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.
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 384,000 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.