Another excellent and underknown writer

If you want to subscribe to Harper's, you can read it in their archives, but the story by T. Coraghessan Boyle, We Are Norsemen, from their September 1977 issue (hey, I told you Rico was a packrat, and some things you just gotta save) is a classic. Just a snippet here, to avoid the copyright police:

We are Norsemen, hardy and bold. we mount the black waves in our doughty sleek ships and go a-raiding. We are Norsemen, tough as stone. As least some of us are. Myself, I'm a skald— a poet, that is. I go along with Thorkell Son of Thorkell the Misaligned and Kolbein Snub when they sack the Irish coast and violate the Irish children, women, dogs, and cattle and burn the Irish houses and pitch the ancient priceless Irish manuscripts into the sea. Then I sing about it. Doggerel like this:

Fell I not nor failed at
Fierce words, but my piercing
Blade mouth gave forth bloody
Bane speech, its harsh teaching.

Catch the kennings? That's the secret of this skaldic verse— make it esoteric and shoot it full of kennings. Anyway, it's a living.
But I'm not here to carp about a skald's life, I'm here to make art. Spin a tale for posterity. Weave a web of mystery.