The word Viking does not refer to the people, but the act of sailing around the world raiding and pillaging other countries. The classic horned helmet that people associate with the Vikings is a myth! That was started by incompetent archaeologists who found helmets and drinking horns buried together and assumed they must somehow be connected.
Viking romance is a subgenre of both the romance and the historical fiction line of books. Despite the popular idiom in this particular case, you can glean a lot of what you need to know about these books from the covers. They appear to have quite a lot in common with the slightly more popular Highlander Romance novels. The Viking romances seem to be for a very similar audience, but those who are willing to go the extra few miles northeast to find the men who are a little bit taller, sweatier, and longer haired.
Like almost every non-religious romance genre, the Viking books very heavily in how much focus is put on the plot, the romance or the sex, and straight-up delicious smut. If you want to read Viking romance novels, follow me!
7 Viking Romance Novels (Norse Mythology)
It is very little in terms of primary source documentation from the non-fiction on the Vikings. Primary sources would have been anything written at the time, in the lifetime of the people concerned. The Vikings were not concerned at all with writing anything down.
A lot of their culture was conveyed orally. They didn’t construct books. The writers do it to satisfy the reader because many Viking fans, movie/Tv series adaptations, and comics are available online. Now I will review 7 Viking romance novels for you. Let’s go!
1. Viking’s Prize (Medieval Heroes)
Viking’s Prize was published in 1994. It was the third of what would be a library of 30 published romance novels and short stories, which the author is still adding to this day. The story is about a French noblewoman taken captive by a Viking lord. After spending some time together, they slowly fall in love. Alarik Trygvason, real-life king of Norway, was going through about a thousand years ago because he’d recently converted to Christianity.
In this book’s universe, Alarik has an almost identical but slightly better-looking half-brother who likes to provide for his people by going Viking in France. The story starts with Alarik getting revenge on a local French count who promised him lands in exchange for peace between them, then promptly doublecrossing him. He sacks his castle and kills almost all within, finding the count is not there but discovering his bride-to-be, a beautiful woman named Elienor, so he takes her back to Norway as his spoils of war.
Elienor gets 100% accurate visions of the future in her dreams, and this is the only magic in this otherwise reasonably historically accurate fiction. Her mother had the same gift and was burned at stake for it leaving Elienor traumatized and quite secretive about her power. She’d be raised in a convent and would take vows as a nun before the count had asked for her hand in marriage.
Alarik and Elienor have an instant, overwhelming attraction to each other physically and emotionally through the circumstances of their meeting. Once they get to his home, they both have to deal with the political situation in Norway.
Throughout the book, Elienor has had prophetic dreams about Alarik getting hit in the back with a thrown ax while trying to save her during the battle. Due to her mixed feelings towards her captor and logical fear of revealing her power. However, seeing Alarik jump from ship to ship to come to her rescue, she realizes she’s truly in love, so she leaps at him, and they collide in mid-air and fall into the water.
This book got me with a clever subversion of expectations. I enjoyed the beginning and ending the most, and it’s no coincidence. So if you’re into Viking romance novels, why not try this one.
Author: Tanya Anne Crosby
Publisher: Oliver-Heber Books
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Tropes: Medieval Historical Romance
Number Of Pages: 334
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
2. The Sea Wolves: A History of the Vikings
Lars Brownworth has many books that introduce many different periods of history. So it might be well worth looking into his catalog to see if he’s written anything introductory on the period you’re interested in. I have my issues with this book. It takes things that were, quite frankly, myths that can’t be proven true.
It takes them and paints them as completely accurate, such as Ragnar Lodbrok. It does paint Ragnar Lodbrok as the Viking that sacked Paris in 845. But it does portray him heavily as being betrayed by King Horik of the Danes and then being killed. The snake pit gets a mention in here. If you are trying to be a non-fiction writer, that’s something you need to take into consideration. Also, you shouldn’t paint events that you’re unsure of as the absolute truth or what you believe.
When you were starting in a study of this period, the author helped you understand the names. Moreover, he helps you understand what was going on in these countries, the political landscape, relationships, what was essential to the Vikings culturally and politically. This is a very valuable book, and it’s well worth your time because you will get a lot out of this very short book.
Author: Lars Brownworth
Publisher: Crux Publishing Ltd
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Tropes: Scandinavian History, Expeditions & Discoveries World History
Number Of Pages: 300
Item Weight: 11.5 ounces
Dimensions: 5 x 0.75 x 8 inches
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
3. A History of the Vikings
This book goes into incredible detail, particularly about the Scandinavian countries. It nearly always deals with places like England, Ireland, Francia, and Russia, where they were active and writing. There are individual chapters here dealing with those countries and the political landscape of the time. It covers the entire 300 year period in incredible detail. So, it’s a lovely book because it covers a whole lot culturally, and it talks about what would have been important socially to the Vikings.
The book was first published in the 1960s, and it is a revised edition. But it was not revised last year, and it was revised in the 1980s. So that tells you how long this book has been around. I would not recommend it to you for that alone because so much has changed in historical scholarship in the past 50 years that it was tough to recommend anything past ten years ago. Anything older than ten years is something that’s probably not of much value anymore beyond the basic historical fact.
But historians’ biases and the things that historians personally were putting into their books and the arguments they were making that can’t be of too much value passed around 20 years. Things change so quickly in our landscape. Historians thought things that were valuable 50 years ago are suddenly no longer of any importance in 20 years. But to my mind, there has never been a better comprehensive non-fiction romance book on the Vikings than this one.
Author: Gwyn Jones
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Tropes: European History, Anthropology, Medieval History
Number Of Pages: 552
Item Weight: 12.9 ounces
Dimensions: 7.6 x 1.2 x 5 inches
Available: Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
4. North Men
It’s a historical book about the Vikings saga 793 to 1241. It charts the rise and eventual fall of Viking culture and Scandinavian migration and domination throughout Europe. Also, the story picks 793 as a starting point because that’s when the Lindisfarne raid was. So the way the book is set out was its undoing in my point of view. It suggests that it will be a timeline narrative of how they progressed from one year to the next five years.
The author split the book by geography to cover the different geographical locations. So one chapter would cover England. The next chapter will cover France, Germany, the Americas, and Turkey. The problem is that it takes you back to the beginning of the timeline for each area. Lindisfarne goes up to about before the Norman conquest. Then the Vikings invaded and harassed the farms and then got into politics.
The narratives aren’t different enough in the different geographies to make it worth doing. It would have benefited more from a structural point of view to have a straightforward timeline because it doesn’t help as well. As is the case with many nobility in the old days, they would name their kids after themselves. In the England chapter, seven Ethel stands have some minor importance. So that was complicated. Overall this book gives you much information about Viking romance, and you will enjoy it by giving proper time and attention.
Author: John Haywood
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Average Customer Review: (4.7 out of 5, on Amazon)
Tropes: Norse & Icelandic Sagas, Adventure, Medieval History
Number Of Pages: 400
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
5. The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
It is historical non-fiction and hard to read history at times. Neil Price did a masterful job on this book. First of all, there’s no way to get bored section and has a great sense of humor and historical data with the myths regarding the Vikings. It is separated into sections by periods in which Viking history changes. There’s some big change that changes everything somehow, and it also explains how the population worked.
- The people worked as people and how they traveled.
- What happened with their ships? How do they live their everyday life?
- Wherever they were? How were they conquered?
Vikings were advanced for the times. It seems some trans people were accepted into society. So to anyone interested in Viking history and thinking history books. It has funny remarks, and everything includes some little sections of writings found from the times. Also, it tells you the whole beginning of the world for Vikings and their culture.
Author: Neil Price
Narrator: Samuel Roukin
Publisher: Recorded Books
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Tropes: Expeditions & Discoveries, Medieval European History
Number Of Pages: 656
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
6. When We Were Vikings
Zelda is a 21-year-old with fetal alcohol syndrome. She sees everything with the perception of a Viking, and everything that happens in her life is a part of her Viking legend. She and her brother Gert lived together and took care of. Gert has taken care of her ever since her mom passed, and they had to leave their uncle’s abusive house for her brother to make ends meet. He starts skipping university classes where he has the scholarship to sell drugs.
Zelda and some of her close friends, her boyfriend, and Kurt’s ex-girlfriend get caught up in Gert drug selling drama. But Zelda, being the Viking that she thinks she is, sees this as an opportunity to prove that she’s the warrior. This one brings a strong and impressive point of view from an adult with special needs. Also, the character development is rocked. It is one of the best Viking romance novels I have ever read.
Author: Andrew David MacDonald
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Tropes: Coming of Age Humorous Fiction
Number Of Pages: 336
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
7. Dead to the World (Sookie Stackhouse)
The book starts, and it is New Year’s Eve. Sookie is going home, and on her way home, she drives by a naked man by the side of the road. That naked man is Eric. So Sookie pulls over, finds out that it’s Eric, and it turns out that he has no idea who he is or where he is. We’ve grown to know and love Eric, and he’s a likable character. He has no memory, but he’s a much sweeter and gentler version of a Viking vampire. While this version of Eric, Sookie liked it very much.
So the book centers around why Eric lost his memory and not the repercussions of that. Much of it is about this bigger gloom and doom related to why Eric doesn’t have his memory. There’s not all that much that happens in the way of plot compared to the next book in the series.
When Eric does get his memory back, he decides not to tell him about any of it. It was so ridiculous. There are also certain parts that I’m not getting up to let you out, so you better make yourself comfortable in that bed.
Author: Charlaine Harris
Publisher: Recorded Books
Average Customer Review: (4.8 out of 5, on Amazon)
Tropes: Amateur Sleuth Mysteries, Paranormal Romance
Number Of Pages: 291
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
Last Words
There weren’t angels, nothing like what was happening in contemporary Europe at the Viking time. We know about Viking culture that comes from their side comes from archaeology. It does not come from anything that was written down. But if you were interested in primary source documentation from the peoples that they were raiding, I recommend reading the Frankish and Irish Annals of the years they were active.
In particular, the Irish Angels are probably of far more interest because there was a high amount of Norse activity in Ireland throughout the period. In fact, Dublin was founded by the Vikings, and it saw a lot of activity from famous Vikings such as Ivar, the Boneless.
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