Some books retell a legend. Others summon it. Dragonslayer’s Valkyrie: The Legend of Sigurd and Brynhildr by Jennifer Ivy Walker belongs firmly to the second kind — a lush, incantatory Norse fantasy romance that takes the oldest love story in Scandinavian myth and breathes salt, smoke, and seiðr into every page. The first installment in the Viking Dragonslayers series, it reimagines the doomed lovers of the Völsunga saga and the Poetic Edda not as distant figures carved in runestone, but as two fierce, flesh-and-blood souls fighting the gods themselves for the right to belong to each other.
The Story: A Wolf, a Falcon, and the Web of Wyrd
Sigurd, last of the Völsung line descended from Odin, earns his place among the Sjórúlfar — the elite Sea Wolves of southern Norway — through nine brutal trials of blood, breath, and frost. Brynhildr, daughter of the Raven King, is a shieldmaiden and gifted seeress who has glimpsed her destiny as a Valkyrie. When her father decrees she must wed the champion of the Sólhjarta Summer Solstice Tournament, she summons the goddess Freyja for counsel — and learns that her fate, her heritage, and her heart are all far more entangled than she ever imagined.
What unfolds is a sweeping saga of tournaments and blood oaths, dragon fire and Dwarven forges, winged horses and mirrored seas. The Norns tighten their threads with every chapter, and both lovers must decide how much they are willing to defy — kings, curses, even the wrath of the Allfather — to keep a vow sworn in starlight. Walker honors the bones of the original legend while weaving in inventive twists of her own, and she does it all without ever letting the mythology overwhelm the intimacy at the story’s center.
Characters Worth Following Into Battle
Brynhildr is the beating heart of this novel — a heroine who polishes her own armor, unhorses her own weapons master, and negotiates her own fate with a goddess. She is never a prize, even when a tournament tries to make her one. Sigurd, meanwhile, is far more than the archetypal dragonslayer; his loyalty to his wolf-pack brothers, his grief for a murdered father, and his raw, reverent devotion to Brynhildr give him a warmth that mythic heroes rarely receive.
The supporting cast is equally vivid:
- Kveld Nightwolf, the enigmatic vitki whose rune-craft and quiet prophecies steal nearly every scene he enters
- Freyja, rendered with both divine grandeur and aching maternal tenderness
- Agnar, the Bear of Bjarkhölm, whose bond with Sigurd gives the story its most moving portrait of honor between rivals
- Yrsa and Ulric, mentors whose devotion to Brynhildr grounds the fantasy in real human loyalty
The Writing: Prose That Reads Like Skáldic Song
Walker writes with what one early reader aptly called “the heart of a skald and the vision of a mythmaker,” and Dragonslayer’s Valkyrie: The Legend of Sigurd and Brynhildr by Jennifer Ivy Walker may be her most sensory-rich work yet. Her prose is deliberately rhythmic and alliterative — waves of wyrd, seed and seiðr and soul — echoing the cadence of the Norse verse that inspired it. You taste the honeyed mead and grilled salmon of the feast halls. You smell juniper smoke curling from a völva’s hearth. And you feel the sting of icy spray as Sigurd claws his way up a waterfall cliff.
Her attention to authentic detail is remarkable. The rituals of rune-casting, the structure of a blót offering, the recurring sacred numbers of three and nine, the drakkar longships and lamellar armor — everything reflects genuine research into Viking Age culture and Norse cosmology, filtered through a romantic’s eye for beauty. Readers familiar with the Sigurd legend will delight in recognizing its landmarks; newcomers need no prior knowledge at all, because Walker builds her world from the ground up with generous, immersive care.
Romance Written in Dragonfire
Make no mistake: “Dragonslayer’s Valkyrie” is a passionate, sensual romance as much as it is an epic fantasy. The bond between Sigurd and Brynhildr — sealed in seiðr, marked by the ouroboros, tested across realms — is fierce, fated, and refreshingly free of manufactured misunderstandings. Their love story burns hottest in its quietest moments: a braided lock of hair, a whispered vow on a moonlit balcony, a promise made “beyond fate and the gods.” Readers who love their romance steamy should know Walker does not fade to black; readers who love it soulful will find the emotional intimacy runs even deeper than the physical.
Who Will Love This Book?
- Fans of Norse mythology retellings who want the Sigurd and Brynhildr legend given the full romantic-epic treatment
- Romantasy readers seeking a fated-lovers story with genuine mythological weight behind the fate
- Lovers of shieldmaiden heroines who fight, prophesy, and choose for themselves
- Anyone enchanted by immersive, sensory worldbuilding — feasts, fjords, forges, and firelight
- Series readers who enjoy a satisfying, complete arc that still plants seeds for the next installment
About the Author and Her Other Works
Jennifer Ivy Walker is an award-winning author of medieval Celtic, Nordic, and paranormal romance. A former professor of French with an MA in French literature, she brings scholarly depth to her mythic settings — evident here in the story’s evocative journey through alpine Francia and the marshlands of the Camargue. Readers new to her work may want to explore her Tristan and Isolde-inspired trilogy beginning with The Wild Rose and the Sea Raven, her Nordic romances Dragon of Denmark, Wolf of the Nordic Seas, and Falcon of the Faroe Islands, or standalones like The Witch of the Breton Woods and Amour in Avignon.
Similar Books You Might Enjoy
- The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
- Sistersong by Lucy Holland
- The Weaver and the Witch Queen by Genevieve Gornichec
- Daughters of the Storm by Kim Wilkins
- Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman (for the source legends)
- The Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne (for Norse-inspired epic fantasy)
Final Verdict
Dragonslayer’s Valkyrie by Jennifer Ivy Walker is a triumph of romantic mythmaking — an epic that honors its thousand-year-old source while giving its lovers something the original sagas never did: hope forged in dragonfire. It is immersive without being dense, passionate without losing its mythic gravity, and paced so that tournaments, sea voyages, and divine confrontations arrive in satisfying waves. By the final page, you will understand exactly why skálds sang of these two — and you will be counting the days until Viking Dragonslayers, Book 2.
If you read one Norse romantasy this year, let it be Dragonslayer’s Valkyrie: The Legend of Sigurd and Brynhildr by Jennifer Ivy Walker. The Norns, one suspects, have already woven it into your fate.
