Bergsveinn Birgisson
Translator: Enrique Bernárdez
Editorial: Nordic Books
Original publication year: 2013
How do you approach the impossible task of bringing back a 30th generation ancestor? Is it possible to write the life of someone who lived 1,100 years before you, even though he was the most powerful settler in Iceland? This is the adventure on which the Icelandic writer and poet embarked Bergsveinn Birgissontry to tell the story of Giermundur Black Skin, the Black Viking.
A man who, despite his striking appearance, possibly due to his mother’s Mongolian origin, did not leave much trace in the Medieval poems and sagas written in Iceland. For this reason, Birgisson’s work has consisted of tracing the last trace of her ancestor through the texts written in Iceland, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Scotland and England and then, filling in the absences with common sense, imagination and narrative talent. But he has not done it in a typical novel.
A scientific treatise
The author himself says in the Epilogue of this book thatIn search of the Black Viking “is moved by passion and subdued by knowledge” and that for him, what he has written is more of a “scientific treatise.” That is to say, despite his past as a writer, this time he has refused to simply make credible fiction. Perhaps due to the fact that the protagonist of this story, that Black Viking, be blood of your blood.
And what he has elaborated, therefore, has been a bridge between the essay and the novel. A story, that of Giermundur Black Skin, anchored in what is known, what is told about him and his commercial activities with the nations of the time in the different poems and documents that have reached our days dealing, from those data, to deduce what is not known.
More than 600 footnotes and 20 pages of bibliography complete the reading of this adventure that spans 1,100 years of history.
Therefore, more than a novel, what the reader has in his hands is a conversation with the author of the book. That little by little he is unraveling the journey of that ancestor of his who was born the son of a king far from Iceland and who came to that island to trade in Irish and Scottish slaves with which he made a great fortune.
Thus, after narrating a passage from the life of the Black Viking, Birgisson then goes on to explain where the story comes from, what the sources are, what parts she has invented and why she has decided to complete the story in this way. Footnotes, more than 600and a bibliography as extensive as it is varied (more than 20 pages of main and secondary sources, as well as conversations with historians, or people who could contribute some information to the book) complete the reading of this adventure that goes through as best it can, sometimes groping , with great strides in others, more than a thousand years of the dark ocean of time.
A friendly translation
But a millennium of Icelandic history, of medieval Norse (Old Norse) songs, of Scandinavian traditions and of Icelandic place names can be really arduous if we do not have lwith the help of Enrique Bernárdez. His translation, which is visible in the first pages of the book, allows us to advance in complicated terminology and traditions foreign to our idiosyncrasies.
Furthermore, it has the talent to disappear as the pages progress, as we allow ourselves to be trapped by the charisma of Giermundur Black Skin and getting familiar with the protagonists of the story. So, when you finish reading, those foreign legends are already tremendously familiar to us.
This is an essay that digs its hands into the dark roots of Iceland’s origin and tries to uncover as much truth as possible.
The literary talent emerging from Scandinavia is very high. Beyond the world-famous Swedish crime novel, on this website we have really enjoyed the readings of the latest Nobel Prize winner, the Norwegian Jon Fosseor the original talent of Icelandic Sjon.
In search of the Black Viking It is not an adventure novel, easy to consume and light in character. It is an essay that sinks its hands into the dark roots of Iceland’s origin and tries to unearth the greatest possible truth about a legend as attractive as it is incredible. The story of a Black-Skinned Viking who colonized much of Iceland and made his fortune trading slaves from northern Europe.
