PEOPLE OF THE DAWN <i> by Jan Fridegard translated by Robert Bjork (University of Nebraska Press: $8.95) </i>

The second novel in Jan Fridegard’s trilogy dramatizing the clash between Christianity and idolatry in medieval Sweden repeats the themes in the first, “Land of the Wooden Gods,” but in a minor key. Holme, the dark, brooding smith, rescues his beautiful, weak-willed wife from thralldom and takes refuge in a hidden cave yet again.

Fridegard seems to be trying to turn him into a Scandinavian Spartacus, a champion of freedom for all, but it’s difficult to accept a charismatic leader who never talks. Nor does the reader discover the source of his belief in liberty in an era when slavery was universally accepted. At a time when the Christian doctrines preached by emissaries of Louis the Pious are beginning to challenge the old pagan religion, Holme doesn’t believe in much of anything. Fridegard may resolve these problems in the last volume, “Sacrificial Smoke,” due later this spring, but at this point, he seems to have exhausted his material in the first book.