Northlanders Research Source List

(re-posted from an earlier version of this site)

Partial list of the sources and texts that were part of Brian Wood’s research for the book:

Non-fiction
-The Anglo-Saxons by Geoffrey Hindley
-Queen Emma and the Vikings by Harriet O’Brien
-Gods and Myths of Northern Europe by HR Ellis Davidson
-The Far Traveler by Nancy Marie Brown
-1066: The Year Of The Conquest by David Howarth
-Wars Of The Irish Kings by David Willis McCullough
-The Barbarian Conversion by Richard Fletcher
-The Druids by Peter Berresford Ellis
-The Viking Art Of War by Paddy Griffith
-Collapse by Jared Diamond
-The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey and Danny Danzinger
-The Vikings by Jonathan Clements
-1066: The Bayeux Tapestry by Andrew Bridgeford
-Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga edited by Fitzhugh and Ward
-The Norsemen by Count Eric Oxenstierna
-The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings
-Battle and Warrior by HR Grant
-Battles Of The Medieval World
-Warfare: The Middle Ages 768-1487
-The Viking World by James Graham-Campbell

Sagas and Ancient Texts
-The Sagas of the Icelanders
-Orkneyinga Saga
-The Vinland Sagas
-The Sagas of the Jomsvikings
-The Tain translated by Thomas Kinsella
-Alfred The Great (Asser’s Life of King Alfred)
-The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
-Beowulf

Modern Fiction
-Vinland and Magnus by George Mackay Brown
-The Ice-Shirt by William T. Vollman
-Saga by Jeff Janoda
-The Thrall’s Tale by Judith Lindbergh
-The Sea Road by Margaret Elphinstone
-The Saxon Series by Bernard Cornwell
-Eaters Of The Dead by Michael Crichton
-Conscience Of The King by Alfred Duggan
-Viking Trilogy by Tim Severin
-Thunder God by Paul Watkins

My Top Five Viking Battles

As written for the Vertigo: Graphic Content blog:

Maldon-summertime, 991AD, a large force of Viking raiders landed on what is now Northey Island, Essex, England, and waited for the tide to recede in order to launch a full scale invasion of the mainland. Opposing the Vikings was a much, much smaller party of Saxons. When the tide receded, the Vikings were horrified to see that there was only a narrow causeway for them to advance over, a strip of land that could handle no more than three men abreast. The Saxons were easily able to hold them off. Frustrated at seeing his men cut down, the Viking leader appealed to the Saxons to “fight fair”. Amazingly, the Saxon leader did just that and let the Vikings all come ashore to fight in a conventional manner. They were, of course, defeated, and the Saxon leader beheaded. His name was Byrhtnoth, and you can find a huge statue of him at Maldon today. He’s regarded as a local cult hero, a man with a stout heart that faced overwhelming odds, but other accounts point to his sin of pride and arrogance.

The Northlanders connection: a similar tidal footbridge was featured in “The Shield Maidens” (#18, 19) and I have notes for a future story about The Battle Of Maldon.

The Siege Of Paris-nearly a full year, starting in 885. I love how wonderfully political this was. But first things first: the invading Viking force was comprised of some seven hundred ships and 30,000 men, which was by and far the largest assembly of Vikings At War that I’ve come across in my research. Most Viking battles were small, resembling more gang warfare than the huge CGI battles you see in films. If you could put 700 men in a shield wall, you’d be a force to be reckoned with (this 30k number is often disputed). Anyway, the Viking are starving the French out, and probably would have succeeded if not for Charles The Fat, emperor of the Franks, who paid the Vikings to leave (history tells us this was a very common and effective way to get Vikings to leave you alone). Included in that deal was permission for the Vikings to rape and pillage Burgundy, no friends of Charles The Fat.

The Northlanders connection: none so far, but if I have the chops, I’ll find a way to research this properly for a story. How can you resist the idea of Vikings in Paris?

Lindisfarne - 793. Not much of a battle. Not a battle at all, actually, but possibly the most famous sacking in history (second to Rome). The Christian Saxons had a really unfortunate habit of consolidating their wealth in possibly the easiest and most recognizable of locations, if you’re looking to remove it by force: churches. This was probably not the first Viking raid on the coast, but it was the first so famously recorded: “…never before has such terror appeared as we have now suffered from a pagan race…” It was the unthinkable, and so you can forgive the Northumbrians for leaving their heaps of silver and gold guarded only by fat monks this ONE time, but that treasure box called a monastery was returned to again and again by the Vikings as it kept being replenished.

The Northlanders connection: issues #9-10 show the Lindisfarne raid through the eyes of a young boy who sees the Vikings as his personal heroes.

Edington - 878, England. This is one of my favorite tidbits from this time period. The Viking invasion, occupation, and, really, colonization of England was well underway, to the point that these occupied territories had a collective name: The Danelaw. King Alfred (not yet The Great) had been pushed back and back to the point that he and his men occpied nothing more than a few square miles of marshland. Literally, the future England was comprised of just that, that bit of marshland, and that’s how close we were to a Daneland and all of us now speaking Danish. But Alfred was able to put together enough of a coalition to meet the Vikings (under the Dane Guthrum) at Edington and save both his kingdom and his dream of a unified land (England). While I strongly dispute the Bishop Asser’s account of the sickly and pious Alfred himself slaughtering scores of Northmen, he earned his title The Great.

The Northlanders connection: none, really, although the Vikings’ occupation of the British Isles is the backdrop for most of the Northlanders stories to date.

Stamford Bridge - 1066, three days before the Norman Invasion of England by William The Conqueror at Hastings. The Viking rule of England was on the wane, and in a last ditch effort to maintain his Northumbrian holdings, Tostig Godwinson invited the Norwegian King Harald across the water to help. The two combined armies met at Stamford Bridge, and as the result of sheer recklessness on Harald’s part, he took an arrow in the throat and died. More reinforcements were to come, but the tide of history turned and the Vikings proper were repulsed. I say proper, because this three-way battle illustrated how the Vikings, over the course of the last couple hundred years, had assimilated themselves into these lands. (Norwegian) King Harald was fighting (the Danish) King Harold (of England), who, three days later as I said, was defeated by William of Normandy (the Normans being of Viking heritage).

The Northlanders connection: too complicated for my blood.

Partial List Of The Source Texts

Partial list of the sources and texts that were part of my research for the book:

Non-fiction
-The Anglo-Saxons by Geoffrey Hindley
-Queen Emma and the Vikings by Harriet O’Brien
-Gods and Myths of Northern Europe by HR Ellis Davidson
-The Far Traveler by Nancy Marie Brown

Read more »

Two New Northlanders Interviews up on Newsarama

Part One

Part Two

Written by Chris Arrant, they cover the recent single and double-issue stories, starting with “The Viking Art Of Single Combat” and ending with “Sven The Immortal” (#20).  From concept to research to the process of writing and how the artwork brings it all together.

What Is Northlanders?

Vertigo On the Ledge: with Brian Wood (written Nov ‘07)

Pitch me a monthly series, my editor Will Dennis told me. But something different, break out of your box. And so I did. The first line of the NORTHLANDERS proposal was: “A nihilistic crime saga set in A.D. 870, when much of England was under Viking rule.”

I’ve always loved Vikings. As a kid, I thought they were these badasses in fur and horns, watched over by scary gods of thunder and death, lissome shieldmaidens at their sides, all stalking the frozen northlands. All pretty great stuff to a 12-year-old, but I knew I needed to do something more, that it needed the maturity and sophistication Vertigo is known for.

I began to read, dozens of books. I went to Iceland. I went back and looked at photo albums from my many trips to Scotland – Orkney especially, the setting for the first NORTHLANDERS story arc. I set aside the mythology and the fairy tales, focusing mostly on history and day-to-day life. What I found most interesting was how the world was at the start of the Viking Age, coming up on the first thousand years of European history. Why the Vikings had to do what they did, and how, in a relatively short (and incredibly violent) time, they pulled Europe out of its dark ages and changed the world, albeit by swordpoint.

We went through many drafts of that pitch. It’s more than just a gritty crime story now, and I changed the date to 980. It’s become a series about millennial fears, clash of cultures and the death of the pagan way of life and the relentless march of progress. About one man, a stubborn Norse warrior in massive denial about who he is, reconnecting with the remote lands he grew up in.

And, since this is a book about Vikings, there’s a lot of sex and a lot of death – desperate men locked in shield walls fighting for their land and their lives yard by blood-soaked yard.

I broke out of my box, sure enough. But I’m still writing about the ideas I always do: identity, location, politics, war, people in love and lives in flux. It’s just set a thousand years in the past and with a lot more swords. I think the 12-year-old me would approve.

—Brian Wood

North #11: In 5 Years My Daughter Will Hate Me…

…when she finds and reads this Northlanders scene I just wrote where six dogs are cut to pieces. Similarly, Ryan Kelly’s kids will have nightmares for two months about how Daddy killed the puppies. Also from the script, this description:

“For this entire scene, Ryan, Magnus will be only partially stitched up, two feet of suture whipping around with the curved needle still attached.”

Heads-up, Ryan.