Viking Boy: The Real Story by Tony Bradman

January 6th 2022

My latest book is called Viking Boy: The Real Story, and it’s the culmination of a long journey – one that began, in fact, in a South London primary school classroom more than fifty years ago.

My teacher during my last year at Malcolm Primary was the wonderful Mr Smith, and he read our class The Hobbit. I was utterly gripped by Tolkien’s tale, and from that time I was a dedicated, obsessed reader. I joined the library and whizzed through The Lord of the Rings, then sought out – with the help of that magical group of wise beings known as librarians – other books that would grant me the same deep enjoyment I had found in The Hobbit. That meant reading all of Rosemary Sutcliff’s books, plenty by Henry Treece, and many more. By the time I hit my mid-teens I had decided that books would be my future, too – I wanted to write stories myself.

The years rolled by. I went to university, became a journalist, got married, had some kids … I started reading them children’s books, then reviewing, and then began picture book writing myself. To begin with I wrote poetry and picture books, the beginner readers, but I always kept an interest in historical and fantasy fiction – a legacy of my obsession with Tolkien. I was always drawn to reading about history too, and had a special liking for the Vikings. Hardly surprising, really – the Viking Age is hugely interesting, and the Vikings made a long-lasting impact on the history of these islands.

But there’s another connection. What I didn’t know when I first encountered the work of Tolkien was that he was a Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, and that meant he also knew lots about the Vikings. Indeed, many aspects of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings come straight out of the shared myths and tales of the Anglo-Saxons and Vikings – the names of the dwarves (Fili, Kili, Balin, Dwalin…), Gandalf, a dragon sitting on a hoard of gold – it’s all set in that world, and I realized that, thanks to Tolkien, the Vikings were part of my reading and writing DNA.

And so the day came when a publisher offered me the chance to write a proper Viking story myself. A great idea for a title popped into my head – Viking Boy – and I then came up with a story to go with it. I ended up writing an adventure set in the Viking world: a boy’s quest to find his father, complete with great warriors and Gods and Valkyries, and as much action as I could squeeze into it. The kind of book I would have loved to read when I was ten or eleven – or for Mr Smith to have read to my class. I even went off to Norway and Denmark to do lots of Viking research.

Viking Boy has done very well, especially in schools – the Vikings are on the primary history curriculum. So it seemed like a good idea to follow it up with KS1 non-fiction books about the Vikings as well – and that book is Viking Boy: The Real Story. My publishers (Walker Books) came up with the brilliant idea of using Gunnar as the narrator of the book, and it was great to go back into Gunnar’s world; some of the other characters make appearances too. It also gave me the opportunity to do lots more Viking research, and I have to say it’s been a terrific project to work on.

Walker has done a great job with the design and illustration – I have to say I love the cover! – and I’m very proud of the book. I have a feeling I’ll be talking to lots of classes about it on school visits, real and virtual. And I know that I’ll be thinking of Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin Oakenshield, Smaug – and Mr Smith – when I do.

Viking Boy: The Real Story is out now.