The Long Ships
Frans G. Bengtsson's Rode Orm follows Red Orm Tostesson, a Skanian youth kidnapped by Viking raiders and swept through a series of adventures across the tenth century world. He is enslaved on Moorish galleys, serves the caliph in Cordoba, raids England for Danegeld, converts uneasily to Christianity, and finally hunts hidden Byzantine gold on the Dnieper. Bengtsson writes with a dry, ironic voice modeled on Icelandic sagas, mixing bloody action with genuine comedy and a cool, humane view of men and their gods. Translated into more than twenty languages, The Long Ships has been called by admirers one of the best historical adventure novels ever written. It is a book people press on friends the way earlier generations pressed The Three Musketeers.
What you might want to know about The Long Ships
The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
A rollicking Swedish epic following the Viking Red Orm from captivity in Moorish Spain to raids across Europe and a fortune in Byzantium.
Yes. Lewis has named The Long Ships as one of the most enjoyable novels he has ever read, mentioning it in interviews and reading lists and steering literary friends toward it.
Loosely. Bengtsson set it in a real tenth century world of Vikings, Moors, and Byzantines, and Red Orm and his crew move through events that actually happened, though the characters themselves are fiction.
The Long Ships was written by Frans G. Bengtsson, published in 1941 by NYRB Classics.
The Long Ships is 503 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Long Ships takes most readers 8 to 11 hours to finish.
The Long Ships is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
