A Dream of Dragons: A Saga in Verse

NORWAY, 1894

Olav — son of Erik Bjørnsson — seventeen,

swung his father's scythe and dreamed:

The singing scythe Grandfather Bjørn had made

and honed each time he found a bit of shade

and passed on to his oldest son

to pass on to his oldest son

to pass until there were no longer sons —

the scythe hissed like the grains of sand on the beach

that hiss when a wave falls back and the bubbles burst.

The wind that whispered through the grain

and dried the sweat upon his arms and chest

bore from the west the scent of salt

and the distant rumble of the Norwegian Sea.

The Viking Age began more than a thousand years ago when the ancient Norse perfected their swift-sailing, dragon-headed longships. Young men, and later whole families, left Norway's rugged fiords in search of open land, trade, treasure, or fame. Many others took to the unknown sea simply because something vague and irresistible beckoned to them. They settled islands all across the North Atlantic and landed in North America more than four hundred years before Columbus. Their exploits are recounted in the ancient Norse sagas. A Dream of Dragons is a proper and modern Norse saga, written with all the power of Melville and Hemingway and a true story now retold in the ageless rhythms of blank verse, as irresistible as the beautiful and specially commissioned woodcuts of Mary Azarian.