Kari's Saga: A Novel of Viking Iceland - Paperback

by Robert Jansson (Author)

Viking Iceland. The year 1000. Civil war looms as pagans and Christians struggle for mastery in the all-island legislature. Zealous King Olaf of Norway embargoes trade and threatens forcible conversion if Icelanders will not convert themselves. In his adventurous youth Kári Sigurdsson won fame, wealth and the nickname Kári the Warrior fighting for King Olaf in two invasions of England. Now a prosperous farmer in his native Iceland, he thinks he has killed enough. But he is embroiled in a vicious feud over an inheritance. With the aid of a young lawyer - his foster-brother - his chieftain's crippled daughter and a half-Irish slave-girl, both of whom love him, and a mysterious Welsh trader who is interested in more than trade, he tries to resolve his problems through Iceland's elaborate court system, but is thwarted at every turn by the treachery of his ambitious wife, the jealousy of his chieftain and the unremitting enmity of his adversary, all pagans. Inclining towards the Christians but bound by pagan ideas of honor, Kári is forced into a revenge killing that can only lead to outlawry and death - unless his allies can find a way out.

Author Biography

Born in Westminster, Robert Jansson studied and researched at London University and UCLA. While a professor in England, he published his first two mysteries, Meet Me in Munich and News Caper. Later, recruited by a major American corporation to develop new businesses from emerging technologies, he moved with his family to the United States. At various times he managed groups in the US, UK, Belgium, Japan, Russia and Ukraine. A survivor of male breast cancer, he is now writing again, and with his wife traveled to Iceland, the Faroes, Norway and the UK to research Kári's Saga, his sixth book and first historical novel.