Help: Quest for lost Norse book

Subject: RE: Help: Quest for lost Norse book
From: Penny S.
Date: 25 Mar 01 - 05:26 AM

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

Subject: RE: Help: Quest for lost Norse book
From: Penny S.
Date: 25 Mar 01 - 04:56 AM

Sorcha, that looks very interesting - I didn't know about that site, which looks useful all round. I'm tempted to say "Harald Haardraada wrote a book!?".

I'm not sure it is the one, because I remember the title as short, in fact for a long time, I was just looking for "Olaf". When I found it in the library, I was searching for versions of the Odyssey, so I probably wouldn't have picked out that particular title. I'll see if any of those copies are near enough for me to have a look at to check. I'm pretty sure I haven't seen it in any of the catalogues, which is odd.

Thanks for the link, anyway,

Penny

Subject: RE: Help: Quest for lost Norse book
From: Sorcha
Date: 24 Mar 01 - 12:02 PM

This is (should be, let's hope)a search result from Bibliofind using Olaf Tryggvason as a title....... Click. I've no idea if it might be the correct one.

Subject: RE: Help: Quest for lost Norse book
From: Naemanson
Date: 24 Mar 01 - 11:54 AM

If your interest is more than nostalgia, i.e., you are interested in Norse stories, my favorite is The Long Ships by Bengtson.

Similar to Penny's story this is a book from my childhood. It was a library book. For 35 years I have looked for this book in yard sales, flea markets, and used book stores and finally found it last year.

Subject: RE: Help: Quest for lost Norse book
From: mousethief
Date: 24 Mar 01 - 11:03 AM

Penny: I wish you good luck with this one!

There's a book I remember from my own childhood which I am tempted to think might be a figment of my imagination. I think the title was "Traveling to Tripoli" and it was about a bunch of toys that were unwanted by their former children owners, that sneak off to Tripoli, because one of them heard that the children there are poor and would be happy to have any toys at all to love. As they go along more and more toys join the throng, until they finally reach Tripoli and all are "adopted" and loved by their new child-owners. I remember reading it at elementary school, indeed, going to the younger classes and reading it to them. But any attempt to find the thing so far has been unfruitful.

So I know how you feel, and wish you best of luck!

Alex

Subject: RE: Help: Quest for lost Norse book
From: Naemanson
Date: 24 Mar 01 - 09:13 AM

This sounds great. I hope you can find it and that the source has two copies!

Subject: Quest for lost Norse book
From: Penny S.
Date: 24 Mar 01 - 06:34 AM

I have held back from this, though someone out there may be able to help (hope so) because it is NOT MUSIC. But I am now getting to the end of options.

When I was 11-ish, I read a storybook which retold the saga of Olaf Tryggvason. It was satisfyingly fat, about two inches, probably octavo, and rebound in a boring library binding. Naturally, I cannot remember the author. It was a book which had been about what seemed a long time, then, and though written for children, was not written as a saga for the little ones. Olaf's mistress was dealt with, for instance.

It had wonderful black and white prints, which might have influenced Tolkein's Hobbit pictures - I remember a view down between the kings' burial mounds and tall pines to the temple at Uppsala, and a scene outside a small dwelling, where Olaf is sitting on a bench, and his mistress appears out of the forest. her name, I think, was something elvy, Alf.. something, and the suggestion was made that she was sent by such people to destroy what he was doing in his rule.

I want to read it again - it has disappeared from Folkestone and Kent library records. it is not in the Bodleian, or the American libraries. Something appears in the British library catalogue, published by the World's Work in 1913, but it seems to have been conflated with a small children's book published in 1964. It is not a book by Robert Leighton, called "Olaf the Glorious" which is a boy's own piece, without subtlety in personal relationships. Sometimes I wonder whether I invented it, but I don't hink my subconscious is up to it.

Can anyone help? Liz?