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Historical person
Magnus the Good was king of Norway from 1035 and king of Denmark from 1042. The son of Olaf Haraldsson, he returned from exile after the fall of Cnut’s North Sea empire and secured rule with the support of Norwegian magnates. He fought for Denmark against Wendish forces and shared power uneasily with his uncle Harald Hardrada before dying in 1047.
Novels about the generation after Cnut use Magnus to explore the rapid fragmentation of the North Sea empire and the continuing competition among Norwegian, Danish and English claimants. His reputation for severity followed by reconciliation, together with his rivalry with Harald, gives fiction a ruler whose saintly inheritance did not remove the practical demands of war and negotiation.
Series
The Wolves of Odin series follows Halfdan and the crew of the Sea Wolf from eleventh-century Scandinavia into the interconnected world of Byzantium, Italy, Normandy, England and Norway. Their blood feud begins amid Christianisation but soon becomes a wider search for wealth, honour and belonging among rulers who…
All books in this series
