Fate's Weave

Book excerpt: In the hazy history of the Old Norse… When Gisle and Geir come back from a day’s hunting, they find their farm devastated, their parents and farmhands killed, and the women of the farm gone, including their sisters Gunn and Ginna. Since their older brother Olof is trading goods in Friesland, they take shelter with their uncle Fridbjörn and his wife Holmdis, the skillful seer. No one travels through the dark night – no one but Nattfari. One dull autumn evening he knocks on the door and asks for lodging. Then he makes predictions about friends and kin, astray and in foreign lands. He tells of Olof and Gangulf in Friesland, he foretells the fate of the sisters on Zealand, and he warns of misfortune and death. Fate’s Weave is a historical adventure novel, a story of life and death far back in time, in the historical haze of Europe’s migration era. Meet the depressed berserker, Gangulf; sisters Gunn and Ginna, who sleep with three kings before winter turns to spring; the Anglo-Saxons Hewald and Hewald, who preach the word of God to Frisians and other heathens; Styrbjörn and Hreppir, who find each other in Gypeswic’s mud; the old edda Crust, decrepit but with a mind of steel, thrusting her spear at warriors; as well as Finnvid, the Finnveding who executes a splendid Yule blót at Bolmsö, thus overthrowing the invasive king Ingvald. Meet Harald and Vigr, Eirbjorg and her daughters, King Erik in Uppsala, and, last but not least, Nattfari. The Nattfari who travels far and wide and who is called by many names... Meet them and many more, whose threads of fate run together and form a strange and mighty weave.