Vikings!
We are a hardy race, being independent booksellers, so of course we are interested in those Norse entrepreneurs who made Europe a lively place in the so-called Dark Ages.
One of the standard-setting writers about medieval Scandinavia was Nobel Prize-winning Sigrid Undset. I have assembled all her works that we carry on this page, even though they technically do not involve Viking culture and history (a few are even contemporary to Undset’s own time). Other than that, she needs no defense as one of the greatest of historical novelists.
Seven Viking Romances
Seven Viking Romances
These medieval Viking romances, including Arrow-Odd and King Gautrek, inhabit some of the most enjoyable and exotic regions of the Icelandic imagination.
They tell of famous kings, difficult gods and women of great beauty, goodness or cunning; but although they paint the traditional colourful picture of the Viking warrior making raids in his dragon-headed longboat, these stories are not concerned, like Hrafnkel’s Saga or Njal’s Saga, for example, to point a moral or to set down the glories of Icelandic history or geography. Instead the narrators, witty and well-read, plundered sources from Homer to French romance, and incorporated local myths, legends and heroic tales in a bid to entertain us, capture our imagination and make us laugh.