The Greenlanders

Smiley gives readers a magnificant novel of 14th century Greenland. Rich with fascinating detail about day-to-day life, The Greenlanders is also the compelling story of one family. Echoing the simple power of old Norse sagas, The Greenlanders brings a remote civilization to unforgettable life.

This enthralling epic tale, written in the tradition of the old Norse sagas, takes us to fourteenth-century Greenland--a farflung place of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains. This is the story of one family: proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling center of this unforgettable book. Jane Smiley immerses us in this world of farmers, priests, and lawspeakers, of hunts and feasts and long-standing feuds, and by an act of literary magic, makes a remote time, place, and people not only real but dear to us.