Loved by the masses, the prolific Margit Sandemo has written over 170 novels to date and is Scandinavia s most widely read author... --Mia Gahne, Scanorama magazine
Full of convincing characters...these are graphic novels without the pictures...I want to know what happens next
Review
...myth and legend interwoven with historical events...an imaginative creation that involves the reader from the first page to the last
Synopsis
In the freezing Norwegian winter of 1581 the plague robs seventeen year-old Silje Arngrimsdotter of all her family. Homeless, starving and shepherding two newly-orphaned infants, she heads in desperation for the warmth of the funeral pyres blazing beyond the city gates of corpselittered Trondheim. In the shadowy forest she meets a captivating stranger - Tengel of the infamous Ice People. She has heard of his dark reputation but nevertheless feels an irresistible physical attraction. "Spellbound" sets the reader on an engrossing path through four centuries of the history of the 'Ice People'. Earthy and often erotic, Sandemo's saga is always imbued with a powerful narrative drive.
From the Back Cover
In English now for the first time - The Legend of the Ice People has already captivated 25 million readers across Europe.
Winter 1581: a deadly plague outbreak robs sixteen-year-old peasant girl Silje of all her family. Homeless, starving and shepherding two abandoned children, she stumbles out of the corpse-strewn streets of Trondheim on Norway's northern coast.
Heading desperately for the warmth of the mass funeral pyres blazing beyond the city gates, she encounters in the shadowy forest one of the infamous Ice People, a fearsome, strangely captivating "wolf man". He offers help - and she feels irresistibly drawn to him. But what is the terrible fascination? And where will it lead?
Spellbound, the opening novel in the Legend of the Ice People series, begins a journey that spans four centuries and interweaves romance and the supernatural in stories that are passionate, earthy, often erotic and distinguished above all else by their powerful narrative drive.
"Loved by the masses, the prolific Margit Sandemo has written more than 170 novels to date, and is Scandinavia's most widely read author." Mia Gahne, Scanorama magazine
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One
ONE evening in the late autumn of 1581, as an icy mist played with the blood-red reflection of fire in the sky above Trondheim, two young women made their way along the town's streets, each unaware of the other.
Not quite seventeen, Silje was a girl whose deep eyes showed an indifference to the world around her, mirroring the loneliness and hunger she felt inside. She hugged herself to keep out the cold, thrusting her hands beneath her clothes, most of which seemed to be made from old sacking. Strips of hide were bound round her worn-out shoes and her attractive hazelnut hair was covered with a woollen shawl, which doubled as a blanket whenever she found a safe place to sleep.
She stepped cautiously around a corpse lying in the narrow alley. Just one more victim of the plague, she told herself. This plague - she could no longer remember how many outbreaks there had been during the last century - had taken her whole family just two or three weeks ago, leaving her alone and forced to scavenge for food.
Her father had been a blacksmith on a large farm to the south of Trondheim, but when he and her mother, brother and sister had died, Silje had been driven out of the wooden cabin where they had lived. What use would a young girl be in a blacksmith's forge?
In truth, Silje had been relieved to move away from the farm. She had left behind a secret, buried deep in her heart, that she had never shared with a soul. To the south-west lay the strange and eerie mountains she called the `Land of Shadows' or the `Land of Evening'. Throughout her childhood their brooding mass had always frightened her, yet also held her spellbound. They were so far away as to be barely visible but, when the brightness of the evening sun lit up the jagged peaks, it gave them a strange ethereal clarity that stirred the girl's lively imagination.
She would gaze at the mountains for ages, in fear and fascination. Then finally she would see `them', the nameless creatures that lived there. They rose up from the valleys between the peaks, gliding slowly through the air, searching, closer and closer to her home until their evil eyes found her. Whenever this happened, Silje would run and hide.
Except that they did have a name. People on the farm always spoke of the distant mountains in hushed voices and it was probably their words that had first frightened her and excited her imagination.
`You must never go up there,' they would say. `There is nothing but witchcraft and evil there. The Ice People are not human! They are the spawn of cold and darkness, and woe betide the person who goes too close to their lair!'
The Ice People? Yes, that was what they were called - but Silje was the only person who had seen them riding on the air. She had never known what these creatures were. Not trolls. Oh no, they were not trolls. Nor were they wraiths. They could not be called devils either. Were they some sort of supernatural marvel perhaps, or spirits from beyond the grave? She had once heard their landlord call one of the horses a `demon'. This was a new word to her ears, but she felt it was a suitable name for `them'. The strength of her fantasies about the Land of Shadows was such that she would often dream about it while in a restless and troubled sleep. It was only natural that she should turn her back to those haunting mountains as she left the farm. A primitive instinct had led her to Trondheim, where she would find people - hoping for help now that she was alone and in need.
