With Raven Wine
The final novel of Gill’s Midwinter Dragon series begins not in Orkney, where its characters were born, but in Jórsalaheim, then on to Byzantium’s capital Constantinople, called Mikligard. The civilizations and challenges of these exotic locations are a fit setting for the daring Vikings and the verses of their warrior-poet Skarfr Kristinsson. He’s composing the saga of the jarl Rognvald as they go, and his verses pepper the text, along with poems of other skalds as chapter epigraphs. The 12th-century Norsemen are free to worship their gods; they need only to add the White Christ to them. Skarfr speaks his verses in the Nordic tradition, to be passed on to other skalds. Then he meets the Byzantine Princess Anna, who has written her father’s saga in the Greek manner and says in time he will write down his as well. Skarfr disagrees, in part because many verses are composed spontaneously.
Besides the escapades and clashes of the colorful Norsemen is a cast of remarkable women beginning with Skarfr’s wife Hlif, trader and at times a völva with supernatural powers. Throughout the series women demonstrated their freedom, creativity, and courage, as they do here. This series deserves to be read in its entirety, a saga itself, well-researched, moving, and often tense. But on its own, With Raven Wine is still a lively read with unforgettable characters during a hazardous era. In the end, Skarfr and Hlif return to Orkneyjar, but this indomitable pair is drawn toward Snaeland, or Iceland—a significant destination (though Gill doesn’t explain), where the Orkneyinga Saga was written in Old Norse by an anonymous author in the late 12th century and collected along with other skaldic tales in 13th-century Iceland. We can imagine ‘anonymous’ in this case was Skarfr Kristensson.
