All the horses of Iceland

This is the tale of a man named Eyvind and a mare with no name, as recounted by a later Christian historian with reference to a record Eyvind brought back--written in a language the narrator doesn't know, then glossed in Greek and Latin. Eyvind of Eyri leaves Iceland to work on a trading ship. When the captain converts to Christianity to allow for trade with Oleg of Helmgard, Eyvind leaves the crew. He joins a merchant named David on a journey across Khazaria, a land at war with the Rus, to the steppe, where they will trade for horses and hides. In the camp of the qan, he is visited by the ghost of the qan's wife--and against David's advice, he suggests a solution to the qan. Despite misadventures as they cross war zones and the difficulty of traveling over water with horses, Eyvind returns to Iceland and settles into a satisfying, if unconventional, life. Told with the narrative inevitability of a saga and tempered with the pragmatic nature of its subject, this is a thoroughly satisfying fictional myth, with plenty of echoes of medieval sagas and histories.

Tolmie (The Fourth Island) sends an Icelandic trader thousands of miles searching for horses to bring home in this charming historical novella adorned with ghosts, magic, and tribal warfare. In the ninth century, Eyvind and fellow trader David hope to get rich through horse trading, a valuable commodity on the cold, rocky island of Iceland. This ambition takes them through Rus and Khazaria to the grassy steppes of Mongolia, where the men meet a chieftain willing to trade his horde of horses if Eyvind, whom the chieftain believes is a magician, will dispel the ghost of Bortë, one of his wives, who's haunting his tribe and terrorizing his horses. With the help of Bortë's mother, Eyvind calms the ghost, who then takes the form of a beautiful white mare that no one in the tribe can see. Rewarded with 25 horses, including this mystical mare, Eyvind and David make the dangerous trek back, along the way facing battlefields, bandits, and toll collectors. In the sparse but elegant style of ancient fables, Tolmie weaves a saga of whimsy and magic against a lavish historical backdrop. Historical fantasy fans are sure to root for this reluctant hero and his fabulous beasts. (Mar.)