Hidden (32 page)

Brigid could have followed many paths, for she was only eight when her life was so completely disrupted. But there was something in her character in the first book,
Hush
, that made me believe she would revolutionize her world. So I went searching for evidence of revolutionary women at that time. And I found Alfhild.

There are many variants on the story of Alfhild—with her living anywhere from the fifth century to the eleventh, with inconsistencies over who her parents were and what role snakes played in her time in the tower, and with
debates over whether she was, in fact, a single historical figure, or a blend of several, or a complete fiction. Given these uncertainties, I felt I had some license to use those aspects of the various tales about her that made the present story cohere the way I wanted it to.

The prince Hakon in this story is also made up. However, there was a King Hakon of Norway (the third king of all Norway) around the time that this young Hakon might have become a king. That King Hakon erected beacons on hills to send messages up and down the country quickly. Also around the time of our boy Hakon's prime, the attitudes in the Norse countries toward Christianity changed. The real King Hakon himself was in favor of Christianity, although he did not manage to make Norway accept it. Meanwhile, King Gorm, who was the first historically recognized king of all Denmark (ruling at least ten years and perhaps more than twenty, until his death in 958), was not opposed to Christianity, and his son, Harald Bluetooth, who ruled from 958 to around 987, was reputed to be baptized by a cleric who went simply by the name Poppa or Poppo or Papi.

The views of Norse mythology put forth in this book are based on materials from a few centuries later. My assumption (which is shared by many scholars of Norse culture) is that those materials were in large part based on
oral traditions that predated them by hundreds of years. The first recorded versions we have of the Norse myths are in Icelandic sagas that date from around 1180 AD. But somewhere around 1225 the Icelander Snorri gave us a major work called the
Snorra Edda
, also known as
Prose Edda.
Most modern ideas about Norse mythology are based on that work. Alongside Snorri's work is another collection called the
Poetic Edda
. It contains a collection of anonymous poems performed by all sorts of people on all sorts of occasions. As I was writing this book, I consulted translations of both works.

A
LSO BY
D
ONNA
J
O
N
APOLI

Beast

Breath

Bound

Hush

Storm

Abram, Christopher.
Myths of the Pagan North: The Gods of the Norsemen
. London: Continuum, 2011.

Barrett, James H., ed.
Contact, Continuity, and Collapse: The Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic
. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2003.

Becker, C. J. “Viking Age Villages and ‘Manors' in Denmark: Recent Discoveries.” In
Proceedings of the Eighth Viking Congress
, edited by Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Peter Foote, and Olaf Olsen, 25–36. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1981.

Blindheim, Martin. “The Ranuaik Reliquary in Copenhagen: A Short Study. In
Proceedings of the Tenth Viking Congress
, edited by James E. Knirk, 203–218. Oslo: Universitetets Oldsaksamling, 1987.

Brodeur, Arthur Gilchrist, trans.
The Prose Edda, by Snorri Sturlason
. London: Oxford University Press, 1916.

Byock, Jesse L., trans.
The Saga of the Volsungs: The Norse Epic of Sigurd the Dragon Slayer
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Chisholm, James Allen. “The Eddas: The Keys to the Mysteries of the North.” Accessed November 3, 2013.
http://www.heathengods.com/library/poetic_edda/ChisholmEdda.pdf
.

Clarke, Howard B., Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Raghnall Ó Floinn, eds.
Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age.
Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998.

de Paor, Liam. “The Age of the Viking Wars (9th and 10th Centuries).” In
The Course of Irish History
, edited by T. W. Moody and F. X. Martin, 91–106. Cork: Mercier Press, 1967.

Douglas, T.
Lives of the Most Celebrated Pirates and Sea Robbers
. London: J. S. Pratt, 1845.

Duffy, Seán.
Medieval Ireland: An Encyclopedia.
New York: Routledge, 2005.

Einarsson, Bjarni F.
The Settlement of Iceland: A Critical Approach. Granastadir and the Ecological Heritage.
Doctoral dissertation: Göteborg, Sweden: Göteborgs Universitet, 1994.

Englehart, Deirdre Sheridan. “A Story to Tell: The Culture of Storytelling and Folklore in Ireland.”
Childhood Education
87, no. 6 (2001): 409–414.

Etchingham, Colmán.
Viking Raids on Irish Church Settlements in the Ninth Century: A Reconsideration of the Annals
. Maynooth, Ireland: Department of Old and Middle Irish, St. Patrick's College, 1996.

Foot, Sarah. “Remembering, Forgetting and Inventing:
Attitudes to the Past in England at the End of the First Viking Age.”
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series
, vol. 9, 185–200, 1999.

Frank, Roberta. “Skaldic poetry.” In
Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide,
edited by Carol J. Clover and John Lindow, 157–196. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

Graham-Campbell, James, and Dafydd Kidd.
The Vikings: The British Museum, London, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
. New York: William Morrow, 1980.

Grammaticus, Saxo.
The Danish History, Books I–IX,
late twelfth century. Translated by Oliver Elton. (New York: Norroena Society, 1905.) Douglas B. Killings, editor, electronic edition. Kindle Edition.

Hallencreutz, Carl F. “Missionary Spirituality: The Case of Ansgar.” 
Studia Theologica
 36, no. 1 (1982): 105–118.

Helle, Knut, ed.
The Cambridge History of Scandinavia
, vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Hodges, Richard. “Goodbye to the Vikings?”
History Today
54, no. 9 (2004), 29–30.

Jesch, Judith.
Women in the Viking Age
. Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 1991.

Jesch, Judith, ed.
The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective.
Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell Press, 2002.

Jochens, Jenny.
Old Norse Images of Women
. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

Jones, Gwyn.
A History of the Vikings
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

Kenny, Michael. “The Geographical Distribution of Irish Viking-age Coin Hoards.”
Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature
87C (1987), 507–525.

Klinge, Matti.
Ancient Powers of the Baltic Sea
. Ontario, Canada: Aspasia Books, 2007.

Laing, Lloyd Robert.
The Archaeology of Celtic Britain and Ireland, c. AD 400–1200
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.

The Laxdaela Saga.
First published 1899. Written around 1245 AD. Translated from the Icelandic by Muriel Press. Charleston, SC: Forgotten Books, 2008.

Lindow, John.
Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs
. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Lynch, Patricia.
Enchanted Irish Tales
. Dublin: Mercier Press, 1989.

Madsen, H. J. “Introduction to Viking Århus.” In
Proceedings of the Eighth Viking Congress
, edited by Hans Bekker-Nielsen,
Peter Foote, and Olaf Olsen, 69–72. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press, 1981.

Nyberg, Tore.
Monasticism in North-Western Europe, 800–1200
. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000.

Oakley, Stewart. 
A Short History of Denmark
. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972.

Old Sailor.
The Log Book; or, Nautical Miscellany
. London: J. Robins and Sons, 1827.

Olrik, Axel.
The Heroic Legends of Denmark
. London: Oxford University Press, 1919.

Pearson, Andrew. “Piracy in Late Roman Britain: A Perspective from the Viking Age.”
Britannia
37 (2006), 337–353.

Poser, Charles M. “The Dissemination of Multiple Sclerosis: A Viking Saga? A Historical Essay.” 
Annals of Neurology
 36 (1994), S2, S231–S243.

Randsborg, Klavs.
The Viking Age in Denmark: The Formation of a State
. London: Duckworth, 1980.

Roesdahl, Else.
Viking Age Denmark
. London: British Museum Publications, 1982.

Rose, Jamaica, and Captain Michael MacLeod.
The Book of Pirates: A Guide to Plundering, Pillaging and Other Pursuits
. Layton, UT: Gibbs Smith, 2010.

Rowley-Conwy, Peter. “Rye in Viking Age Denmark: New Information from Øster Aalum, North
Jutland.” 
Journal of Danish Archaeology
 7, no. 1 (1988): 182–190.

Sheehan, John. “Early Viking Age Silver Hoards from Ireland and Their Scandinavian Elements.” In
Scandinavia and Ireland in the Early Viking Age
, edited by H. Clarke, M. Ní Mhaonaigh, and R. Ó Floinn, 166–202. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998.

Short, William R.
Icelanders in the Viking Age: The People of the Sagas
. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2010.

Stanley, Jo.
Bold in her Breeches: Women Pirates Across the Ages
. London: Pandora, 1995.

Walpole, Charles George.
A Short History of the Kingdom of Ireland from the Earliest Times to the Union with Great Britain: with Five Maps and Appendices
. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1882.

Wolf, Kirsten.
Daily Life of the Vikings
. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004.

SIMON & SCHUSTER BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2014 by Donna Jo Napoli

Jacket design by Krista Vossen

Jacket photograph copyright © 2014 by Terry Bidgood/Trevillion Images

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
B
OOKS FOR
Y
OUNG
R
EADERS
is a trademark of Simon & Schuster, Inc.