I love bombast. Fireworks. Language that walks the tightrope while cannon fire fills the air all around. Barry Hannah, Jonathan Lethem, Cormac McCarthy. That sort of thing. Dazzle. Energy. Power.

But there are other kinds of power. I’ve lately been reading again through Andre Dubus, Marilynne Robinson, Alice Munro, Wallace Stegner. Our contemplatives. I could throw out some words, capital-A Abstractions like Dignity, Gravity, Transcendence. Words we use when we try to approximate the readerly sensation that begins faintly at the tips of our toes or in the burnings of the soft cartilage of our ears, and moves slowly toward the center of our bodies, building in intensity, building to the crescendo of the newly aching heart, the loosened tear ducts, the head bowed under the weight of the terrible knowledge that what is complicated is also true.

I’m most taken with Wallace Stegner’s long story “A Field Guide to the Western Birds,” the story that introduces us to retired literary agent Joe Allston, narrator of many of Stegner’s finer novels, including The Spectator Bird.

The interesting thing about the Vikings is that, for me, as the author of a novel about them, I never really liked them very much. Well, that’s not exactly true. I never liked the public image of the Vikings. It was almost embarrassing: the stereotypical brawny warrior, horned-helmeted (a detail that is archaeologically unfounded, by the way), filthy and brutish, more beast than man. I do not dispute the facts of the Viking raids, or the Vikings’ male-centered ethos, or the numerous sagas depicting wild, raging battles fought by ferocious warriors. But as a 21st-century woman, I wanted to get past these testosterone charged images. I wanted to find a way to the Viking heart, assuming it was in there at all.

The poem, Hávamál (The Sayings of Hár) is part of The Poetic Edda. It outlines in detail the worldview of the Norse, as spoken by Hár, “the One-Eyed” god, one of the many appellations of the great god Odin. Much of the poem reads like passages from the biblical Proverbs, with Hár/Odin giving counsel to his listeners of all that is right and wise in a man’s behavior. The overtones are fatherly, and the focus is on the man’s world where hospitality, moderation, loyalty, wisdom, and self-control are key.

All hail to the givers! A guest has come
Say where shall he sit?

Such extravagant geniality seems simply pretentious, but it was also self-interested, I realized. The guest might as easily be a stranger as a well-loved friend. If a man didn’t welcome and treat his guests fairly, how could he count on such hospitality when he himself traveled through distant lands?