The novel and your collection

I think it's safe to say that by far the best novel I've ever read about Vikings is Frans G. Bengtsson's novel The Long Ships, set in the late 10th century AD, first published in English (translated from Swedish) in 1954; the Swedish original was published in two parts in the 1940s.. The edition I read was published in paperback in 2010 as part of the NYRB Classics series, with an introduction by Michael Chabon. One of the most enjoyable historical novels I've ever read.

 

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I say, "Goodbye to all that"

 

Now, that was a good book!

 

@DonnaML, I remember wanting to find a copy of Bengtsson as a kid; never did. ...Wow. Especially with an introduction by Chabon, the reissue sounds like it's worth scaring up.

 

I certainly think so!

 

...Sadly enough, regarding both historical fiction and television, what was easy to find as of the mid-later '70's left an arbitrarily, but emphatically (...no, this is going somewhere, Promise) indelible imprint on how I've related to both genres ever since. It can't not be great --and encouraging, for the projected future of the species-- that since then, each of them (as I'm told, often on what looks like good authority) have made profound advances since then. ...Okay, for fiction, Chabon and Umberto Eco are Way Up There.
...Yipe. For historical fiction, Eco's The Name of the Rose (set in early-14th-c Italy) also rates. His first novel published in an English translation. Not even his best; like, for instance, Hendrix, he got better as he went along.
...But even at that, The Name of the Rose (along with P. D. James's The Children of Men) is way up there among the best novels that were made into the worst movies. ...Wish there was a category for that in the Oscars ...along with 'Movies That Were Too Good to Get an Oscar.'