How to Be a Pirate recap

A coffin washes ashore at Berk during a sword-fighting lesson. It carries the name of Grimbeard the Ghastly, the most feared Viking pirate who ever lived and an ancestor of Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, and it holds two things: a living man, a shipwrecked stranger who calls himself Alvin the Poor-but-Honest Farmer, and the trail to Grimbeard's lost treasure. The Hairy Hooligans and the Meatheads set out after it, to an island guarded by Skullions, blind dragons that hunt by scent and cannot be fought. Hiccup, the only one able to make sense of the riddle, reaches the tomb ahead of the adults with Fishlegs and Toothless, and there the stranger shows himself for what he is: Alvin the Treacherous, who wants the hoard and no witnesses. Hiccup, the worst swordsman of his year, survives the duel. The treasure is lost, Alvin is left for dead, and the Hooligans come home no richer than they went.

Previously: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III is the undersized son of Stoick the Vast, chief of the Hairy Hooligan tribe on the island of Berk, and the tribe's unlikely heir. In the first book he scraped through the tribe's initiation with the least impressive dragon on the island, a tiny toothless Common or Garden dragon he named Toothless, and then saved Berk from a monstrous stranded sea dragon using the one skill nobody else has: he can speak Dragonese, the dragons' own language, in a tribe convinced that yelling is the only way to handle a dragon. His friend Fishlegs is anxious and allergic to reptiles; his cousin Snotlout still despises him and still expects to be chief one day. Hiccup is an accepted Hooligan now, but he is no bigger, no louder and no better at the violent things Vikings admire, and he keeps his talent for talking to dragons mostly to himself.

Hiccup's year is being taught to fight with swords by Gobber the Belch, and Hiccup is the worst in the class by a wide margin. During the lesson a coffin drifts ashore. It carries the name of Grimbeard the Ghastly, the most feared Viking pirate who ever lived and an ancestor of Hiccup's, and inside it the Hooligans find a half-drowned man who is still alive, a stranger calling himself Alvin the Poor-but-Honest Farmer, together with the pirate's belongings. Among them is the trail to the treasure Grimbeard is said to have hidden before he died. Nothing appeals to a Viking tribe more than lost treasure, and Stoick begins organising an expedition.

The Hooligans set out after Grimbeard's treasure in company with the Meathead tribe under Mogadon the Meathead, whose son Thuggory is one of the few boys outside Berk to treat Hiccup decently. The trail is not a straightforward one, and it leads to an island the tribes avoid, guarded by Skullions: blind, armoured dragons that hunt by smell and are not worth fighting. Alvin attaches himself to the expedition and takes a close interest both in the map and in Hiccup, who is the only person able to make sense of the riddle written on it. Hiccup, Fishlegs and Toothless end up ahead of the adults and inside the island's tunnels.

Underground, Hiccup, Fishlegs and Toothless find their way to Grimbeard the Ghastly's tomb and the hoard he was buried with. Alvin reaches it as well, and drops the pretence of being a poor but honest farmer. He is Alvin the Treacherous, he has been after the treasure from the moment he came ashore, and he intends to leave no one behind to argue about it. Hiccup, the worst swordsman of his year, is the one left facing him.

Hiccup fights Alvin in the tomb and, to his own astonishment as much as anyone else's, survives the duel. The treasure does not come home with them: it is lost along with the tomb, and the boys escape the island with their lives and nothing more. Alvin is left behind and is taken for dead, which proves to be premature. Hiccup returns to Berk no richer than he left it, having again done something none of the adults expected of him, and the Hooligans go back to being one of the poorest tribes in the archipelago.

Hiccup faces Alvin the Treacherous with a sword in Grimbeard the Ghastly's tomb and comes out of it alive, which nobody who has watched him in Gobber's lessons would have predicted. The hoard is not recovered: Hiccup, Fishlegs and Toothless get off the island with their lives and very little else, and the Hooligans sail home exactly as poor as they left. Alvin is left behind and is taken for dead, an assumption the story does not encourage the reader to trust. Hiccup's standing in the tribe is a little better than it was, but nothing fundamental has changed at home: Snotlout is unaltered, Stoick still has no idea that his son's real advantage is being able to talk to dragons, and Toothless is as impossible as ever. Grimbeard the Ghastly, and what he left behind him, are unfinished business for the books that follow.