Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Leif Frond and the Viking Games
    Leif Frond and the Viking Games
    Leif Frond and the Viking Games
    Ebook54 pages37 minutes

    Leif Frond and the Viking Games

    By Joan Lennon

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Leif wants to be a hero, but as the youngest and smallest member of his huge Viking family, he's never had the chance to shine. Can he finally become a champion at the Midsummer Games?

    All he has to do is compete with some fully grown Viking heroes at sports including archery (no problem, with his very special bow from Queue the Artificer) and wrestling (big problem, the other contenders are all twice his size). Oh, and keep the Widow Brownhilde away from his father before he does something stupid like marrying her. And stop his meddlesome granny from cheating. And avoid his gigantic troll-like sister and her list of chores....

    Easy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateAug 14, 2014
    ISBN9781472904638
    Leif Frond and the Viking Games
    Author

    Joan Lennon

    Joan Lennon is a well-known writer of novels, poetry and short stories who has appeared all over the UK at book festivals, libraries and schools, where she gives talks and leads workshops for readers and writers of all ages. She has been a Hawthornden Fellow, the Jessie Kesson Fellow, a resident at the Chateau de Lavigny, and has received a Creative Scotland Writer’s Bursary. She is the author of Silver Skin (BC Books, 2015) which was shortlisted for the Scottish Teenage Book Prize.

    Read more from Joan Lennon

    Related to Leif Frond and the Viking Games

    Related ebooks

    Children's Historical For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      I Met Myself Coming Back

      Oct 6, 2022

      I Met Myself Coming Back
      6 min read

    • Article

      Life In The past Lane

      Aug 27, 2021

      Life In The past Lane
      5 min read

    • Article

      THE DUKE OF Edinbrough Hotel

      Nov 13, 2019

      THE DUKE OF Edinbrough Hotel
      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Of A Kind

      May 3, 2023

      Four Of A Kind
      4 min read

    • Article

      Smile through THE SADNESS

      Nov 26, 2020

      Driving past an old pub in a Gloucestershire village, Dad caught my eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘That’s a haunted pub, there, Becki,’ he told me. ‘Cavaliers haunt this place. It was a royalist stronghold in the civil war…’ As he talked, I listened,

      4 min read

    • Article

      The Wind Feels Loss

      Aug 8, 2019

      The Wind Feels Loss
      7 min read

    • Article

      My Gangfight On The Buses

      Jan 12, 2022

      My Gangfight On The Buses
      3 min read

    • Article

      Mother's Fall – And The Descent Of Man

      May 1, 2024

      Mother fell. She ended up sitting, back against the wall, like a weary-looking soft toy on a slow edition of The Repair Shop. I called the emergency services. While I was on to them, I told them my underactive thyroid medication had recently delivere

      3 min read

    • Article

      Last Orders

      Jul 28, 2021

      Last Orders
      5 min read

    • Article

      Excerpts From The Works Of The 2024 Whiting Award Winners

      Apr 10, 2024

      The 2024 Whiting Award winners were announced Wednesday night. Below are excerpts from their work.

      19 min read

    • Article

      The Man I Should Have Married

      Dec 29, 2019

      The Man I Should Have Married
      11 min read

    • Article

      Six Sonnets

      Jan 1, 2021

      Goldenrod, I could say, you know, everybody wants somethingfrom me, but, well, everybody wants something and nobody wantsnothing from me, goldenrod, towhead, beast. Goldenrod, you packthe meadows like gold-plated sardines. I have heart palpitationsbu

      3 min read

    • Article

      Quiet COURAGE

      Mar 3, 2021

      Quiet COURAGE
      6 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      The Courage To Be Happy

      Feb 1, 2023

      MARRIAGE and columns have this in common: you tend to repeat yourself. More than once in these pages, I have quoted the New Yorker’s legendary film critic Pauline Kael. After President Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 she wrote: ‘I live in a rather

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Last Friend on Earth

      May 4, 2023

      It was as if Doreen Saunders had been waiting for me, passing the time until my arrival. She might as well have been sitting in a rocking chair, knitting needles clicking, jam tarts cooling on the side, the door wide open, waiting for the next visito

      6 min read

    • Article

      Four Poems

      Mar 1, 2022

      I met the Bishop on the roadand much said he—same old porridgeI heard as a child, my little bodya “foul sty.” “Love has pitched his mansion.” MaybeLove pitched her silken tent.Love has raised its dwelling inthe place of reproduction, which can be fit

      3 min read

    • Article

      Caught Out

      Oct 2, 2022

      Caught Out
      9 min read

    • Article

      Pats On The Back

      Dec 12, 2019

      I AM writing this column from a prone position. Reclining on my sofa in the library, propped up with cushions like some latter-day Lady Ottoline Morrell, but without the wit, brilliance and patronage. I wish I could say my current condition arose fro

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Leif Frond and the Viking Games

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Leif Frond and the Viking Games - Joan Lennon

      CHAPTER ONE

      Hosting the Games

      T hor’s Elbow! my father whispered, turning pasty pale. It’s her!

      We were standing on the shore, welcoming the visitors to the Midsummer Games. My fatherhad just single-handedly carried four childrenand a tent to dry land yet now all the blooddrained away from his face. He’d seen one last boat approaching – a boat flying the Hildefjord flag – a boat carrying…

      …the Widow Brownhilde. Three words that would strike terror into the heart of the greatest champion ever sung about by the bards.

      Polite people called her ‘a fine figure of a woman’ and ‘quite determined’ but she was, in fact, huge and as relentless as a winter wolf. The Widow had used up three husbands already (first there was Knobbly Knerdman, then Bogboring the Yawn-maker and, last and least, Dogsdinner Dimson) and rumour had it she was on the prowl for Husband Four.

      Rumour had it she had her eye on my father.

      Did my father want to be Husband Four?

      He very emphatically did not. And as far as I was concerned, having the Widow as my stepmother would be similar to getting savaged by wild pigs or swallowed whole by the World Serpent. At the same time.

      What am I going to do? my father moaned under his breath. Where can I hide? Is it my Fate to be bound to this horror? I think he’d forgotten I was still there.

      It was a cry for help if ever I heard one, and champions never ignore a cry for help.

      I’ll save you, Father! I said. I could see it already… Leif the Champion… Leif the Father-Saver… what wouldn’t the bards give for a story like this! They would carry my fame to every settlement in the known world… I could see the little children and the women gathering round to hear the tale of my bravery, while all the men sat muttering enviously…

      "Save me, mighty son of mine – save me from this terrible Fate!" Hallfred Frondfell looked down at the Champion with desperation like a cloak over his ageing shoulders…

      (No, that wouldn’t be right. It would be, he looked up at me, because I was the Champion and therefore the tallest person in the room. And I expect he wouldn’t appreciate the ‘ageing’ crack.)

      Fear not, Still Fighting Fit Father, Leif the Tall and Handsome Champion cried. I will outwit this foul fiend or if needs must, I will slay her, and bring you her head on a platter.

      Well, that would be a bit extreme, even for the Widow Brownhilde, said my father. But I appreciate the thought.

      Rats! I really have to stop saying the things in my head out loud. "All right, all right, no head chopping. Not when we’re hosting the Games. I can understand that. But, well, what I can’t understand…"

      My father sighed. What can’t you understand?

      "If you don’t want to marry her, how can she make you? I blurted out. I mean, she’s big, for sure,

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1