I got a nice “birthday present” last week. It was a free copy of this book. It was sent to me by its designer, who is the son of the author.

The story behind the gift goes like this. In the course of my researches for my novel, The Year of the Warrior, I made contact with a fine woman associated with a historical society in the Stavanger, Norway area. She put me in touch with Dr. Torgrim Titlestad of the University of Stavanger. Dr. Titlestad might be called a man with a mission. He’s a proponent of a revolutionary view of Norwegian history which traces the origins of the Kingdom of Norway to the western part of the country, rather than to the Oslo area, which has been the traditional, authorized view.

I promote the traditional view in TYOTW, by the way, mainly because I wasn’t aware of the new one when I wrote the first part of the book. If I’d known about the controversy, I’d have found a way to weasel around it.

Nevertheless I exchanged a number of e-mails with Dr. Titlestad, and he was able to put various materials in my hands which were extremely helpful in my research.

Some time later, he came out with a book called Norge Blir et Rike, (Norway Becomes a Nation), and he sent me a copy (not an inexpensive gift). I was delighted to find that he had included a picture of the cover of Erling’s Word (which was later incorporated in The Year of the Warrior) on one page of the book, as an example of English-language Viking fiction. This made me (I still insist on believing) a genuine academic citation, and thus an immortal figure.

This new book I’ve just gotten is to a large extent an updated version of that book, but they’ve done it in English now. And it’s got the Erling’s Word cover on page 296. I’m even in the index.

Information on the book can be found here. The headline is Norwegian, but most of the text is English. I’d urge you to buy a copy, but you have to order it from them for now, and shipping would be high, on top of the cost of the book, which isn’t negligible. They’re looking for an American distributor. If you have any suggestions, contact me, and I’ll pass it on.

(This business, by the way, is not connected in any way to my own pending book deal. I expect to have something to report on that pretty soon.)