Autumn Reading Challenge - A Book Based On A Historical Event

Clearly I'm not doing the challenge in linear order. I will, quite likely, be choosing what to read in a chaotic manner.

And we start with Sword Song by Bernard Cornwell.

May contain a bit of a spoiler (literally, just a bit).



This is the fourth instalment in Cornwell's Saxon series. I was introduced to the stories last year, around the time the BBC programme The Last Kingdom came out. I did watch the programme (not the greatest programme in the world), but I think I actually found the series because some bloke at work was talking to me about Vikings (that probably did include the t.v. programme - which I thoroughly enjoy).

The stories are based on the Danish invasion of England during the reign of King Alfred of Wessex. The time before England was England. The protagonist is Uhtred of Bebbanburg; an Anglo-Saxon warrior from the Kingdom of Northumbria, who speaks Danish, looks Danish, battles like a Dane and has Thor's hammer dangling from his neck. (The guy in the programme was sod all like the character in the novels). In Sword Song we are also introduced to the Norse invaders, who like the Danes, have their sights set on Wessex. The Norse show a lot of similarities to the Danes, and their army contains a lot of Danes. One of my favourite parts of the novel, was towards the end, with a Norse warrior willing to betray his kin and their goal of capturing Wessex, because he fell in love with their exceptionally highborn Anglo-Saxon hostage. (I did just give a way a giant spoiler). It plays on that trope of Norse man turns up in dragon headed ship, kills, plunders, takes Anglo-Saxon woman - adding a very human element to it.

King Alfred of Wessex is really the main component of the stories. Cornwell has incorporated historical notes at the end of the novels, noting his thought process for the stories. Cornwell has mentioned in these that his focus is on King Alfred and his desire to to unite England into one Kingdom. The historical notes are also a particular part I enjoy reading, for both the historical context and Cornwell's own thought process for writing the novels.

Sword Song is brilliantly written just like the previous novels, incorporating a very lovely mixture of fiction with history, as well as great gruesome battles.