The Long Ships : A Saga of the Viking Age [Hardcover]

Frans Gunner Bengtsson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1992

This saga brings alive the world of the 10th century AD when the Vikings raided the coasts of England. Acclaimed as one of the best historical novels ever written, this engaging saga of Viking adventure in 10th century northern Europe has a very appealing young hero, Orm Tostesson, whose story we follow from inexperienced youth to adventurous old age, through slavery and adventure to a royal marriage and the search for great treasure. Viking expeditions take him to lands as far apart as England, Moorish Spain, Gaardarike (the country that was to become Russia), and the long road to Miklagard. The salt-sea spray, the swaying deck awash in slippery blood are the backdrop to fascinating stories of King Harald Blue Tooth, the Jomsvikings, attempts to convert the Northmen to Christianity, and much else. Like H. Rider Haggard, Bengtsson is a master of the epic form.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"It's terrific fun, the kind of book that moves the fustiest of critics to pronounce it a rollicking yarn or something to that effect. Translation for us mere mortals: There are no boring parts to skip...Bengtsson writes the most delightful version of historical fiction...Here is the buried treasure, readers, newly unearthed. Now, go forth and read." --The Christian Science Monitor

"The literary equivalent of an action- and intrigue-filled adventure movie that won't insult your intelligence...Orm is a charismatic character, and Bengtsson is an infectiously enthusiastic and surprisingly funny writer — even readers with zero interest in the Europe of a millennium ago will want to keep turning the pages. All novels should be so lucky as to age this well." --NPR

"A household name in Scandinavian literature since its publication during World War II, the title The Long Ships is recognizable to English-speakers, if at all, from a tenuously related 1964 epic with Sidney Poitier. New York Review Books reckons to remedy that with this 500-page hunk chronicling 20 years in the life of Red Orm, a son of Skania, born during the reign of Harald Bluetooth, who first goes a-viking as a teen....And if the company of so many burly, bearded heroes can weary, Bengtsson's clear-eyed witnessing of a new world dawning does not." —L Magazine


 

“This extraordinary saga of epic adventure on land and sea…is a masterpiece of historical fiction…The Long Ships should be a rare delight. And not least of the rewards of reading Mr. Bengtsson's gorgeous romance is the sly humor that is sprinkled through it.” -Orville Prescott, The New York Times

 

Bengtsson “keeps his readers eager for the next chapter. He has a sharp eye for the picturesque and the comic in daily living, and though his style is sophisticated he often writes with a kind of festive abandon.” -Hudson Strode The New York Herald Tribune

 

“This is a lusty man's book that women, too, will enjoy.” -Margaret Widdemer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

 

“The Long Ships has many virtues of the true story-teller's art…Under the merriment and the fighting there is a great deal of scholarship as sound as it is imperceptible. Reading this marvelously good-humored ale-broth of a book, you say: this is how it must have been to be a Viking chief a thousand years ago. And not such a bad life at that.” -Burke Wilkinson, The New York Times

 

A “wonderful adventure novel…” -Phillip French, The Observer

 

“Offers lusty Vikings lusting and looting, bedding and battling across Europe from the Ebro to the Dneiper.” -Time Magazine

 

“A splendidly robust saga of the Vikings…crackles with humour.” -Daily Telegraph

 

“The author and his excellent translator bring that old, warrior world alive with such vigorous enjoyment and simplicity that the deeds of those men roving about the world in their dragon ships seem as marvelous as those of our atomic age.” -Daily Telegraph

 

“A boldly illuminated picture of the Northmen…confidently recommended.” -The Times (London)

 

“A remarkable panorama of a vanished way of life.” -Times Literary Supplement

 

“A banquet of adventure by sea and land, with man-size helpings of battle and murder, robbery and rape.” -New Statesman

 

“Lusty and uninhibited…a tour de force.” -Evening News

 

“Still the king of books about Vikings…the Vikings liked to row and sail and fight. That's what they do in this action-packed epic.” -Bookmarks Magazine

 

"Even though The Long Ships was first published in 1941, it remains the literary equivalent of an action-and intrigue-filled adventure movie that won't insult your intelligence...Bengtsson is an infectiously enthusiastic and surprisingly funny writer--even readers with zero interest in the Europe of a millennium ago will want to keep turning the pages."

--Michael Schaub, NPR.org

 

 

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Frans G. Bengtsson, Swedish essayist, novelist, poet, and biographer, was born in Tossjo, near Kristianstad, as the son of the manager of an estate in Skane. Bengtsson was the first successful practitioner of the informal essay in Sweden, a genre that he virtually introduced to the literature of his own country. His best-known novel is Rode orm (1941-45, The Long Ships), a Viking saga written in an ornate and romantic style. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Buccaneer Books (June 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0899669344
• ISBN-13: 978-0899669342
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (106 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,385,169 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

121 of 125 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally got it & read it!, August 18, 1999

By 

Stuart W. Mirsky "swm" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Long Ships : A Saga of the Viking Age (Hardcover)

Having heard so much about this saga-type novel I sought it eagerly & finally broke down & bought it via amazon uk (after a long & fruitless hunt stateside). Rather expensive for this paperback w/lots of typos & editing problems, I thought. But the book, I judge, was worth it in the end. The tale of Orm Tostesson & "friends", this book follows the adventures of this typical late tenth century viking through nearly all the high-points of vikingdom in the period. From raids & servitude on the coasts of Moorish Spain, to visits with Irish monks and dinner with the Danish King, Harald Bluetooth, and his assorted guests, including no less a worthy than Styrbiorn Olafsson, the Jomsviking and claimant to the Swedish throne about whom E. R. Eddison wrote so brilliantly in his own viking novel, Styrbiorn the Strong, this book takes us through all the paces. Orm ends up with a very noble wife living in a backwater part of Scandinavia (the borderlands between Sweden and medieval Denmark) but even there he gets no peace since his enemies and adventures pursue him. And in his maturity another and final adventure comes his way when he is summoned to the eastern reaches of far Gaardarike (the country that was to become Russia) to claim an "inheritance" of great value. Along the way, Orm makes some good friends, some bad enemies, participates in some (but by no means all) of the great events of viking history in that period, and finally mellows to become a better man who embraces the new way of thinking while yet feeling at home in the old.

I did think the book a bit too episodic though this is no indictment of it since the sagas themselves are nearly always such and the "voice" smacks very much of the sagaman's art. However, a close reading makes this very clearly a modern novel for the humor is quite bracing and alone marks this tale out as one of ours and not one from an earlier time. I especially appreciated Orm's hypochondria, despite his courage in the face of battle, a very human and humorous touch! And the fighting is all very realistic, no great superhuman feats of derring do (except occasionally as we find in the real sagas). Some of the literary technniques used, besides the marvelous sense of tongue-in-cheek humor, are also quite contemporary. I did think the tale a bit slow in places, especially at the beginning, and rather more predictable than not.

And, more, it is not, in my opinion the best of the viking or saga novels despite what others have said here. For tautness and action, none have yet done it better, in my opinion, than H. Rider Haggard with Eric Brighteyes. For the pure poetry of style, Eddison's STYRBIORN THE STRONG still has my vote. And for the resounding greatness of the tale and the power to move, no modern author has ever penned a better saga novel than Hope Muntz did with The Golden Warrior. But Bengtsson did a very nice job and deserves five stars for it. I take my hat off to him and to those here whose reviews obliged me to obtain and read this fine viking tale.

(For those with an interest in the saga as novel, a few other good ones I'd recommend include Cecelia Holland's very modern and psychological Two Ravens, a glimpse into the hot-house environment of an Icelandic farm, and Jane Smiley's The Greenlanders which tells of the final days of the the Norse settlement in Greenland as the cold and the Eskimos closed in around the settlers there. And if you still have any patience and want more, perhaps you'd want to try my own small effort, THE KING OF VINLAND'S SAGA, which I wrote to be the saga I'd always wished had been written and preserved about the Norse excursions to this part of the world. All, I believe, are available in some form or another on-line. Mine I know is.)

Stuart W. Mirsky
Author of The King of Vinland's Saga

55 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Funny and historically accurate, November 7, 2003

By 

isala "Isabel and Lars" (London, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Long Ships (Paperback)

This book is an eternal classic. Set in the height of Viking Age it tells us how Orm (Snake) is kidnapped by a band of marauding vikings. He then serves as a slave on a moorish ship, he is a mercenary among the muslims, he is marauder in England. He marries royally, settles, and goes on a treasure hunt for stolen gold in Russia. Bengtson uses the laconic language of the vikings to hilarious effects. The translator manages to keep it, which is great. The book is historically accurate with many historical events and persons interwoven in the narrative.

36 of 36 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Re-issue this book!!!, March 13, 2002

By 

Earl Merkel "earl" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Long Ships : A Saga of the Viking Age (Hardcover)

Every serious reader has had the experience: perhaps by accident --on a library shelf, or in a dusty box at a garage sale-- you stumble across an out-of-print book that seizes your imagination through its author's sheer mastery of the storytelling craft.

And you wonder: why, O why, doesn't the publisher re-issue this in lieu of one or another of the emminently forgettable titles in current release?

Such a book is THE LONG SHIPS by Frans Bengtssen, which crossed the Atlantic from Scandinavia to America in the early 1950s; like Leif Ericson, who made the same trip long before Columbus, this book lingered only briefly here before vanishing with scarcely a trace.

And that is a tragedy for anyone who craves an epic, lusty tale of Vikings and their travels-- told with a sophisticated humor that is both wry and understated and with a sense of historical perspective that blends so subtly into the narrative that one is staggered to later find it is painstakingly accurate. Thank you, History Channel-- but I heard it all first, and far more compellingly, from following Orm Tostesson's exciting voyages, enthusiastic plunderings and thrilling adventures in THE LONG SHIPS.

This book is a delight in every way: certainly, you can read simply for it for the lyrical use of language (it is, by the way, a translation from its original Swedish, and translator Michael Meyer deserves canonization for his masterful rendering of it into English). But it works well on so many other levels --as an action/adventure, or as a character-driven historical novel-- that to attempt to limit this book's sophisticated multi-layered appeal would be a disservice.

The copy I obtained (with great difficulty; it's hard to track down THE LONG SHIPS, but well worth the effort when you do) was published by Collins of St. James' Place, London. I understand Random House holds the American rights.

If there is any justice in the literary world --or wisdom left in today's publishing houses that is not measured with a cash register-- THE LONG SHIPS would immediately be reissued to a new generation of readers, to much fanfare from those of us who have already had the pleasure of reading it.

--Earl Merkel
(Author, FLU SEASON/THE FINAL EPIDEMIC and LIKE DISTANT CITIES BURNING, NAL/Penguin/Putnam, both scheduled for publication in Summer/Fall 2002.)