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All the Horses of Iceland Kindle Edition

by Sarah Tolmie (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 424 ratings
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A New York Times Best Fantasy of 2022!

“All the Horses of Iceland is a slim and beautiful chronicle in the tradition of Naomi Mitchison and Ursula K. Le Guin. …The result is a sorcerous journey through hospitality and enchantment.” —The New York Times

A hypnotic historical fantasy with gorgeous and unusual literary prose, from the captivating author of The Fourth Island.

Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild, and small, and free, but few have heard their story. Sarah Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland weaves their mystical origin into a saga for the modern age. Filled with the magic and darkened whispers of a people on the cusp of major cultural change, All the Horses of Iceland tells the tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of fire, stone, and ice. His search for riches will take him from Helmgard, through Khazaria, to the steppes of Mongolia, where he will barter for horses and return with much, much more.

All the Horses of Iceland is a delve into the secret, imagined history of Iceland's unusual horses, brought to life by an expert storyteller.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

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  1. Print length
    114 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Sticky notes
    On Kindle Scribe
  4. Publisher
    Tordotcom
  5. Publication date
    March 1, 2022
  6. File size
    3531 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A New York Times Best Fantasy of 2022!

“All the Horses of Iceland is a slim and beautiful chronicle in the tradition of Naomi Mitchison and Ursula K. Le Guin. …The result is a sorcerous journey through hospitality and enchantment.” ―The New York Times

“Sarah Tolmie has a light touch, a powerful voice, and a vivid sense of place and period.” ―Elizabeth Bear

“Tolmie brings a scholarly precision to her fantasy that makes magic mundane and the mundane utterly sublime . . . deeply refreshing, a kind of grace.” ―The New York Times

About the Author

Sarah Tolmie is the author of the Tordotom novella The Fourth Island (2020), the poetry collections Check (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2020) and The Art of Dying (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2018), the 120-sonnet sequence Trio (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2015), and the chapbook Sonnet in a Blue Dress and Other Poems (Baseline Press, 2014). With Aqueduct Press, she has published the novels The Little Animals (2019) and The Stone Boatmen (2014), as well as the short fiction collections Two Travelers (2016) and NoFood (2014). She is a medievalist trained at the University of Toronto and Cambridge and is a Professor of English at the University of Waterloo.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0927DBRPB
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tordotcom (March 1, 2022)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ March 1, 2022
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 3531 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 114 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 125080793X
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.1 4.1 out of 5 stars 424 ratings

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Sarah Tolmie

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Customer reviews

4.1 out of 5 stars
4.1 out of 5
424 global ratings
Great story!
4 Stars
Great story!
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of this story but was very pleasantly surprised. This is beautifully written and rich in the old ways of story telling. Having grown up with horses the majority of my life I found this story of the Icelandic horses fascinating. It is a slow paced book with lots world building and history. The character and animal descriptions were thorough and really lent to the story. Though this story is completely fabricated, as acknowledged by the author, it’s done so in a way that I can imagine it being real. I look forward to reading more of her work!
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Top reviews from the United States

Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars All the Horses of Iceland Gallop in My Heart
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 2023
Verified Purchase
I came into this novella knowing that I would love it. Those who are familiar with me know my obsession with Scandinavian history, mythology and literature.

What I did not expect however was how flawless it would be. I am usually wary of short novellas such as this one because it only allows the author a mere hundred pages or so to capture my attention.

But Sarah Tolmie did not do only that, but I was completely and utterly captivated, captured and imprisoned by these pages, swallowing them whole in a single day.

I felt myself walking with the these characters, reliving the moments, the tension, the magic. How wonderful was it to be transported into a world I have often read so much about. To be enamored of every single detail, so magically brought to life.

Having read the book accompanied by the Audible track made the journey all the more real and exciting. I can only thank Sarah Tolmie for bringing us along with her on this journey full of magic, history and information. I thank her also for her gargantuan effort in her research.

Powerful. Inspiring. Magical.
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Storyteller7
4.0 out of 5 stars I highly recommend this poetic historical fantasy about the importation of steppe ponies to Iceland
Reviewed in the United States on April 16, 2022
Verified Purchase
Poet/medievalist Tolmie weaves the tale of an Icelandic trader who travels from the arctic north thru Central Asia searching for hardy horses to bring home in this charming historical novella adorned with ghosts, magic, & tribal warfare. In the 9th century, Eyvind the Viking, abandoned by his ship in Rus when he refuses baptism, joins with a fellow trader, the Jewish merchant David, hoping to get rich through horse trading. This ambition takes them along the Danube, then thru Khazaria to the grassy steppes of Mongolia, where the men meet a chieftain willing to trade some of his Mongolian ponies if Eyvind, whom the chieftain believes is a magician, will dispel the ghost of his wife Bortë, who's haunting his tribe and terrorizing his herd. With the help of Bortë's mother, Eyvind calms the ghost, who then takes the form of a beautiful white mare that no one in the tribe can see. Rewarded with 25 horses, including this mystical mare, Eyvind makes the dangerous trek back, along the way facing scavenging soldiers, bandits, & toll collectors. Tolmie relates Eyvind's adventures in the unadorned yet elegant style of ancient sagas.
9 people found this helpful
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Customer in central NC
3.0 out of 5 stars Okay if you like fantasy novels
Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2022
Verified Purchase
I haven't read much in the fantasy genre, but having recently visited Iceland, I thought this would be a good book to read. However, I didn't care much for this tale of how Iceland got its distinctive horses. At least it was short and readable, but frankly not that enjoyable to me.
One person found this helpful
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openmypages
5.0 out of 5 stars All the Horses of Iceland
Reviewed in the United States on March 1, 2022
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"It occurred to him that access to power often resided with unexpected, even unwelcome people."

--------------------------------

All the Horses of Iceland is exactly the type of myth retellings that I like. Eyvind is a man scarred by a childhood illness, he has lost his hearing in one ear and is unable to father a child. He decides he to try to make his fortune by joining a successful merchant he has crossed paths with in the local market. David is a successful Jewish trader who traverses the Silk Road through central Asia, he is worldly in a way Icelander Eyvind is not. We follow the journey across the sea and the vast continent as they encounter the local peoples, some friendly and some not. Eyvind experiences different cultures, learning all sorts of new tactics and tools to bring back to his people. 

Along the way he experiences some ghostly activity and learns about the magic within himself. He acquires horses which he thinks will revolutionize life in Iceland and he needs to navigate getting them successfully home. One of these horses is a majestic, and perhaps a little magical, white one that helps to guide him home.

The story is beautifully written and the pace is metered in a way that we can enjoy Eyvind's wonder but does not stay in any one place too long. We see not only the journey but its impact on Eyvind's life and the whole of Iceland.

Thanks to Netgalley for advanced access to this novella. All opinions above are my own.
8 people found this helpful
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Dale B. Woodhouse
4.0 out of 5 stars traders
Reviewed in the United States on March 4, 2023
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More than just about horse. Story follows a trader east we’re he runs into some interesting characters expanding his understanding of the greater world.
3 people found this helpful
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Judy Edwards
5.0 out of 5 stars What a luminous, original story.
Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2023
Verified Purchase
I read this book in one sitting, at bedtime. It very quickly weaves a dream around you, none of which feels odd or forced. At the end of it I was left in quiet amazement at the grace and potency of this little story. 10/10. Read it if you are at all inclined.
2 people found this helpful
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Kindle Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars I liked it.
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2022
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I quite enjoyed this story. No, it wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I read it in one fell swoop and was engaged the whole time. It has the story telling flavor of, sort of, Tolkien, rather saga-like.
2 people found this helpful
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Brian C. Hagerty
3.0 out of 5 stars It's a short story. It's good, but short.
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2023
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This is an interesting tale about an Icelander in the middle ages who travels the world and brings some horses back to Iceland. If you enjoy the Icelandic sagas, you'll probably like this. But be aware that it's not a book. It's just a story.
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Top reviews from other countries

Faye
4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 6, 2024
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Description:
Eyvind, a young trader from Iceland, seeks his fortune on the mainland, landing a lucky break when he meets a local warlord with a ghost problem. Set in the ninth century, this is an imagined history of Icelandic horses.

Liked:
Unconventional, baldly mystical, and illuminating. I had no idea of the history of this period, and even though this is fiction, I feel like I have the barest of groundings now. For once, it was obvious that the author actually knows a bit about horses; so many books with horses as a fairly central component fail this test! Loved the ghost story at the heart of this tale.

Disliked:
Because this draws on older storytelling methods, with nods to Icelandic sagas, letters and travelogues of the time, lots of the underlying, modern storytelling tropes are missing or twisted here, which can make the story surprisingly hard to settle into. The end also felt fairly truncated.

Would recommend. Though it’s not a short, relaxing read - give it its due.

Anything Else:
I am so in love with the cover art for this one.
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Mina
4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting novella about life and folklore in the 9th century
Reviewed in Germany on June 26, 2022
Verified Purchase
This is a story of only about a hundred pages, so I’ll make this review accordingly short: the Icelander Eyvind is traveling as a merchant as far as Mongolia, where he encounters the uncanny, learns a lot about and from the various people and religions along his way. He is a witness of how people live, fight, die and do business, so the reader learns as well. This feels very much like a folkloric tale and the style fits the content. The uncanny is more magical realism here and is interwoven very organically so to speak. Overall, very nice tale.
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