Einar Unnsson is the central character of Tim Hodkinson’s Whale Road Chronicles, an 8-book Viking Age historical fiction series. Outlawed from Iceland as a young man, Einar joins his uncle Jarl Thorfinn “Skull Cleaver” of Orkney and is drawn into the brutal world of 10th-century Norse warfare and politics. Over the course of the series, he transforms from a fugitive into an ulfhednar, one of the feared wolf-skin clad warriors of Norse legend.
Einar’s story begins in Odin’s Game and runs through The Blazing Sea, tracking his development as a fighter, his tangled loyalties to family and faction, and his survival through some of the Viking Age’s most violent conflicts. Hodkinson uses Einar’s perspective to explore the culture, beliefs, and power dynamics of the Norse world with historical detail drawn from Old Norse literature and medieval sources.
Reading Order
See the complete The Whale Road Chronicles reading order for all books in the series.