Book Review – Magnus by George Mackay Brown

This is based on the life of Magnus Erlendson, Earl of Orkney from 1106 to (about) 1115.

Magnus’s story is told in three Norse sagas, but here recreated as fiction inside 200 pages, by the prose of George Mackay Brown.

Magnus was the first son of Erlend Thorfinnsson, Earl of Orkney, who ruled jointly with his twin brother Paal, who also had a son, a joint heir, Haakon Paalsson; two heir-apparents, vying for one Earldom, of very different characters. Haakon, aggressive, quarrelsome and arrogant, and Magnus, quiet, contemplative, and a mystic, reading psalms aloud during a sea battle off the Anglesey coast.

This begins with two incredibly compelling chapters, but what follows cannot quite keep the pace. The first, as a group of 7 boys leave their homes for the first time, and wait on the Birsay shore for the tide to go out, so they can walk across to attend boarding school for two years. And the following chapter, with Magnus and Haakon now young men, on a raiding expedition in the Irish Sea, and the battle off the coast of Anglesey.

One of its most unconventional features, though considered as Historical Fiction, is that (without warning) it slips out of its twelfth-century setting. I was reminded of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in the scene with the police interruption.

I wanted more after the first chapter as the boys attend school – the jump to adulthood seemed too sudden. But the novel is unpredictable, experimental in many ways.

There are moments and scenes which engrave themselves on the memory, it is a tantalising piece of Orkney / Norse history, relevant in the current day as the Scottish people consider their heritage, and whether they have more in common with England and Wales, than with Norway, Shetland, the Faroes and Iceland. But the voices from the Islands are few, the places much changed of course, and more than likely will not be heard.