Northern Europe, 976 AD. Bjólf and the viking crew of the ship Hrafn flee up an unknown river after a bitter battle, only to find themselves in a bleak land of pestilence. The dead don’t lie down, but become draugr – the undead – returning to feed on the flesh of their kin. Terrible stories are told of a dark castle in a hidden fjord, and of black ships that come raiding with invincible draugr berserkers. And no sooner has Bjólf resolved to leave, than the black ships appear... Now stranded, his men cursed by the contagion of walking death, Bjólf has one choice: fight his way through a forest teeming with zombies, invade the castle and find the secret of the horrific condition – or submit to an eternity of shambling, soulless undeath!

Laughing Shall I Die explores the Viking fascination with scenes of heroic death. The literature of the Vikings is dominated by famous last stands, famous last words, death songs, and defiant gestures, all presented with grim humor. Much of this mindset is markedly alien to modern sentiment, and academics have accordingly shunned it. And yet, it is this same worldview that has always powered the popular public image of the Vikings—with their berserkers, valkyries, and cults of Valhalla and Ragnarok—and has also been surprisingly corroborated by archaeological discoveries such as the Ridgeway massacre site in Dorset. Was it this mindset that powered the sudden eruption of the Vikings onto the European scene? Was it a belief in heroic death that made them so lastingly successful against so many bellicose opponents? Weighing the evidence of sagas and poems against the accounts of the Vikings’ victims, Tom Shippey considers these questions as he plumbs the complexities of Viking psychology. Along the way, he recounts many of the great bravura scenes of Old Norse literature, including the Fall of the House of the Skjoldungs, the clash between the two great longships Ironbeard and Long Serpent, and the death of Thormod the skald. One of the most exciting books on Vikings for a generation, Laughing Shall I Die presents Vikings for what they were: not peaceful explorers and traders, but warriors, marauders, and storytellers.

From the bestselling author of Jurassic Park, Timeline, and Sphere comes an epic tale of unspeakable horror. It is 922 A.D. The refined Arab courtier Ibn Fadlan is accompanying a party of Viking warriors back to their home. He is appalled by their customs—the gratuitous sexuality of their women, their disregard for cleanliness, and their cold-blooded sacrifices. As they enter the frozen, forbidden landscape of the North—where the day’s length does not equal the night’s, where after sunset the sky burns in streaks of color—Fadlan soon discovers that he has been unwillingly enlisted to combat the terrors in the night that come to slaughter the Vikings, the monsters of the mist that devour human flesh. But just how he will do it, Fadlan has no idea.

Filling a gap in the literature for an academically oriented volume on the Viking period, this unique book is a one-stop authoritative introduction to all the latest research in the field, and the most comprehensive book of its kind ever attempted.

976 AD - Northern Europe. Bjolf and the Viking crew of the ship Hrafn flee up to an unknown river after a bitter battle, only to find themselves in a bleak land of pestilence. The dead don't lie down, but become what the villagers call draugr - the undead - returning to feed on the flesh of their kin."

The body of the Eirik the Viking, known far and wide for the quality of his axes that can split a Saxon skull, is found downstream from the old mill. It appears that he was slain by his own weapon. Such a foul deed might not have been rare in eleventh-century Europe, but this is Otter Tail County, Minnesota. Sheriff Palmer Knutson determines it is a case of murder, and the rest of the members of the Viking camp are all suspects. The more he investigates, the more apparent it becomes that the happy band of creative anachronists who had set up their camp by Phelps Mill all had their own reasons for wanting to send Eirik to Valhalla. Almost every weekend during the summer they gather to dress in meticulously designed Viking clothing and armor, and all of the assembled campers have their special skills, including making Viking-era chainmail, knives, weaving, or jewelry. Intrigued by the history of the Norsemen, a young graduate student plans to produce a film about the last Viking, set in the year 1066. In the course of his investigation into the murder, Sheriff Knutson learns a significant amount of the history and myths of Vikings, and using deduction, logic, and finally his heart, he endeavors to solve yet another case.

Harald, a young early Viking, joins the great warrior Thorkell Fairhar for an adventure on board ship. But will he and the crew meet disaster and death or make it back home from the coasts of Scotland and Ireland?