Q&A with Michelle Styles discussion

While I was writing Taken by the Viking, I knew that I wanted to tell Ivar's story. Anyway, I happened to read Queen Emma and the Vikings -- which is a biography of an 11th century English queen (wife to Ethelred the Unready and Canute) and peaceweaver. Her father was a Viking who settled in Normandy and he met her mother when the mother took her sister's place in bed. And I thought what an interesting premise. I did some more research and discover the whole concept of hospitality did extend to women sleeping with warriors. Several of the sagas mention it as well.
And I knew I wanted to look at the relationship of Viken to its immediate neighbour to the East. Surprisingly this proved slightly more difficult to research as really the only primary source documents covering the period had been well used by Tokien and Wagner to create their masterpieces. It would be difficult to have a king called Gandalf for example.