Guest Review: The Outlaw Viking by Sandra Hill

Once again Ms Hill has gifted her reading public with a fascinating look at the Viking culture of the 10th century, a culture that has been widely misunderstood by most of us, probably due to a variety of influences not the least of which is poorly researched fiction about the Dark Ages or historians who have allowed their personal bias to pick and choose only those aspects that are most negative.  To be truthful, there isn’t a whole lot about the Dark Ages that we contemporary citizens of the world would find appealing, certainly not their attitudes toward male/female relationships, marriage as a trade agreement or as a power grab, and certainly not the fluctuating political climate that was so dangerous for individuals, families, villages and larger communities.  War was the order of the day, whether it be provincial, village against village, or family against family.  Whole communities were wiped out, people whose paths had never crossed that of the aggressors, but whose affiliation with a particular noble family or aristocrat automatically made them the enemy.  Ms Hill has taken all these facets of life in what is now known as the British Isles and Scandinavia and woven a literary tapestry that will keep historical romance lovers interested from the first paragraph.  This is the second of a series of novels about the Vikings, all of which can be read as stand alone reads, but all are connected through family history or locality even though some are set in a context that is a number of years removed from the previous stories.

Just as Ruby Jordan was a modern woman transported back in time, so her daughter also found herself in ancient England just after a huge battle between those loyal to the Saxons and those loyal to the Vikings who had held power in what was known as Northumbria.  Thoraine Jordan, Ruby’s daughter, was a trained emergency medicine doctor and whose skills were urgently needed for those wounded she found around her.  “Rain” Jordan was as mystified about her time travel experience as was her mother initially, but as events unfolded and as Rain met various individuals whose names were known to her through her mother’s memories, she began to realize that all her mother’s musings were not just fantasies but involved real people who had lived a thousand years before.  In contemporary time it had been 30 years since Ruby returned to her American home, pregnant with her Norse husband’s child ( and Thork was the spitting image of Ruby’s American husband, Jack Jordan), but only 12 years had elapsed since Ruby “disappeared.”  Now Rain has returned to find her “half-brother” wounded along with one of his closest friends, a man whose wife and baby son had been destroyed by gang-rape and murder by the Saxons and who had made revenge the cause celebre of his life.

Like all really good historical fiction, this is a complicated book and requires that readers put their minds into the reading task as well as a very active imagination.  One must also have some appreciation for this time period as the various cultural and national groups appear and interact, all of whom eventually merged into the peoples of Great Britain.  Much of Ms Hill’s research is based on the archeological dig that begn in the 90’s in York and which is available to the viewing public today.  The Vikings were indeed a war-like people, but so was everyone else.  It was the way of the times, with provincial rulers guarding their holdings, more powerful rulers engulfing smaller fiefdoms, and so forth.  It was also a time, Rain found, that was greatly in need of her skills and knowledge.  Medical treatment consisted of herbal treatments and “bleeding” by means of leeches or literally draining blood from the patient, surgery performed with crude instruments and no understanding of cleanliness or sterile conditions.  (Most women are unaware that obstetricians didn’t even wash their hands between deliveries until late in the 19th century, and the man who pioneered this level of cleanliness was drummed out of the medical community as being unstable and mentally ill.)  

But at its core, this is a love story between Rain and that revenge-filled friend of her half-brother.  Selik had always been the clown of the friendship circle–a man who could come back with the humorous or ribald crack, the bit of a funny story, or a tease that would have everyone chuckling.  No more.  Now he was a dark and dangerous man who considers Rain a prisoner who can help save his companions and fellow soldiers, but who is far more dangerous to the emotional walls of stone he has built around his heart.  She was a constant challenge to him, to his friends, to the family of his dead wife and son, to almost everyone with whom she came in contact.  And she never failed to keep him riled up with her efforts to help people, to find ways of bringing her far more advanced medical knowledge to bear especially knowing that the physicians of the time would think her treatments to be “dark magic.”  Medicine was the property of the Church, and even though most people had “accepted” Christian baptism, the Norse gods were still widely worshipped and invoked.  No deity was invoked by Selik, though.  He didn’t believe in God or gods, or love, or trust, or anything else.  He held close a very small group of loyal warriors, his dead wife’s family, and not many others–certainly not Rain.  So any reader must be prepared to encounter some very thorny exchanges between these two as somehow they travel life paths that keep on bringing them together, keep on forcing them to face each other and their respective values and cultural differences, and where they are forced to consider a future together.

I found this novel fascinating because I have always really loved stories set in the context of the Dark Ages, and mostly because I am really an Anglophile at heart and love the stories that bring  British history alive.  I also appreciate the Viking history in a new way, having toured the Viking museum in York and realized that much of what we now believe about those ancient peoples is erroneous.  This novel is filled with colorful characters who each stand out in their own way, whose personalities are unique and whose involvement in each other’s lives is both poignant and humorous.  The certainty of war hangs over everyone’s heads and the possibility that changing political loyalties can endanger life and limb is never far from anyone’s daily awareness.  These kinds of tensions make relationships far more immediate and the sexual tension far more evident.  No one ever knew if they would life to see another day.  And it is a testimony to the stalwart human spirit of many of those ancient communities that they forged on in spite of those kinds of negative possibilities.

I have been a Sandra Hill fan for some time now and while it has been a while before beginning this series since I read a Viking-based story, these novels have certainly captured my interest in a very big way.  I found I couldn’t put them down once I began one.  Like all the books in this series, this novel was originally released a number of years ago and is now being re-released by Avon Books.  I am so glad to have discovered them now as the author has updated some of the references and re-polished the book as a whole.  And, in her own words, she was attempting to ” . . . tug at [our] heartstrings with [her] tormented hero Selik,”  and get us to ” . . . laugh at the cluelessness of men through the ages.”  As far as my reading experience goes, she succeeded in spades.  I think historical romance fiction readers will really like this one.

I give it a rating of 4 out of 5.

You can read more from Judith at Dr J’s Book Place.

This book is available from Avon. You can buy it here or here in e-format.