In the year 982 Erik Torvaldsson, also called Erik the Red, left Iceland after a bloody neighbour feud. He went out to find a mysterious island to the north. He found it and called it Greenland, so that many people would follow him. Thanks to gifts and bribes, he ruled his colony unchallenged by Christian priests and kings, all the way to the beginning of the year 1000 A.D.

In "The Awakening," join Erik Sigismund, a king thrust into the mysterious realms of Valhalla after a tragic confrontation with the malevolent White Circle. As he grapples with the loss of his family, Erik finds himself surrounded by an eclectic group of otherworldly heroes, including Moloch, Dagon, Chemosh, and Jophiel.Their quest takes a treacherous turn as they face the enigmatic Drawngir, a creature of darkness threatening to plunge Valhalla into eternal despair. Armed with a legendary silver sword, Erik must navigate alliances, test friendships, and make sacrifices that will shape the destiny of Valhalla. As the group battles the Drawngir, the echoes of earlier conflicts with the White Circle and Lord Slange reverberate through the narrative. The shadow of past betrayals and the weight of a kingdom lost add layers of complexity to Erik's journey. Will he rise to the challenges presented in Valhalla, or will the sins of his past prove insurmountable? "The Awakening" is an epic fantasy that seamlessly weaves together elements of mythology, magic, and the indomitable spirit of a warrior king. With each turn of the page, readers will be transported to a world where the line between reality and the supernatural blurs, and where the awakening of Erik Sigismund hints at even greater challenges awaiting in the next thrilling instalment. Prepare for a tale of courage, sacrifice, and the boundless mysteries that lie beyond the realms of the known.

A beloved Viking saga and masterpiece of historical fiction, The Long Ships is a high spirited adventure that stretches from Scandinavia to Spain, England, Ireland, and beyond. Frans Gunnar Bengtsson’s The Long Ships resurrects the fantastic world of the tenth century AD when the Vikings roamed and rampaged from the northern fastnesses of Scandinavia down to the Mediterranean. Bengtsson’s hero, Red Orm—canny, courageous, and above all lucky—is only a boy when he is abducted from his Danish home by the Vikings and made to take his place at the oars of their dragon-prowed ships. Orm is then captured by the Moors in Spain, where he is initiated into the pleasures of the senses and fights for the Caliph of Cordova. Escaping from captivity, Orm washes up in Ireland, where he marvels at those epicene creatures, the Christian monks, and from which he then moves on to play an ever more important part in the intrigues of the various Scandinavian kings and clans and dependencies. Eventually, Orm contributes to the Viking defeat of the army of the king of England and returns home an off-the-cuff Christian and a very rich man, though back on his native turf new trials and tribulations will test his cunning and determination. Packed with pitched battles and blood feuds and told throughout with wit and high spirits, Bengtsson’s book is a splendid adventure that features one of the most unexpectedly winning heroes in modern fiction.

This book looks at the emergence of the cult of St Magnus, earl of Orkney (d. 1117), and the literary corpus composed in his honour. Both aspects are examined from a wider Scandinavian and European perspective.

In the present as in the past, the dead have been deployed to promote visions of identity, as well as ostensibly wider human values. Through a series of case studies from ancient Egypt through prehistoric, historic, and present-day Europe, this book discusses what is constant and what is locally and historically specific in our ways of interacting with the remains of the dead, their objects, and monuments. Postmortem interaction encompasses not only funerary rituals and intergenerational engagement with forebears, but also concerns encounters with the dead who died centuries and millennia ago. Drawing from a variety of disciplines such as archaeology, bioarchaeology, literary studies, ancient Egyptian philology, and sociocultural anthropology, this volume provides an interdisciplinary account of the ways in which the dead are able to transcend temporal distances and engender social relationships. Until quite recently, literary sciences and archaeology were generally regarded as incommensurable in their aims, methodologies, and source material. Although archaeologists and literary critics have been increasingly willing to borrow concepts and terminology from the other discipline, this book is one examples of a genuinely collaborative endeavor. This is an open access book.

This volume presents a comprehensive exposition of both the prehistory and medieval history of the whole of Scandinavia. The first part of the volume surveys the prehistoric and historic Scandinavian landscape and its natural resources, and tells how man took possession of this landscape, adapting culturally to changing natural conditions and developing various types of community throughout the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The rest - and most substantial part of the volume - deals with the history of Scandinavia from the Viking Age to the end of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (c. 1520). The external Viking expansion opened Scandinavia to European influence to a hitherto unknown degree. A Christian church organisation was established, the first towns came into being, and the unification of the three medieval kingdoms of Scandinavia began, coinciding with the formation of the unique Icelandic 'Free State'.

Scandinavian art songs are a unique expression of the cultures of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Although these three countries are distinct from one another, their languages and cultures share many similarities. Common themes found in art and literature include a love of nature, especially of the sea, feelings of longing and melancholy, the contrast between light and dark, the extremes of the northern climate, and lively folk traditions. These shared sensibilities are reflected and expressed in a tangible way through music. Scandinavian art song has faced several challenges over the years in North America (even in the American Midwest, where descendants of Scandinavian immigrants are concentrated). But matters have changed recently with the recent expansion of diction curricula to cover languages other than English, French, German, and Italian. The primary obstacle remains practical resources for the study of art songs and lyric diction of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. This guide remedies this problem. Scandinavian Song is a practical guide to the art songs of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. Unlike other sources that give at best a cursory overview of lyric diction in the Scandinavian languages, this guide provides practical information, enabling teachers and students to render transcriptions of Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish texts into the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)—an absolute necessity for any study of repertoire. An extensive survey of available music, sample IPA transcriptions and translations, as well as a website link with native speakers reciting selected song texts, make this book an invaluable resource for students and professors in North American college, university, and conservatory voice programs.