Wolves in the Hall (The Blood and the Crown)
A most unusual novelized history of Denmark in the 11th century, Wolves in the Hall begins with Emma of Normandy, dowager queen of England, on the night her son Harthcnut dies in 1042—the death also of her husband Cnut’s Danish-Norwegian-English empire—and follows the troubled succession of the Danish throne until the coming of King Niels in 1104.
The author is a Danish historian who does museum work in England, and the historicity is meticulous, but more important for the reader is the lean, lyrical voice, worthy of a skald, that makes reading this long book a treat. The scene-setting is superb. For those of us for whom Danish history is little known, be assured it abounds in fascinating characters like the Vikingesque Harald, a former Varangian Guard, the silent, calculating Sveyn, and pious (fanatical) Eric, who dies in Cyprus on pilgrimage. There is the terrible period after the death of Sveyn when his three sons—and then five—contend for the throne, while the Thing (council of thegns) and Church maneuver for their advantage.
It must be admitted that the latter chapters need an editor: the same episodes are repeated verbatim in a number of cases (!), and accounts of the ever-recurring conflicts start to seem a little déjà vu. The king known as Canute suddenly turns up as Knut, and it takes a minute to figure out he’s the same man, especially because there’s also a Cnut who is not the same. But by and large, this is a beautifully written history guaranteed to fascinate and inform.
