Gunnhild Embarks

"...whitecaps...leaped in foam where they struck the skerries and holms strewn widely about."
-Poul Anderson, Mother Of Kings (New York, 2003), Book One, Chapter IX, p. 44.

"'Fair weather and a following wind,' said Aalf..." (ibid.)

We notice yet another two-word sentence, "Clouds scudded." And a two-word phrase, "Timbers creaked..." What more do we need than a noun and a verb? Maybe two verbs?: "Gulls soared and dipped." Or a longer sentence?: "Cormorants bobbed on the waves or flapped blackly aloft."

"...they...rowed into a wick..." (a what?)

"...to eat with flatbread..." (p. 45)

"Aalf broached a firkin of ale..."

Camping on an island at night, Gunnhild looks at stars, constellations and the "...Winterway stretched like a frosty river..." and asks: "What might this hugeness know of gods, worlds, men, and their dooms?" (p. 45)

Is she glimpsing the cosmos transcending humanity?

"[The ship] heeled in waves that sunrise silvered and ran with a bone in her teeth."

I had no idea what this phrase meant, and have no memory of noticing it on the first reading, but googling provided a precise explanation.

Turning over the page, we find, at the beginning of Chapter X:

"Long before this, one Ulf, son of Bjalfi, dwelt in Sygnafylki in Norway..." (p. 48)

Thus, Anderson launches another narrative about another character in another place and time. Reading late at night, we realize that the book requires more attention than we can give it right now...