Vikings

THE MEN OF NESS--Eric Linklater-- Farrar & Rinehart ($2).

Readers who smiled over Author Linklater's Juan in America (TIME, March 4, 1931), might expect another picaresque comedy from him, but The Men of Ness is as different from his first book as a Soglow cartoon from a Rivera fresco. Serious this time, Author Linklater has written a carefully primitive, saga-like chronicle about the Vikings who once harried and inhabited his native Orkney.

Ragnar Hairybreeks was a pattern for Vikings, and his sons were pretty tough too, all except Thorlief Coalbiter. Thorlief let others go a-viking; he preferred to sit by the fire and figure things out. He figured to such good purpose that he continued to sit safe and prosperous at home while his kinsmen cleft each other to the brisket in various foreign parts. But his sons Skallagrim and Kol were chips of the older block. As long as they followed Thorlief's advice their forays were generally successful. But there came a day when his sons set out against his warning. The near-disastrous storm they ran into was only the start of their troubles. When they were finally shipwrecked on England's coast they found themselves in the land of Uncle Ivar, their mortal enemy. In a last good, solid. head-cleaving fight they managed to get him down before his carls did for them.

Though he eschews Latin-rooted words, clings to Anglo-Saxonisms almost as tightly as William Morris did, Author Linklater manages to give his bare and lusty chronicle an authentic primitive manner without ever putting the reader to sleep. Though his tale is at times reminiscent of the over-factual Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, it lifts towards the end to a narrative as stripped and swift as a Viking long ship with the oars going all together.

Last month Author Linklater stood for Parliament as Scottish Nationalist candidate in East Fife, Scotland. His Juan in America, whose rogue's progress in the U. S. contained many an amorous interlude, so offended Scotch Presbyterian morals that Candidate Linklater polled only 1 ,000 of 30,000 votes cast.

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