The Swedish writer Sven Stolpe reports that somebody asked author Frans G. Bengtsson "what intentions he had with The Long Ships", to which Bengtsson responded that he had no particular intentions.
The research for the book was based largely on Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla and other old Icelandic literature, but also on medieval chronicles and contemporary research, and historic names, people and events were woven into the fiction.