Well, there are copies in the British Library and the Bodleian, and more information, so I can get a look at it, and one of those copies is near enough if it is the one. I'm tempted by the woodcuts, definitely, and being a translation of a Norwegian version, by a woman author fits the sort of feel I'd been getting by comparison with other books. English retellings seem to stick very close to originals, being a bit spare in style, without approaching motivations and feelings of characters. For a while, I thought it might have been American (by comparison with Howard Pyle), until I came across a book of religious stories translated from Swedish, with similar illustrations, which had a similar effect. The publishers of that had long gone. The more I think about it, the more likely this one seems, despite the title.

I hadn't spotted it because I'd been searching with the word story in the title, and it didn't show up in the results.

Meanwhile, how about this for a title?

"Olaf the Dane; or, the Curse of Columbkille. A supernatural story." by a John Denvir, published in Dublin in 1908. Doesn't that look like a good read?

Olaf the Dane; or, the Curse of Columbkille. A supernatural story. Naemansson, it's not just nostaglia - it comes across in memory as likely to reward rereading, and unusual in its approach - but I will keep an eye out for the Long Ships.

Thanks all - has anyone ever seen it?

Penny