Ragnvald is in line for an inheritance, but he’s predictably betrayed as petty land-dukes squabble over land, unaware that a single great warlord will rise to make a hash of their designs.
Ragnvald and Svanhild are the book’s nominal protagonists the real drama exists in witnessing how the Northmen’s affairs fall into Game of Thrones-like territory. The Half-Drowned King is the story of Ragnvald of Maer, sworn man of Norway’s first king Fairhair Harald-who, it turns out, is the author’s distant relative. Yet deep truths about human nature are revealed in how we treat the annals of our ancestors. The most valuable ships today are giant metal craft filled with dour metal rectangles, so it’s strange that pirates and scavengers’ exploits should take the prize in the collective imagination. Hartsuyker is on sure ground when she writes about Ragnvald’s world, less so when speculating about her puppets’ motivations. The Eysteinssons are not so much characters as pulsating packages of Norse names or receptacles for received facts about Northern life. His sister Svanhild has so much more sense, and she seems to be the wisest member of the troubled Eysteinsson family.
The most remarkable fact about Linnea Hartsuyker’s The Half-Drowned King is that Ragnvald, a ninth century Scandinavian warrior, is not stabbed multiple times for his mistakes.
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