I enjoy a good bit of heroic fantasy. Mostly. If only I can banish the sneaking voice at the back of my mind whispering that isn’t this all a bit… well… silly? Or, worse, redundant? I mean, the family politics of medieval Europe inspired Game of Thrones, so why not just read a history book?

And if you should be in a similar camp, then may I recommend the Templar Trilogy by Swedish author Jan Guillou?

Guillou himself is an interesting character—an investigative journalist and spy writer who did time in jail for revealing that the land of cuddly, Volvo-driving Abba fans has a secret intelligence agency that can match the CIA dirty trick for dirty trick. That’s life on the front line of the Cold War.

His character, Arn Magnusson, is a local Swedish folk hero, because Guillou cleverly takes Arn’s fictitious life and wraps it into real history in the form of the birth of the modern kingdom of Sweden. The battles he was involved in all happened. The places are all real and visitable. And with a bit of handwaving, the fictitious Arn becomes the grandfather of the very real national hero Birger Jarl.

In the first book, The Road to Jerusalem, Arn is born into minor Swedish nobility and for various reasons spends most of his childhood raised by monks, including an ex-Templar who teaches him various extracurricular non-monkly fighting skills.

This is handy because, at the end of the book, Arn inadvertently sleeps with two sisters (in series, rather than parallel—and, hey, it could happen to any innocent young lad from the monastery), one of whom is his true love and one of whom is a scheming minx. For this sin he must do twenty years’ penance as a crusader in the Holy Land.

This brings us to the second book, The Templar Knight, which switches between Arn’s story and the story of the second crusade, and his beloved Cecilia doing her own twenty years’ penance in a convent back home.

From her perspective we see the birth pangs of the new Swedish nation, while Arn’s purity of heart, nobility and Christian virtue earn him the respect of Christians and Muslims alike, and make him one of the few crusaders, and even fewer Templars, to make it out of the Holy Land alive after the disastrous Battle of Hattin.

And finally—finally!—in The Kingdom at the End of the Road, Arn returns home, determined to use his military skills and considerable wealth to bring peace to his homeland and forge it into a new nation, the kingdom of the Sveas, or Svea Rige, as you might call it.

If you read heroic fantasy for the world-building, then medieval Sweden is described in enough detail to suit your every need, with no feeling of anything being contrived just to get a little extra buzz or laugh. (Plucking just one example from the air: Arn and Cecilia’s wedding night being unable to commence until the archbishop has made it up the stairs to bless them in bed.)

If you read it for the military clashing and banging, then Arn has it in spades. And the version of Christianity practised by the Swedes—a mixture of literalism, ritual, pragmatism and Marian veneration, all with residual pagan overtones—presses all the right buttons for anyone expecting arcane religions and magic. It’s exactly the same as reading heroic fantasy, except that there are no dragons and it’s a guilt-free trip.

Note: Nothing herein in any way precludes me from trying to write heroic fantasy if I ever decide that’s the direction my career should take. But, meanwhile, I specialise in helping other people turn their ideas into gripping novels, fantasy, factasy or any other genre within reason—and it keeps me out of trouble.