He is the author of four previously published novels, and is the editor of the journal of the Georg Sverdrup Society. Walker says, “I never believed that God gave me whatever gifts I have in order to entertain fellow Christians. I want to confront the world with the claims of Jesus Christ.”

His Website address is www.larswalker.com. He blogs at www.brandywinebooks.net.