Henry Treece (b.1911, d.1966) was a British teacher, editor, and Army intelligence officer who became a poet and playwright, then a writer of historical fiction for children. Many of his books are set in early Britain, before the Norman conquest. Viking’s Dawn is the first book in a trilogy about the Vikings and their incursions into the British isles during the mid-eighth century.

In this novel Harald Sigurdsson, a Norse boy, signs onto a Viking ship, The Nameless, and agrees to serve its master, Thorkell Fairhair. As the ship sails out to plunder the coasts of England and Scotland, Harald sees men injured, drowned, and killed in battle, and Harald himself kills his first man with his Viking sword. I won’t give too many spoilers, but suffice it to say that voyage does not go as planned and the plunder is somewhat lacking.

Viking’s Dawn is a violent book, but the Viking life was a violent, and sometimes short, life. The story feels authentic, not watered down for young readers, but also not steeped in gratuitous blood and gore. If your young reader, middle grades through young adult, wants to get an idea of how real Vikings lived and fought and thought, this book is well-researched and detailed, without getting bogged down in too much explication to the detriment of action.

I would be interested to find and read Mr. Treece’s other two books in his Viking trilogy, The Road to Miklagard and Viking’s Sunset.