Review by Frank Plowright

Iceland may be a beautiful land, but it remains a harsh land, and the further back through the centuries you go, the more it was the case. In the Viking era home comforts were few, trees were more valuable than silver, and fires needed to be kept burning.

Using bluish grey to complement black and white artwork, Erik Kriek establishes both beauty and harshness from the beginning, and separates his scenes throughout The Exile with wordless pages of the landscape and the bird life, especially ravens. The exile is Hallstein Thordsson, a banished Icelander who returns to his homeland with two warrior companions. This is shortly after his father’s death, and Kriek lets readers know that others are plotting to acquire his land from his widow. In the meantime they’re stealing her trees.

Having set up an inevitable settling of accounts, Kriek tours around a wide cast, listening in to their conversations, revealing their thoughts and motivations, and setting the tensions simmering. His pages seem almost etched, yet despite an ink-imbued blockiness and most men having beards, Kriek draws expressive people, if sometimes a little too posed in showing what these rugged types are feeling. The free use of black ink applies a dark mood, to which the frequently portrayed storm clouds only add. So does the use of rusty red colouring for acts of violence, past, present or imagined.

There’s something Shakespearean about the unfolding of events, with readers aware of truths unknown to the cast. In addition to various personal conflicts, secrets and betrayals there’s also the clash of old ways and new, represented by some residents converting to Christianity. Kriek reveals secrets slowly, causing readers to reassess who they consider virtuous. None of the disclosures are contradictory, yet Kriek has led readers to make assumptions. The Exile reads as a tragedy throughout, and indeed it plays out as such, but perhaps not entirely as expected in an ending in which Kriek points toward two possibilities for the future, leaving us to decide what will come to pass.

Artistically rich and brimming with drama, The Exile is a simple story, exceptionally well told.