"The Viking War" moves to Denmark

In my historical Viking series, the story moves to Jelling in Denmark where King Harald Bluetooth is in conflict with Gold-Harald, his nephew, who claims the throne. The story dives into the events that lead up to the great sea-battle at Hals, in which Sigve the Awful plays a decisive role.

At the beginning of the book, Sigve, rather unwillingly, serves King Greycloak and his mother, Queen Gunnhild, at Avaldsnes in Norway. At the king's farm, he has met a woman called Life. She is the king's pet, a prey from a Viking raid in the far north, and Sigve's grudge against King Greycloak turns into hatred when he hears Queen Life's story.

Sigve owns a very fast longship, the Sea Serpent. When the king asks him to escort an envoy to Denmark, he meets old enemies and old friends, among them Earl Hakon, the great schemer. In the tense situation – a battle is approaching – Sigve seeks opportunities to solve both his own and Queen Life's problems.

Sigve the Awful and Harald Greycloak sail to Denmark

The conflict between Harald Bluetooth and Gold-Harald

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DGYQXFY

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DGYQXFY

"The Viking War" is out!

Finally the fifth book in the Viking Series is here. You can buy or lend it at Amazon.
United Kingdom: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07DGYQXFY
United States: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DGYQXFY

The Viking War is coming!

The Viking War is the final book in the Viking Series. Strife is building in the northern countries, and Sigve is fighting for a king he fears and despises.

At the beginning of the book, Sigve the Awful has met a woman called Life. She is the king's pet, a prey from a Viking raid in the far north, and Sigve's grudge against King Greycloak turns into hatred when he hears Queen Life's story.

To save his people, Sigve has sworn fealty to the Norwegian king. One of his more bizarre duties is to satisfy the desires of the king's mother, the Bitch Queen, whose perverse needs are endless.

Sigve owns the Sea Serpent, a very fast ship. When the king asks him to escort an envoy to King Bluetooth in Denmark, Sigve meets old enemies and old friends. In the tense situation – a battle is approaching – he seeks opportunities to solve both his own and Queen Life's problems. The Viking War brings the Saga of Sigve to a dramatic end.

New Book from John Snow

Terje Hillesund aka John Snow is writing a
new book about Sigve the Awful, the
fifth book in The Viking Series

I am glad to tell that I'm writing a new book in the Saga of Sigve the Awful. It's the fifth book in the series, but I haven't decided on the title. War is building in the northern countries, and King Harald Greycloak of Norway sends Sigve to spy on his uncle, King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark. In the brewing struggles, the opponents are many, and everyone seems ready to betray everyone, even their closest kin. In the the bed chambers, powerful women are inciting their men to fight, and Queen Gunnhild, The Bitch Queen, is an active player.

I've thought of calling the book "Vikings at War", but I'm not sure yet.

Everyone who writes historical fiction does a lot of research. In my stories, I describe Viking environments and events (buildings, weapons, food, ships, battles) as accurate as possible, and to do so, I travel to important museums and historical sites, I visit reconstructed Viking houses, I follow the building of longships, I search the Internet, but first of all I read books.

Here, I'd like to present some of the these books. As in my stories about Sigve the Awful, love, warfare, history, and mythology are themes in the books below .


Vikings at War by Kim Hjardar
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Vikinger i krig meaning "Vikings at War" is a very good Norwegian book about Viking warfare; now coming in English. It tells about the Vikings as raiders and conquerors, and the book describes how they established long-lasting realms in Ireland, Scotland, England, France and Russia. The book is beautifully illustrated with a wealth of informative photos, drawings, maps and graphics. It describes Viking war strategies at sea and on land, and it contains an especially interesting chapter about Viking weapons: their use and the weapons mythological and religious significance.

Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A.S. Byatt’s Ragnarok: The End of the Gods is a great book: well-written, interesting, exciting. I read it twice.

Ragnarok is about a little girl. Evacuated from Sheffield, she grows up in the English Second World War countryside. Here she starts reading the English version of the German book Asgard and the Gods. Digging into the mind of the child, Byatt simultaneously tells the girl’s life, her experiences with Asgard and the Gods, and the story of the Norse gods and Ragnarok. It’s elegant.

I don’t understand the end of the book. Does it give a stripe of hope? I don’t know. In Voluspå (the great Edda poem telling of the World’s beginning and end), a new and cleansed Earth rises after Ragnarok. But I prefer to believe that the Vikings and Byatt see Ragnarok as the ultimate destruction. Humanity lives and dies. End of story.


Sven Tveskæg - Danernes sidste viking by Preben Mørkbak
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this book a few years ago, and I found it interesting and well-researched, but a bit slow. In my opinion, the most exciting part was the descriptions of the difficult relationship between Svein Forkbeard (Sven Tveskæg) and his father Harald Bluetooth.

When I read it again, it is to get some inspiration for a book I'm writing in which Svein Forkbeard is but a boy, but in which Harald Bluetooth plays a decisive role. My book is fifth in a series, and it follows The Bitch Queen in which Gunnhild Kingsmother is a major character. She is Svein Forkbeard's aunt and Harald Bluetooth's sister, and like all writers I'm stealing from others. So, thank you Preben Mørbak for your portrayal of Bluetooth!

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Vikings in Canada centuries before Columbus

The more I read and hear about the old Norsemen the more impressed I am. In the documentary THE NORSE: AN ARCTIC MYSTERY a film crew follows Pat Sutherland on her journey to prove that the early history between North America and Europe did not unfold the way the history books say it did. In fact the Norse were in Canada several centuries before Christopher Columbus.

“The Norse were here over a long period of time, and they had business to do,” says Sutherland. The dig at the Nanook site at Baffin Island in Canada has revealed stone walls marking out the shape of an trading post, possibly the first European building this side of the Atlantic.

Vikings in Canada centuries before Columbus

“It certainly substantiates that there were Europeans on the site,” says Sutherland, “no question about that.” The excavation team has also found lots of artefact pointing to the Norse, and according to Sutherland the Norse traded walrus tusk and furs with the Dorset people, the local natives of the time.

See animations from the documentary

Unfortunately - and very controvercially - Pat Sutherland has lost her research funding and she has also been fired by the Canadian Museum of History. Hopefully this extremely interesting research will be taken up and continued so that everyone interested in the topic can get more knowledge.

See Pat Sutherland's research article: Evidence of Early Metalworking in Artic Canada.

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Old oak forests and the Oseberg ship

This morning I went hiking in a primeval oak forest. The old, twisted oaks thrive in the hillsides of a narrow valley along with birch, elm and linden trees. At the bottom of the vale a hiking path threads its way along "Uråa" , which means "the brook under the scree". I Norway spring is now at its most intense with plants blooming, woods turning green, and birds singing like crazy. On my way into the ravine, I past a precipice and heard the hoarse croaks of a pair of ravens, but I saw none of them.

Both oaks and linden trees take on strange shapes in the primeval forest.

Oaks are among the last trees to come into leaves
and this old giant is among the latest of the late.

In the old days large oak forests covered much of Southern Norway before the woods were cut down and the timber exported to the Netherlands and England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Back in the Viking Age the oak and pine forests were essential to the building and development of the Viking ships. Pine delivered timber for the strakes and masts, and oak, with its variety of forms, gave solid and enduring materials for knees, ribs, curved stems, keels and all the different shapes needed in the construction of a Viking ship, whether they were slender warships - longships - or heavy merchant ships - knorrs.

The Oseberg ship at The Vikingship Museum in Oslo.

The famous Oseberg ship may very well have had timber from the very wood I was visiting this morning. The ship was used in a burial in Eastern Norway, but examinations have shown that the trees used in the Oseberg ship were cut in the southern part of Western Norway.

Building a replica of the Oseberg ship.

Walking in the oak forest and watching the warped and crooked oak branches, I thought of my novels, and I could easily imagine Sigve the Awful's shipwrights walking the woods around Vik, searching for  materials for their shipbuilding. But on my return down the path beside the brook, I passed the precipice once more, and again I heard the ravens caw without seeing them. This time one of them was laughing a very hoarse laughter, and in the car back home I wondered whether it was Huginn, "thought"  or Muninn, "memory" who so overtly had been mocking me.

Vikings: Life and Legend

Today I received a very encouraging message from one of my readers. He had read an article in The Guardian about the coming Viking exhibition at British Museum. In a review of the exhibition the Guardian journalist asks for a more engaging Viking story. My reader had titled his message: John Snow tells the story.

Tha background is that  British Museum in London opens the exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend on the 6th of March this year. It is the largest Viking exhibition at the museum for more than 30 years and at its centre is Roskilde 6, the biggest Viking ship ever found. From stem to stern it is unbelievingly 37 meters long.

Roskilde 6, 37 meters long; the largest Viking ship ever?

Does Cornwell think we are stupid?

The Pagan Lord by Bernard Cornwell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


(With spoilers from the two first (of thirteen) chapters.)

Bernard Cornwell is a master of his craft. He writes well, he knows how to tell an exciting story; he weaves his tales of Uthred of Bebbanburg nicely into Saxon history.

In The Pagan Lord Uthred comes home to Fagranforda and finds his hall in flames and his woman missing. Uthred rides to the Danish warlord Cnut Longsword and gets Sigrunn back on the condition that he will find Cnut's wife and only son, who are also abducted.

Home again, the rest of Uthred's homestead is burning, and Uthred is threatened by a Christian mob that is raging over his killing of a holy abbot. Beaten and cursed, Uthred rides to Lundene with his people and the rest of his warriors. Here he buys a warship and sets out with his men on a northerly voyage - to regain Bebbanburg Castle, his inheritance.

For readers it's only to board the ship, sit down on a thwart, and enjoy the ride. Cornwall will do all the steering and at regular intervals the conflicts (and almost everything else) will be repeated and difficult elements explained. No intellectual efforts needed. Everything is just right. Cornwell must think that his readers are stupid.

And stupid we are, sitting on the thwart or riding a horse, feeling Cornwall's hands holding the reins, enjoying every minute, very well knowing there's no need to turn off the television. Well done!

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"Saga Oseberg" sails to Kaupang

Kaupang was an important Viking trading town in northern part of Denmark (today's south-eastern part of Norway). This summer "Saga Oseberg", an exact replica of the Oseberg ship, sailed in Viksfjord to Kaupang. See more pictures in the local newspaper Østlands-Posten and read my review of a beautiful Kaupang book below.

Saga Oseberg's rowers

Saga Oseberg with captain and crew

Kaupang

KAUPANG: The Viking Town. The Kaupang Exhibition at UKM, Oslo, 2004-2005 by Dagfinn Skre
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This s a gem of a book. It tells the story of Kaupang, the trading place at Skiringssal in the south-eastern part or Norway. Kaupang was an urban centre or town in the 9th and 10th centuries, and the book places Kaupang among the most important trading centres in the Scandinavian Viking age, along with Ribe, Birka, and Hedesby.

Images of "Saga Oseberg"

I'm back from my vacation, I've been relaxing on our cottage with my family and I've been sailing in the same waters as Saga Oseberg, the new replica of the famous Oseberg ship. I saw the ship being built, but I still haven't seen here sailing, unfortunately. But here are beautiful photos of her on her way to Risør Wooden Boat Festival.

"A fantastic novel"

Click here.

The last weeks I have been very inspired. In her final letter, my editor says that The Lethal Oath is “truly a page-turner,” and that I have “created a gem of a historical action-adventure novel that is sure to entertain readers.” The characters are well drawn, unique, and engaging, she writes, and concludes that it is “a magnificent, well-written, riveting story (...) a fantastic novel from beginning to end.”

With such words, writing is easy. The editor suggested stylistic improvements, and also pointed to some inconsistencies, especially in punctuation. The last weeks I have rewritten sentences and paragraphs and made even more use of active voice. I have omitted superfluous words and corrected all the small errors that inevitably creep into written manuscripts.

The Oseberg ship

Last winter an exact replica of the famous Oseberg ship was built in Tunsberg, Norway. As part of my research for coming books, I visited the building site last spring, and it was extremely interesting to watch the work and talk with shipwrights, woodcarvers and other craftsmen building the ship. The building was done outside a hotel near the harbour in Tunsberg and the site was open to the general public. In the hotel’s lobby women were also weaving cloth for tents and sail.