Hereward the Wake - An Epic Journey to the Furthest Heights of Glory and the Utmost Depths of Anguish

At first glance, Kingsley's 'Hereward the Wake' is a rather ominous book. It has small print, old language that is now out of use, and a dismal introduction and preface. When I first began to read it, I made the mistake of tackling the preface. I read about three or four pages, put the book back on the shelf, and didn’t open it again for several months. When I finished Scott's 'Talisman,' (an absolutely wonderful book that everyone should read,) I picked Hereward The Wake up one more time, and decided to see if it would redeem itself in the first chapter. After the first chapter, I was hooked. It was absolutely thrilling and it improved with each subsequent chapter. It left Talisman and Ivanhoe far behind. I did not touch another book until I finished it, two days ago. You could almost hear the wild northern wind and the wilder northern sea singing through the pages. It has all the spirit of a Viking saga, and it is not far different.

The story is a true one, the outline of which Kingsley said that he took from the bishop Leofric's biography of Hereward's life. But Hereward the Wake is not a biography. True, it is history, not fiction, for the most part but it is also a story, a real story, with everything that a real story should have.

I will give an outline of it here, and then give my own thoughts on it afterward. The story is set in England, towards the close of Edward the Confessor's reign. Hereward Leofricsson, commonly called The Wake, is the son of Leofric (Not the bishop who wrote the biography of the Wake), a noble of Edward the Confessor's court and the ever-famous Godiva. He is a bold, daring youth, with the hot blood of all his Danish forefathers, and he lives with his mother in a town called Bourne, where his father is the holder. Early in his youth he is made an outlaw as a result of his unruly behavior toward the Church. I will not go into to whether or not I think he deserved such a fate - the details are too many to put down here, and if one reads the book they should be quite able to decide for themselves. He runs away north, to Crowland, fights for awhile under Gilbert of Ghent, in whose service he slays the Great White Bear, only a few of which were left in the world even in his time. Then he decides to be a Viking, and goes further north, from one wild island to the next, and gets into - and sometimes out of - all kinds of thrilling adventures. This may have been my favorite part of the book. He ends up in Flanders and there he falls in love with a wise and beautiful woman, Torfrida. She was interested, as was common in her day, in some fanciful ideas of magic - love potions etc. and that fact, called by some, and perhaps rightly so, as witchcraft, may prove to be an objection to some readers. But I can say that, while witchcraft is always wrong, it was only a passing fancy that she repented of soon after.

And then comes an end to his wild Viking dreams. News comes from England - Harold Hardraade, the hero of the Vikings, has been killed by Harold Godwinsson, who, in turn, has been killed by William the Mamzer. The Normans are conquering the land, slaughtering the chiefs, enslaving the people. After a difficult period of indecision, he decides to come back to the 'real world' and join the resistance against the Norman tyrant. His chief hope is that the Danes will come join him and place Sweyn, the only rightful heir, upon the throne. He and Torfrida embark on a long journey of danger, anguish, despair and heartbreak. As the situation grew more and more tense, I felt sure that Hereward and the last of his brave companions would die at Aldreth, fighting for England to the end. When I finally did come to the end I was shocked. I cried for the rest of the book, and I was tempted not to finish it. But I did, and I am glad that I did, though history is not always what we would like it to be. I will not tell you what did happen, but I will tell you that The Wake's death was far from satisfactory. Even so, as the merciless truth of history, it was not a complete failure - it had a memory of past glory, a shadow of what had once been and was no more, like the 'last echo born of a great cry.'