The Long Ships, Frans Bengtsson (or, what a year was 1954)

I have this very edition.

I’m not sure what was in the water in 1954, but can we have a little bit more of that, please?

That fabled year saw the publication of none other than:

• The first volume of the greatest work of high fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings
• Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword, arguably the finest book-length example of sword-and-sorcery/heroic fantasy
• The complete English language translation of Frans Bengtsson’s The Long Ships, one of the finest examples of historical fiction I have encountered.

Not a bad year (he says, with typical tongue-in-cheek Viking understatement).

To be fair, Bengtsson’s novel was first published in the early 1940s in a two volume set, but in Swedish, the author’s native tongue. Book one (The Long Ships contains four short books) was published in the United States in 1942 under the title Red Orm. But 1954 was the first time the complete book was made available to an English-speaking audience.

The Long Ships is quite simply terrific in almost every way. It’s a highly readable page turner, with adventure packed onto almost every page. It’s studded with good humor and some laugh-out-loud funny moments and exchanges, even in the midst of some pretty grim events. And it is the distillation of the Northern Thing. The Long Ships channels the old Icelandic Sagas into a modern style, while keeping some of the cadence of the language and literary conventions of this old story-style and preserving the spirit of that heroic age. The Sagas were known for their deadpan delivery of heroic deeds, nasty misadventures, and terrible tragedies that would leave us moderns standing slack-jawed in awe, horror, or incomprehensibility, and The Long Ships likewise delivers. For example: “The year ended without the smallest sign having appeared in the sky, and there ensued a period of calm in the border country. Relations with the Smalanders continued to be peaceful, and there were no local incidents worth mentioning, apart from the usual murders at feasts and weddings, and a few men burned in their houses as the result of neighborly disputes.”

Now, my neighbor sometimes lets his leaves sit on his lawn a little too long for my liking, and these sometimes blow onto my greensward. But I don’t burn his house down (with him in it) out of retribution. But I do live in a very different age (for which I thank God—mostly. An occasional murder at a feast would be nice).

The events of The Long Ships takes place the late 10^th/early 11^th century, during the waning days of the Viking Age. Many of the figures and places and battles are historical, including the likes of the battle of Maldon, which saw a Viking force rout an army of Anglo-Saxon forces led by Earl Byrnhtnoth in Essex, England in 991 A.D. We meet Harald Bluetooth, Eric the Victorious, and Sven Forkbeard, all figures from history. But in and around these real life people and places Bengtsson weaves a compelling fictional story about the life of a Viking, Orm Tostesson, aka. Red Orm.

I’ve got a fine seventh printing by Alfred A. Knopf from 1968. It contains some nice maps of the journeys of Orm and his men. We’re introduced to Orm as a young man, soon captured by marauding Vikings. He spends years as a galley slave, toiling at the oars and enduing the lash of the cruel Moors. After winning his freedom in honorable service as a bodyguard for Alamansur, Orm makes his fortune in raids across Ireland, England, France, and Scandanavia, culminating in a final sea-voyage for a lost fortune that takes him to Miklagard (modern day Istanbul) in Eastern Europe, down the river Dnieper. He settles down and raises a family. The old pagan beliefs and the likes of Odin, Tyr, and Thor are being driven out by zealous priests attempting to convert the Vikings to Christianity. Sometimes the Vikings beheaded these pesky priests, but sometimes they caved, finding the Christian virtues of humility and turning one’s cheek amenable to civilized living and a welcome respite from rapine and slaughter. It’s amazing how casually slaves were taken and sold in this era. The practice was merely part of the economy. There’s a wonderful depiction of a Thing and its method of adjudicating various disputes and grievances, often resolved with complicated weighing of fractions of silver, sometimes with mortal combat between hazel rods.

The most enjoyable sequence in the book is a six-day feast of Yule in the hall of King Harald Bluetooth. Wonderful stories are told and copious amounts of ale and pork consumed as an uneasy truce between factious Vikings is maintained. Ultimately violence spills over. Orm fights a sword-duel with Sigtrygg (a greedy bastard who desires Orm’s prize necklace) and kills him amid the benches in a makeshift arena before a cheering throng of revelers, but suffers a grievous wound. While recovering Orm meets his future wife, the beautiful Ylva, daughter of Harald. She’s wonderfully portrayed by Bengtsson as headstrong, passionate, and stubborn.

Bengtsson (1894-1954) by the way was an interesting dude and it’s a shame he did not live long enough to see the popularity his book eventually achieved in the United States. The dust-jacket of my volume proclaims him a famous resident of his native land of Sweden, poet, essayist, historian, and novelist, and author of several volumes of verse and essays. He was the author of a distinguished biography of Charles XII (“king adventurer of 18^th century Sweden”), and a translator who could read in seven languages. Bengtsson wrote The Long Ships during the first years of World War II, which provided a hell of a backdrop and a ready atmosphere for its mayhem and violence.

In closing, seek out and read this book. I’ll admit I whiffed on this old post from Black Gate and would now absolutely place it in my Top 10 Northern Inspired Stories. Like, high up on that list.