The Exile of Borghild Brynlaging

I've mentioned the work a few times—it's the story of a Danish Valkyrja who kidnaps a young king of Denmark she knew personally and then flees to present-day Copenhagen. Our king is none too excited about it, and also confused considering he saw the same woman killed and then cremated only a couple weeks ago.

I personally can't help but feel the story's a bit clunky due to the heavy references to Norse myth, but everyone who's seen it so far told me they understood it and liked it.

I wrote this story for my creative writing class, so you'll find some dodgy references and Getting Crap Past the Radar.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/55227043/The-Exile-of-Borghild-Brynlaging

This thread is here for commenting on the story, because doing so by PM is a mite inconvenient.

edited 13th May '11 11:51:44 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Hm, the words won't appear on the pages for me.

That's unusual. No one else who read the story on scribd reported any problems, and at least two people commented on the content itself.

edited 12th May '11 5:46:37 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

I downloaded it instead. Let me have a read.. (It might be server problems or my browser.)

edited 12th May '11 5:52:35 PM by QQQQQ

In case it's the font (I've forgotten not everybody has American Typewriter) I've changed the font to Courier and reuploaded.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Really good!!!

I reject your reality and substitute my own!!!

Thanks a lot! What did you like about it?

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Poor Borghild should have been stranded in Reykjavik.

Halper's Law: as the length of an online discussion of minority groups increases, the probability of "SJW" or variations being used = 1.

That would have worked out pretty well if she spoke Old Norse since modern Icelandic and Old Norse are mutually intelligible, but the language Danes spoke in the 4th century was Proto-Norse.

She's Danish, so she goes to the largest Danish city I thought of, which is also conveniently in the Danes' historical territory.

edited 18th May '11 8:09:28 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

I was going to say "but that would be the linguistic equivalent of a Chaucer-era English peasant being dropped into modern day London". At least it would be a step slightly above Borghild's situation, which would probably be equivalent to to an Anglo-Saxon being dropped into modern day London.

Halper's Law: as the length of an online discussion of minority groups increases, the probability of "SJW" or variations being used = 1.

Sort of. It differs, though, in that an Anglo-Saxon guy would have at least heard of "Londinium", and Copenhagen wasn't even settled until the 11th century.

Also, Middle English *

had a very Germanic pronunciation while Modern English has a highly Latinized pronunciation, so a Middle English speaker would still have difficulty understanding others and making himself understood.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Well, I could read it without immediately going into critic mode, so you're better than approximately 85% of the people on this forum.

Read my stories!

Really? Cool.

Did you enjoy it?

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Your love of letters not native to English is a bit jarring, but I'm sure it's something you get used to.

Other than that, it wasn't that bad of a read, at least as far as I have gotten so far.

Read my stories!

We are using letters not native to english right now. Also Þ is native to English since it was adapted directly from the native alphabet.

I insist on using spellings like Asgarðr because d and ð are not at all the same letter, and Asgarthr just doesn't look right.

Valkyrja instead of Valykrie is because the plural Valkyries doesn't look or sound right. So you get the Old Norse word and its plural in Old Norse.

edited 28th May '11 10:20:46 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

I enjoyed this a lot! You have the ability to use somewhat archaic language without impeding the ease of reading or the flow of the story, something I can only envy. All the characters are well depicted, especially Borghild herself, and you certainly have the feel for the Norse mythology. You have some good descriptions without letting them drag the pace down: for example, I love the mention of Scyld's "bronze-coloured" tress of hair hanging down. (Quoting from memory; I don't have the document open right now.) The plot is emotionally powerful, with a clever resolution.

The only real criticism I have is that the opening (until Borghild and Scyld arrive in Copenhagen) feels a bit thin. It gives us all the information, but it feels a bit rushed. It's possible that you just intended it as a brief prologue to the main story, and I'm not saying you should change it. Just giving you my 0.02$.

On a technical note, there are a couple of spelling inconsistencies. For example, early on you write "Oðin", but in the rest of the story, it's "Oðinn". Also, at one point towards the end, you write "Cobenhawen" (can't tell whether it's a W or two Vs) rather than "Cobenhaven". Should be easily fixed.

All in all, a very well-written story that appeals both to my love of Norse myth and my love of good and dramatic plotting. You are very talented.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

Thank you very much!

Yes, the prologue piece does feel very rushed. I think this is because for my creative writing class the story had to be a maximum ten pages.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Now that I can sympathise with. I had the very same problem recently, in fact...

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

I was compelled to read it.

The woman is a creepy psycho. I'm very glad she was called out on it, in story, and punished.

BTW, did she attempt to rape him? That part was a bit obscure. Intentionally so?

Yes, as I was writing the story for my class, so I couldn't explicitly say she put slot A on tab B. I quite like the roundabout style of description, actually, and will work that into my style.

My teacher caught the reference and wrote that the rape was unnecessary and made her "despicable and unforgivable", which is funny because "despicable and unforgivable" was precisely my intent. No one said my protagonist had to be a good person or even likeable.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

lols. Did she explain why the character couldn't be despicable and unforgivable? I thought the rape scene was well done if you intended it to be a bit obscure.

Although the guy was no saint by the end either.

She didn't. The assignment also said nothing on the issue. As a matter of fact, I even asked the teacher before hand about my character (saying that she's "not a nice person", is "selfish and bigoted among other things" without mentioning the rape or other abuses of Scyld) and she said it was fine.

Yeah, that's my characters for you. It seems that the most righteous character is Alaric, but that's probably because he didn't have enough time to do something unforgiveable.

edited 5th Jun '11 8:53:28 PM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Earlier today I was already starting to cook up some sort of sequel.

After all, as long as Alaric wasn't the last Odin-worshipper in Borghild's vicinity, Borghild can't be stuck exiled on present-day Miðgarð forever. All she has to do is intercept another Valkyrja.

edited 6th Jun '11 11:58:25 AM by annebeeche

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.

Excerpt plz? Like, maybe two paragraphs? (Not on my computer at the moment. Sorry 'bout the massive necro, but it was in your sig and I'm curious.)

edited 5th Sep '11 10:15:36 PM by Artemis92

Ponders too much; thinks too little. Currently goes by Knowlessman.

I'd love to, but I won't be at my own computer all day and the formatting from copypasting from Scribd to pain text is god-awful.

Banned entirely for telling FE that he was being rude and not contributing to the discussion. I shall watch down from the goon heavens.