The Ice-Shirt
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| The Ice-Shirt | |
 First edition cover |
|
| Author | William T. Vollmann |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Timothy Ely |
| Country | Author: United States First edition: England |
| Language | English |
| Series | Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes |
| Genre(s) | Historical novel |
| Publisher | André Deutsch |
| Publication date | May 1990 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover and Paperback) |
| Pages | 404 pp (first edition, hardback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-233-98506-9 (first edition, hardback) |
| Preceded by | first book of series |
| Followed by | Fathers and Crows |
The Ice-Shirt is a 1990 historical novel by American writer William T. Vollmann. It is the first book in a planned seven-book cycle entitled Seven Dreams: A Book of North American Landscapes. (As of 2008, four of the seven books have been published.)
The Ice-Shirt is set in the 10th century A.D. and chronicles the arrival of the Norse people to Greenland, Vinland, and the Arctic. The novel blends historical fiction, modern journalism (in a series of interviews with modern residents of Greenland), and the varied mythology of the cultures in question, including Norse, Mi'kmaq, and Inuit. Portions of the novel draw heavily from the Flateyjarbók, a 14th-century Icelandic manuscript (especially the Grœnlendinga saga), as well as other Norse sagas including the Heimskringla.
