Scandinavia in the Age of Sail
A HISTORY BLOG
A history blog on the Great Northern War, Sámi history as told in the works of Just Knud Qvigstad, and the sea trade in Northern Europe in the early eighteenth century. A hobby, the blog is ad-free.
An historical fiction book series set in eighteenth century Denmark-Norway, woven with war, romance, and a thread of Norse myth and folklore. Nine no-spice novels under construction.
Original art created for this website by @kris_tinsart.
Karen Nyenhuis
Author
I learned to write decades ago at Wellesley College, where I wept over paper essays covered in red ink, studied French and computer languages, and met women with myriad world views. I have read widely on military and religious history prior to 1750 in Northern Europe. I am also related to the late Norwegian linguist and Sámi historian Just Knud Qvigstad.
A particular soldier in the Norwegian artillery inspired six years of research and a mostly fictional story world spanning four decades and four countries. As of October 2026, I’ve written 381,000 of 720,000 words in the not-yet-published series of nine novels.
All writing on my blog and in my books is my own, with no AI generation or revision. I use only Scrivener’s built-in spell check and text-to-voice to read my words out loud to me.
Harald stepped onto the wharf and breathed in the familiar salt air of the place he’d pledged his life to protect: a small harbor encircled by mountains and cluttered with ships.