Based on a true story, Harald's adventure takes him from a frightened teenager to wealthy and powerful warrior and finally, to a ruthless and tyrannical king, whose ambition leads him to a futile, yet glorious death at the battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066.

Now available in paperback, this is a rich and compelling account of the life of King Harald Hardrada of Norway, one of the greatest Viking warriors to have ever lived.

This compelling Icelandic history describes the life of King Harald Hardradi, from his battles across Europe and Russia to his final assault on England in 1066, less than three weeks before the invasion of William the Conqueror. It was a battle that led to his death and marked the end of an era in which Europe had been dominated by the threat of Scandinavian forces. Despite England's triumph, it also played a crucial part in fatally weakening the English army immediately prior to the Norman Conquest, changing the course of history. Taken from the Heimskringla - Snorri Sturluson's complete account of Norway from prehistoric times to 1177 - this is a brilliantly human depiction of the turbulent life and savage death of the last great Norse warrior-king.

Medieval Tales from the Bard Iron-Tongue is a collection of historical-fiction short stories concerning the adventures, battles, and conversion, or in one case, the non-conversion, of three Germanic kings (Clovis: King of the Franks, Radbod: King of the Frisians, and Harald Bluetooth: King of the Danes) and one Saxon nobleman (Widukind: Lord of the Saxons). These tales are framed by the stories of the life and death of the mysterious Bard Iron-Tongue. Each story in this collection will transport the reader in a unique way into early medieval life, telling an idea-rich, action-packed tale of Germanic tribal wars, personal ambitions, and evolving cultural and religious world-views. Medieval Tales from the Bard Iron-Tongue stands in the tradition of medieval literary works such as Beowulf and the Icelandic sagas or modern novels such as Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Tales, Stephen Lawhead's Byzantium, and Giles Kristian's Blood Eye.

In the dead of night, a band of Vikings ravage a lonely convent on the Brittany coast--and their fearsome leader makes a decision that will eventually lead to his downfall. Ranulf de Lannion is fifteen years old. Crippled, deformed and abandoned by his family to the charity of the convent, he is seized by the Vikings during a midnight raid. Contemptuously nicknamed The Scraeling by his captors, his future appears grim. Harald Sigurdsson, or 'Hardrada' as he will come to be known, is the leader of the Viking band. A violent mercenary with designs on the throne of Norway, Hardrada abducts The Scraeling on a whim. Ranulf grows into an invaluable asset, smoothing Hardrada's path over their thirty-five years together from mercenary to commander of the Varangian Guard, all the way to king of Norway. But all is not as it seems in the heart of Ranulf de Lannion. Having sworn secret revenge upon Hardrada for the murders at the convent, he vows to end the day of the Viking forever. When the king of Norway launches an attack against the Anglo-Saxon throne of England in 1066, what role will The Scraeling play in bringing the age of the Viking to an end?

Medieval accounts of how Norway was unified by its first king provide a lively, revealing, and wonderfully entertaining example of this process. Taking the story of how Harald Fairhair unified Norway in the ninth century as its central example, Bruce Lincoln illuminates the way a state's foundation story blurs the distinction between history and myth and how variant tellings of origin stories provide opportunities for dissidence and subversion as subtle - or not so subtle - modifications are introduced through details of character, incident, and plot structure.

Retells the saga, as written by Snorri Sturluson of Iceland, of the bloody conquests of a ruthless Norwegian leader whose death was brought about by King Harold of England.