I’m excited to be working with Rachel’s Random Resources to be bringing you a stop of the Promises Of The Runes blog tour. I have the pleasure of bringing you a very exciting content piece, but before we get to that, let’s meet the author and take a look at the book.
Christina Courtenay writes historical romance, time slip and time travel stories, and lives in Herefordshire (near the Welsh border) in the UK. Although born in England, she has a Swedish mother and was brought up in Sweden – hence her abiding interest in the Vikings. Christina is a former chairman of the UK’s Romantic Novelists’ Association and has won several awards, including the RoNA for Best Historical Romantic Novel twice with Highland Storms (2012) and The Gilded Fan (2014) and the RNA Fantasy Romantic Novel of the year 2021 with Echoes of the Runes. Promises of the Runes (time travel romance published by Headline Review 13th April 2023) is her latest novel. Christina is a keen amateur genealogist and loves history and archaeology (the armchair variety).
Across The Web:
Website: http://www.christinacourtenay.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/christinacourtenayauthor?fref=ts
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ChristinaCourtenayAuthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PiaCCourtenay
Now that we’ve met the author, let’s take a look at the book itself.
He travelled through time to capture her heart.
The amulet was still in the palm of his hand. Was it some sort of conduit to the past? The image of the anguished woman in his vision was seared into his mind. Perhaps it could help him find her?
Ivar Thoresson is desperate for adventure. As an archaeologist specialising in Viking times, he wants nothing more than to travel back to the ninth century as his loved ones have done, to learn everything he can about the era which fascinates him. And whilst his adopted family have always made him feel loved, the chance to meet a true ancestor, the warrior Thorald, is a temptation he cannot resist.
But while Ivar is preparing to go, he uncovers an amulet which shows him a vision of an arresting woman with red-gold hair. Clearly in distress, she is pleading for help. Convinced of the power of the charm and its message, Ivar’s journey takes on a new purpose. He steps back in time determined to follow his destiny – and find the woman who has called to his heart.
Published: April 13th 2023. Headline Publishing Group. Page Count: 352.
Book Hype.
Goodreads.
The Storygraph.
Amazon.
Waterstones.
How good does this book sound? Now is the moment you’ve been waiting for, it’s time for a very exciting content piece where Christina talks about her adventures in researching for Promises Of The Runes. Check it out below.
PROMISES OF THE RUNES is the fifth book in my Viking Runes series, and for each one I’ve tried to find a unique setting. The Vikings were fearless adventurers and travelled extensively, so it wasn’t too difficult to imagine them going off to various places
In PROMISES OF THE RUNES, the hero Ivar ends up in Norway, although it wasn’t called that during Viking times and was not a unified country but rather a bunch of smaller kingdoms. Ivar is a 21st century guy who has travelled back in time to the 9th century, and as an archaeologist he finds everything of interest. I wanted to try and show the reader the same things he sees, and to do that I needed to visit Norway for myself as I’d never been there. It proved to be a fabulous journey, covering 1,230 km of the southern part of the country in five days!
I brought my older daughter along for company, and we started out in the capital Oslo. There I visited several museums, most importantly the Historical Museum where they had two relevant exhibitions – VIKINGR and FABULOUS ANIMALS from the Iron Age to the Vikings. The VIKINGRexhibition contained some of the most exquisite objects ever found from the Norwegian Viking era and I was delighted. There were beautiful brooches, a silver hoard, the famous Gjermundbu Helmet – the best-preserved Viking helmet in the world – a gold spur and lots of swords. The absolute highlight for me was one particular sword with the inscription VLFBERHT. These have been found throughout Europe and were supposedly the best ever made. They are thought to have come from workshops in southern Germany and presumably made by a smith called Ulfbehrt as the inscription is like a trademark. I had read about these but never seen one in real life, so this was a dream come true for me.
We rented a car and headed off on our adventure. Our first stop was THE VIKING SHIP MUSEUM on a small island outside Oslo called Bygdøy. It’s currently closed for reconstruction so we were lucky to catch it before the work began. It contained the famous Oseberg and Gokstad ships, found in ship burials in Norway, and they were both awesome. I have wanted to see the Oseberg ship ever since I first heard about it as a little girl and I wasn’t disappointed – it is quite simply stunning!
Our tour of southern Norway also took in a sort of Viking graveyard with 50 burial mounds of various sizes built between the years 600 – 1000 AD (called Borrehaugene) at Borre, the MIDGARD VIKING SENTER, next to the mounds, a small museum all about Vikings, and a huge replica chieftain’s hall that’s been built nearby, the GILDEHALLE. This provided the setting for the beginning of my story when the heroine is held captive by a king who wants to marry her off to one of his warriors. We also made a stop at KAUPANG, a site that used to be a trading town in Viking times. This is where the hero and heroine of PROMISES OF THE RUNES first meet. There is nothing left of the town nowadays, but I needed to look at the surrounding area to get a feel for the scenery at least.
We continued along the south and west coasts, and took in the beautiful fjords and spectacular scenery. When we headed inland, we ended up in a valley called Gudvangen that could have been the setting for a fairy tale. It was quite simply breathtaking and a perfect place for my heroine to live! There were steep mountains all around, and it was as though we were isolated from the rest of the world. It took the sun until midday to reach the bottom of the valley. Fortunately, for my research, there was a reconstructed living history Viking village there as well called Njardarheimr. Our guide allowed us to try our hand at archery and throwing a Viking axe at a tree stump. I was astonished when I managed to hit the targets on both counts!
These were just some of the sights we were lucky enough to see, and it all helped me to picture Ivar’s journey back in time. I hope the beauty of Norway comes through loud and clear in the book!
How amazing does this sound? I’d love to be able to take a trip like this one day. Don’t forget to follow the rest of the tour by checking out the bloggers included in the graphic below.
The Pufflekitteh Reads 