Ottilie A. Liljencrantz 1876—1910

Ottilie A. Liljencrantz, born in Chicago in 1876, is best remembered for her historical Viking romances. Her first work was a juvenile book entitled The Scrape that Jack Built, but the circumstance that undoubtedly decided her future was the purchase of Du Chaillu’s Viking Age, which intensely fascinated her. Frithiof’s Saga and Andersen’s Norse Mythology further aroused her to the possibilities of a field at once inestimably rich and comparatively untold. These studies resulted in The Thrall of Leif, the Lucky. This glowing tale is centered in the career of Leif Ericson, the Norse Viking, who in the year 1000 sailed from Greenland and, landing in the present state of Rhode Island, was the discoverer of the American continent.