Brávellir: Vikings battle for the soul of the North
It is not an original idea to base an entire historical novel around one battle. Bernard Cornwell, the godfather of my kind of fiction, has been doing it for decades. But this is, I think, a first for me. Usually my novels have some other strands and end up with a big fight. For King of the North (Fire Born 4), I set out with the idea of recreating the legendary Battle of Brávellir and the rest of the story came later.
It’s an odd battle, for a start. And a pointless one, from a 21st-century perspective. The story goes that Harald Wartooth, King of the Danes, was growing old and nearly blind and was concerned about dying peacefully in his bed and therefore not gaining a hero’s afterlife in Odin’s feasting hall. So he made an agreement with Sigurd Hring, King of Sweden, to have a big battle so Harald could die gloriously. Mad, right? But then Viking thinking was different to ours. They would say, what’s the point of living a long life without glory? Dying in your bed, for a warrior, was shameful. Better to go out in the fine blaze of battle.
So the two kings and their armies agreed to meet at this place, near the modern town of Norrkoping on the old border between the kingdoms of Svealand and Ostergotand (now in mid-Sweden).
It’s is actually a perfect spot for a battle. It’s in border country where the forested heights of Svealand meet the fertile plains of Ostergotland, with a large lake to the west and a deep inlet of the Baltic Sea, called the Braviken, to the east. The Braviken allowed the fleets of the Danes to come right top to the battlefield, rather than having to march all the way there from Denmark through possibly hostile territory. The plain north of Norrkoping makes a good self-contained venue for a fight. And that’s were they met.
The numbers of fighters given are preposterous – hundreds of thousands fought and died, the sagas claim. But, if the battle happened at all, it was probably an affair with fewer than ten thousand combatants. And one interesting feature is that both kings engaged Viking mercenaries, famous heroes, to fight under their banners. One of the things I loved about researching this was coming across the names of the heroes who took part in the battle. For example: Saxo the Splitter, Thord the Stumbler, Throndar Big-nose, Rolf the Uxurious, Grettir the Wicked, Erling Snake . . . For King of the North, I invented a few more names, such as Hagnor the Fat-bellied, Egil Skull-splitter, and Hjorlief the Violator.
There were even, apparently, several famous shield maidens who took part in the battle as commanders of companies. Saxo Grammaticus, a 12th-century Danish historian and author, describes them thus: “On these captains, who had the bodies of women, nature bestowed the souls of men.” (Trans. Oliver Elton.)
But the participation of women did not make the battle any less horrific. It was a mass slaughter, a great bloodletting in which thousands perished. Saxo writes: “The steam of the wounds suddenly hung a mist over the sky, the daylight was hidden under a hail of spears.” (Trans. Oliver Elton). And at the height of the battle Harald Wartooth – so named because he had a tooth growing out of his jaw at an odd angle, that some said he used to gore enemies – was killed by his own steward, when that servant calculated that the king had garnered enough glory to gain admittance to Valhalla. I told you, it’s a very weird story.
Anyway, that legendary bloodbath is the basis of my forthcoming novel King of the North (Fire Born 4), which will be out in September 2023. I haven’t stuck all that closely to the narrative of the legend; I have made it my own tale, and hopefully a bit more plausible. I expect you will enjoy it all the same.
The Last Berserker (Fire Born 1) is available now for just £1.99 from Amazon; The Saxon Wolf (Fire Born 2) and The Loki Sword (Fire Born 3) are also out now.
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