Erik the Red

An Historical Novel based on history of the Old Norse. This author is drawing on some common-sense factors in order to disclose another version of what may have been Erik the Red's glory days or the glory days of his ancestry and his followers. Written by William "Peter" McArthur who has, during the COVID-19 lock-up, written his own autobiography: "My Many Hats," and more recently another historical novel: "Pearl of the West," written around Anthony Henday's Bedmate 754/55.

It was the pandemic of 2020 that prompted this historian, who has always been intensely interested in all aspects of history, to put his pen to paper. Peter grew up in a large family; having many aunts and uncles much older than his father, Peter S. McArthur 1899-1963, who was a child of his paternal grandfather: John McArthur 1850-1928 of Renfrew, Ontario. The latter was a wheelwright who came west to a homestead in 1906 where he was living in a tent with his wife and seven children. His father's eldest half-brother, from John McArthur's first marriage, was the author's uncle, James McArthur 1872-1960. John had five children with his first wife, including James, and four with this second, including Peter's father.

On his maternal side, his grandfather Gunder Olson Boraas was born on the Vester Boraas Farm in Norway in 1857-1931. He came to America on the Steamship Leif in 1874 and had five children by his first wife, all born in the USA and six by his second wife, all born in Alberta, Canada. Peter's mother was Olava Boraas, 1914-1990, and she had one sister, Selma, along with brothers George, Oscar, Iver, and Alfred. It was these Norwegian uncles with whom he spent much time in his formative years, listening to each of them relating the Norse sagas as best they could recall, much like they had heard them from their father and other Norse settlers who had been born in Norway and settled in the USA before relocating to Viking, Alberta.

This historical novel draws heavily on his memory of those old tales as he had heard them from many years earlier. Some sagas conflict with the others, as details were first written a thousand years after the events.

Naturally some events become a little twisted; as this author found when compiling his notes, and often credits may go to the wrong outward voyage, yet the importance of key events; such as their meetings with the Skrellings, is hard to question. Read on and enjoy this novel as Peter shares his many years of studying the Norse Sagas. Note the Author's notes will be numbers when he is adding clarity: for example, A-N 1; A-N 2; these notes appear in smaller print.