Dark Runs the Road

Dark Runs the Road is an exciting and absorbing novel about the conflict between the pagan Vikings and the Christian Saxons during late tenth and early eleventh centuries. Sweyn is the son of Firebeard, Jarl of the Wolves’ Dale in Norway, and a foreign woman, Swan-White, who was captured on a raid and branded as a witch by those who felt she had bewitched their lord. Firebeard is eventually forced to renounce her, and he casts out his son as well.Dark Runs the Road follows Sweyn’s life from his youth, raised by Ketil, a Lapp with magical powers, on through quarrels and reconciliations with his father, and exile in England. Sweyn’s struggle to find his place in the world is accompanied by the interior and exterior conflict between pagan ways and the new Christian religion.Evangeline Walton (1907-1996) is best-known for her classic four-volume reworking of the Mabinogion (published in 1936, 1971, 1972, and 1974), collected as The Mabinogion Tetralogy in 2002. Her second novel Witch House was published by Arkham House in 1945. She was awarded a World Fantasy Award in 1985, and a Life Achievement Award in 1989. She was one of the masters of modern fantasy literature.