Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Long Ships is a Swedish adventure novel set in the late 10th century, following a Viking named Röde Orm from Scania through captivity in Andalusia, service in the bodyguard of Almansur, raiding in England, and an expedition to Kievan Rus. It portrays the political landscape of the Viking Age, including the courts of Harald Bluetooth and Ethelred the Unready, against the backdrop of Scandinavia's gradual Christianization.
The Long Ships was published in two parts: the first in 1941 and the second in 1945. Each part contained two books.
The Long Ships has been translated into at least 23 languages. The first English translation, by Barrows Mussey, was published in 1943 under the title Red Orm; later editions and newer translations by Michael Meyer use the title The Long Ships.
Bengtsson said he had no particular intentions. He told the writer Sven Stolpe that he simply wanted to write a story people could enjoy reading, comparing it to The Three Musketeers or the Odyssey.
Bengtsson based his research largely on Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla and other old Icelandic literature, supplemented by medieval chronicles and contemporary historical scholarship. He modelled the novel's language on the Icelandic sagas.
A British-Yugoslav film starring Richard Widmark and Sidney Poitier was released in 1964, though it retained little beyond the title and the Moorish setting. A planned Swedish adaptation in the 1980s, to be directed by Hans Alfredson and star Stellan Skarsgård, was cancelled for financial reasons; Alfredson's script was instead produced as radio theatre, broadcast in 1990. A 2014 Cannes announcement by Danish producer Peter Aalbæk Jensen of a two-film and four-part TV series was also cancelled.