Will you be watching Norway take on England this Saturday? I will be, and not just for the football. (It’ll be the dark viking fantasy vibes for sure!)
The moment I saw this matchup on the schedule, I couldn’t help but grin. Because as many fans and historians have already pointed out, this game is a rematch centuries in the making. It’s the same rivalry, the same tension between two peoples, that sits at the heart of my Viking fantasy series, Leifthasir’s Saga.
If you’ve read A Tale of Scorched Ash and Elm, you already know where this is going. If you haven’t, let me introduce you to the real-world history simmering underneath my fictional world — and why, when the whistle blows on Saturday, my loyalties are not remotely in question.
Leifthasir: Viking Fantasy Built From 8th-Century Scandinavia
The realm of Leifthasir isn’t a vague, generic “Viking kingdom.” It’s grounded specifically in 8th-century Norway and Sweden. The hall-culture, the lendmann and the Thing assemblies, the seafaring economy, the seidr and Norse mythology woven through everyday belief. Every detail, from wergild law (Seen in The Sea & The Stag Horn) to longship design, is pulled from real Viking Age Scandinavian history and the Eddas and Sagas that survive from it.
That grounding is deliberate. I wanted readers to feel like they’d stepped into an actual hall in an actual fjord, not a fantasy-flavored approximation of one.
Wexia: The Anglo-Saxon Shadow Across the Sea
Across the water sits Wexia, Leifthasir’s rival, and the polity built on Anglo-Saxon-controlled England. Where Leifthasir draws its identity from Norse law and myth, Wexia draws its from Anglo-Saxon rule, dynastic ambition, and a very different relationship to power and faith.
Wexia isn’t a cartoon villain-kingdom, either. Its politics, its royal house, and its conflict with Leifthasir are built from the same kind of historical texture, just from the other side of the North Sea. That’s what makes the rivalry interesting to write: it’s not good versus evil, it’s two real cultures with real, opposing claims colliding.
So a Norway vs. England Match Is Basically Leifthasir vs. Wexia
Once you know the parallel, it’s impossible to unsee (At least for me). A match between Norway and England isn’t just football to me; it’s Leifthasir and Wexia, still squaring off a thousand years later.
Needless to say, I know exactly who I’m cheering for on Saturday. Leifthasir, obviously. Some rivalries just don’t end.
Read the Book That Started It All
If this kind of history-grounded, myth-soaked storytelling is your thing, A Tale of Scorched Ash and Elm is where the Leifthasir/Wexia conflict begins; morally grey power plays and Norse myth brought to life in vivid, historically researched detail. It’s available now, along with the rest of the Leifthasir’s Saga series.
Get A Signed CopyCome tell me on Instagram or TikTok who you’re rooting for on Saturday, and whether you can spot the other real-world echoes hiding throughout the series.