"Thorgols discovered for himself what is possible in Greenland, where folks must learn new ways or die."
In a harsh land, death and hardship are common... so much so that not being able to "learn new ways, one will die." Because of their isolation, exposure to a harsh environment, violent traditions, and sickness,
“Everyone has many chances to practice with death. If you have not, then you are indeed rare among Greenlanders.”
While the story is engrossing, the style is one of an actual Scandanavian saga. This can be off-putting for some readers. It was worth the effort and challenge and reading it because the story keeps getting better and better. The characters seemed so vivid, their suffering so real..." but who among us does not have a brother or a cousin or a son who seems as though he cannot be helped to do right, but must always find his own way through the thickest undergrowth, although the clear path be near by: Who among us does not sometimes grow angry and sometimes grow bitter and sometimes grow melancholy at the ways of such folk?" ( )

This is a 4 star read for me, but what an incredible reading experience. Smiley writes in the style of old Norse sagas which is hard to get into, but addictive once you get used to it. It is like a magnificent weave is being created in front of your eyes and you get into the characters' lives and then out and back in again.
These people, who really come to life in the book, sometimes die so easily and there is no dwelling upon it. It is a fascinating style that mirrors the harshness of the environment and the constant struggle and nearness of death the real Greenlanders were used to. This is a difficult book to read also because the reality is so unpleasant and the book makes it almost too real for the reader.

A space-time machine. ( )

The story of three generations or so of Norse families in the slowly declining Greenland settlement in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. I say "story"... Truth is, it doesn't necessarily read very much like a novel. In some places we get dialog and insights into specific characters' points of view. In other places, it reads more like an overview of history, and in others more like we're among these people listening to news from the neighbors, and all of these different things just blend seamlessly into each other, page after page.

And there are a lot of pages. Nearly 600 of them, full of the ordinary and extraordinary details of people's lives, their disputes and loves and mistakes and changes of heart, their physical and mental illnesses, their hardships and hopes and tragedies and moments of pettiness and violence and beauty. It's compelling stuff, and through it all, these people, for all their differences from us, feel absolutely like real people.

This is not a fast-reading book. It's the kind of book that really only works, I think, if you just let it unspool at its own pace and take you along for its slow but immersive ride. And you know what? I think it did me an incredible favor with that. I feel like lately I've been feeling sort of stupidly stressed about my reading life. I'm not reading as many books as usual! I'm not making sufficient progress through my out-of-control TBR shelves! Whatever I'm reading, I'm constantly distracted by thinking about what I'm going to read next! Or, rather, I was. This book just sort of demanded I let all that go and just relax and enjoy the journey. Which, after all, is what pleasure reading is supposed to be about. And whaddaya know? It worked.

Rating: Slightly to my surprise, I'm giving this one 4.5/5. Sometimes, you just get the right book at the right time, and you have to show it some appreciation for that. Plus, the ending was so poignant that it's left me with unexpected emotions that still seem to be lingering after I've turned the last page and shut the covers. ( )

Wow…that really is an epic. Very immersive in Greenlands past culture and happenings. I really enjoyed it, even if it did get tedious at points. Just, uh, spoiler alert-ish, don’t get too attached to any characters, lol. ( )

This is a deceptively large book. My edition has 580-something pages, but they are dense pages. It's kind of a slow burn with sluggish pacing and a meandering mode of story-telling. I've seen similar meandering story-telling in older literature and suspect Smiley is imitating the old Norse sagas or something similar. I liked the book a lot. It made me want to learn more about the culture (14th-century Greenland) she was writing about, and I frequently found myself looking up words and concepts -- wadmal, svid, Thing, tablet weaving, skraeling -- and to form a more accurate mental pictures of the landscapes and living situations of the book's inhabitants. I don't usually care all that much about characters, but I found myself invested in some of these. Smiley's story spans seasons and generations and offers a sense of both the harshness and the beauty of it all. ( )