In Poland, Mieskzo and Boleslaw the Brave, the first kings of Poland, are very well known . . . But nowhere in the textbooks is it mentioned that Mieszko had a daughter. I wanted to change the way of looking at that part of Polish, Scandinavian, and English history between 985 and 1017, events which previously seemed to be unrelated . . . Swientoslava was the causative axis. ~ Author’s Note
Swientoslava was better known by her Swedish name, Sigrid Storrada, meaning haughty. It is a point of historical fact that when she was widowed by Eric the Victorious of Sweden, who ruled c. 970 – 995, she burned a suitor alive for daring to offer a marriage proposal beneath her station. That this novel embroiders the tale two-fold calls into question whether or not Swientoslava also manipulated her second husband, Sven Forkbeard (King of Denmark 986-1014) with thinly veiled insults that he read as praise; whether she trained a pair of wild lynxes to guard her and her closest family; and whether she spent her life pining for Olaf Trygvasson (King of Norway 995-1000), as this tale would have us believe. But it makes for a good story and it preserves the spirit of the remarkably strong woman who was overshadowed in the history books by her more famous spouses, father, brother, and sons— Olaf the Swede (King, 980-1022), Cnut the Great (Ruler of England, Denmark, Norway, and parts of Sweden), and and Harold II of Denmark (King 1014-1018). To address Northern European history at that pivotal time without addressing her would be somewhat akin to addressing American history with no mention of Abigail Adams, Eleanor Roosevelt, or Barbara Bush.
This book, the first in a two-part series, while artfully written (and masterfully narrated by Cassandra Campbell at 9h. 23 m.), is not rife with quotable observations. But it should be required reading for informed feminists and fans of Bernard Cornwell’s Last Kingdom series of historical fiction chronically the Viking invasions of England.
Because it is translated from the Polish, there are no English author interviews or book trailers on YouTube for me to post, but there is this 8-minute biography of the widow queen.