13 Best Viking Books

Winroth examines Viking travel, trade, warfare, political institutions, and cultural life through archaeological evidence and medieval texts. The thematic account connects Scandinavian expansion with changes within Norse society and its interactions with the wider medieval world.

This hefty anthology gathers many of the classic medieval Icelandic family sagas in modern translation, tracing settlers, feuds, voyages, and everyday life in the North Atlantic world that later inspired Smiley’s own fiction about Greenland and Iceland.

Neil Price uses archaeology and written evidence to examine the Viking world from its Scandinavian roots to its overseas connections. The history explores belief, households, trade, political change, and violence, showing how these shaped lives across the period.

In ninth-century England, Uhtred is a Saxon noble’s son raised by Danes, torn between two cultures. When war threatens Alfred’s Wessex, he must choose where his loyalties lie—and what it will cost to reclaim his home.

Abducted as a boy and carried aboard a Viking ship, Orm enters a world of raids, rivalries, and unfamiliar cultures. Frans G. Bengtsson's historical adventure follows his travels through tenth-century Europe, combining battles and feuds with humor.

Outcast Osric lives a quiet life as a carpenter's apprentice until Norse raiders burn his village and drag him aboard their longship. Renamed Raven by their chief, he must earn his place in a savage warband and steal a sacred book that kings will kill for.

Framed as an edited manuscript of Ibn Fadlan’s travels, this tale drops an outsider into a Viking band’s mission. He witnesses a brutal mystery in the north that feels like a realistic root for a monster legend.

Starting with a small bead found in an English Viking burial, Cat Jarman investigates connections stretching toward the Silk Roads. Archaeological science, human remains, and traded objects reveal networks that linked Scandinavia with places far beyond northern Europe.

A Norse raid on an Irish ship leaves Thorgrim Night Wolf tangled in a fight over a sacred crown and the future of Tara. To save his son and shipmates, he must navigate Irish politics, Danish enemies, and treachery on every side.

In eleventh century Scotland and Orkney, Thorfinn grows from hard edged young earl to a ruler with a claim on a kingdom. Dunnett reimagines the historical Macbeth as a brilliant, dangerous man shaped by war, sea power, and ruthless politics.

Aspiring investigator Alva ventures into the woods with her wolf, Fen, despite reports of a kidnapper. A discovery pulls her into a Viking-world mystery involving hidden treasure and a code, as she follows the example of her uncle Magnus.

A historical epic set among Norse farmers in fourteenth century Greenland, this novel follows Gunnar, his sister Margret, and their kin as harsh weather, rigid beliefs, and failing trade slowly squeeze a remote colony toward isolation, superstition, and collapse.

On the Isle of Mann in 979, a dying monk holds a secret crucial to Crowbone's claim to Norway's throne. Gunnhild's opposition sends him and his companions into a journey that tests their sworn loyalties.