In 1921 a 15-year-old Robert E. Howard picked up a copy of a pulp magazine and it changed his life. The magazine was not Weird Tales but Adventure, and its stories lent a new vivid reality to the historical eras Howard loved. He later described the experience in a July 1933 letter to H.P. Lovecraft:

“I was fifteen years old; I bought it one summer night when a wild restlessness in me would not let me keep still, and I had exhausted all the reading material on the place. I’ll never forget the thrill it gave me… it was an Adventure. I still have the copy.”

Howard later tried to crack the pages of the pulp as a young writer but failed, and eventually gave up the pursuit altogether. His stuff was selling well enough elsewhere, and this type of fiction demanded a higher standard of historical realism that would take him additional time to write and fact-check—time he did not have in abundance.

Adventure was not a historical fiction magazine per se, but its editorial guidelines demanded historical accuracy. Arthur Sullivan Hoffman, who edited the magazine during an early creative peak (1912-1927), made that clear with the column “Ask Adventure,” a place for readers to submit questions to the magazine’s international panel of experts. But Hoffman never allowed that commitment to displace red-blooded storytelling, and Adventure provided plenty of that.

Adventure… could there be any purer name for a pulp magazine and what it promised? It was in some respects the Weird Tales of adventure fiction. Many talented authors wrote for the long-lived pulp, which ran in various formats from 1910 all the way through 1971. In it you could find stories by the likes of Harold Lamb, Talbot Mundy, H. Rider Haggard, Rafael Sabatini, Baroness Orczy, H. Bedford Jones, Erle Stanley Gardner, Jim Kjelgaard, and many other notables, including one Arthur D. Howden Smith. Howden Smith delivered on the promise of Adventure with his serialized stories of the Viking Swain.

These stories have until now only been accessible to diehard collectors of the original magazine (the six stories in vol. 1 appeared from August 1923-May 1924) or through piecemeal internet searches. But DMR recently reprinted the Swain stories in a four-volume series: Vol. 1, Swain’s Vengeance (December 2022), followed by three more in quick succession: Swain’s Chase (Jan. 2023), Swain Kingsbane (April 2023) and Swain’s Justice (July 2023).

Howden Smith is perhaps better known for his epic Grey Maiden series, recently reprinted by Altus Press. But he worked very fluidly and convincingly in the Viking era. Howden Smith apparently based the Swain tales upon the Orkneyinga Saga, the Norse account of the jarls (earls) of the Orkney isles north of Scotland. I’ve got bit of a Viking fetish so this is like throwing red meat to the fan base. See some of my prior posts on the Northern Thing here.

Because I’ve read so many Saga adaptations and other Viking or Viking-adjacent stories I’ve got high shield wall standards, and Swain’s Vengeance does not crack my personal top five. I would not put this at the same level as H. Rider Haggard’s Eric Brighteyes (1890), E.R. Eddison’s Styrbiorn the Strong (1926), Frans Bengtsson’s The Long Ships (1954) or Poul Anderson’s Hrolf Kraki’s Saga (1973).

Does this mean the Saga of Swain is not worth your entertainment dollar?

Hell no.

Those books I mentioned above are among the finest I’ve ever read and Swain’s Vengeance stands just outside that ring, far better than most. These stories are 100 (!) years old and for the most part still read as vividly and cracking as anything published today.

Do you enjoy hall burnings, ship-to-ship combat on the high seas, murderous shield walls, and the terrifying torture known as the Blood Eagle? A man’s head ripped off by brute force during a 1:1 duel? I do, and you’ll find all that here. Along with bloody battles, betrayals, and twists and turns to keep you guessing. It’s a well told package with all the Viking trappings you might expect.

These are good enough that Howard Andrew Jones in an introduction to Swain’s Vengeance places the best of the Swain stories alongside Harold Lamb, an author for whom Jones goes to bat at every conceivable opportunity. Jones describes Swain’s saga as “one of the finest historical fiction sagas to appear within the pulps. It can be held up favorably against great works by Gilchrist and Brodeur, and Talbot Mundy, and Harold Lamb, and Rafael Sabatini. This is top-shelf adventure fiction, from a gifted writer working at the pinnacle of his talent.”

High praise indeed.

Swain’s story takes many twists and turns to keep the reader guessing, but the powerful narrative thread that underlies it all is that most primal of all stories: Revenge. The Viking Olvir Rosta does Swain a terrible wrong right out of the gate, and then proceeds to pile on the misdeeds and murder. Swain takes an oath of vengeance and we’re off.

There are no (or very little) overt displays of magic in the stories, although there are witches and curses and the like. But its handled as the stuff of suggestion. That curse you cannot avoid? It might be magic … or it might be your powerful belief in the gods compelling you to act. I am reminded of how it is depicted in the historical fiction of Bernard Cornwell.

Swain’s Vengeance is a manly book. Few women are featured, and Swain has little use for them, declaring, “The gods are well enough for women,” he said. “But a man puts his trust in his sword.” But there are a few females who are portrayed memorably. These include the witch Frakork, whom you cross at your peril. Swain’s mother Asleif is a badass, uttering lines of stone-cold Northern courage in the face of horror that leave you in awe. As here:

“Did you think to frighten me?” she laughed harshly. “I am the widow of a warrior, the mother of sons who never knew fear. My years have been spent in turmoil and suffering. Always death has ridden beside me. Always pain has been at my elbow.”

I commend DMR for putting out such handsome reprints. Someone must keep the classics alive. You can’t know where you’re going if you don’t know from whence you’ve come, and Swain’s Saga provides a stark and bloody roadmap for sword-and-sorcery. Sword-and-sorcery was inspired by swashbuckling historical adventure fiction and the larger than life, hard-edged “heroes” that strode through their pages, and there is no clearer evidence than the tales of Swain.

Swain himself is (at least in this first volume) rather one-note, boastful, all vengeance and not sparing of hard words for everyone including his friends. He doesn’t change much over the stories and is incapable of self-reflection. That doesn’t make him very likable or relatable. But this is true of many of the “heroes” of Saga literature and their sword-and-sorcery inheritors. Howden Smith’s prose style is sparse, a bit like the Sagas themselves. It might take modern readers a little getting used to and put some off.

But Swain’s Vengeance has more than convinced me to keep reading. I’ll be picking up Swain’s Chase to continue Swain’s pursuit of vengeance. Apparently he heads to Constantinople next, where Olvir has wormed his way in to commander of the Emperor’s Varangian Guards. I’m looking forward to the next installment of the saga.

Sources

Howard Andrew Jones, “Howard’s Journey.” Sword Woman and Other Historical Adventures

The Pulp Magazines Project, “Adventure Magazine: America’s No. 1 Pulp”

Brian Murphy is the author of Flame and Crimson: A History of Sword-and-Sorcery (Pulp Hero Press, 2020). Learn more about his life and work on his website, The Silver Key.