[Hugin]

1) The Long Ships, by Frans G. Bengtsson. It is all about the life and times of Vikings in the 10th Century, and has been a best seller in northern Europe since it was written in the 1940s. Translated into 23 languages.

I'll have to read it. I do remember a corny but fun movie by that name from the 60s.

I would add to your list anything by Bernard Cornwell. Real page turners and you can learn tons about history. I love the historical notes at the end, because he separates out the fiction from the history, and lets you know what he has changed (not much). I really knew very little about Wellington's campaign in Spain and Portugal until I read his Sharpe's series. He gives an accurate description of every battle fought there.

[AnAmericanMother]

Cornwell is MUCH better researched than C. S. Forester (I also think he's a better writer, although he also inserts 20th c. mores and thinking into early 19th c. England, which in my view is wrong. Which is why I prefer Marryat).

My undergrad degree was in history with a concentration in military history - English Civil War, Napoleonic Wars, and American Civil War, mostly. He is right on the money, historically speaking.

[AnAmericanMother]

Georgette Heyer's Napoleonic War novels are a little bit of a hop out of the romance genre for her. "The Spanish Bride" is set in the Peninsular War, "An Infamous Army" at and around Waterloo.

And of course there's "The Fortunes of Harriette", written by Angela Thirkell (niece of Kipling and writer of the modern Barsetshire novels, bringing Trollope up to the 30s and 40s) under a pen name. Harriette Wilson was the courtesan who tried to blackmail Wellington by threatening to publish some imprudent letters he had written to her, eliciting his famous response, "Publish and be damned!"