I know a fantasy book that actually has a diverse Viking crew sailing to Africa.
The book features a chapter about a Viking voyage, which is set just after a Norman invasion of England. A pair of knights from England head off for retirement, evading capture from Moors and joining up with a Viking captain named Witta. Witta’s crew includes:
- “Kitai”, a Viking navigator from China. Kitai is described using stunningly racist terminology, in order to make it really clear that this person is Definitely An Asian Person From Asia.
- An African Grey parrot, which originates from the Congo.
- Warrior “Thorkild of Borkum,” who was once a slave to a “King in the East”
- References to “Hlaf the Woman” who wrote the manual, or Ship-book, that they use to navigate. We are told that she “robbed Egypt.”
Witta’s father traded on the African coast: “Witta told us that his father Guthrum had once in his life rowed along the shores of Africa to a land where naked men sold gold for iron and beads.”
Witta decides to repeat this journey. They put in somewhere near equatorial Africa and the locals hire them to kill some gorillas for them (?!) rewarding them with gold. The encounter is successful, and the crew splits up in England, with the knights bringing their share of the gold back to Sussex and the main plot of the book, and Witta going back to Stavanger.
The book also has scenes set on Hadrian’s wall in Scotland, somewhere around the year 400, in which the Roman soldiers battle the “Winged Hats” from Scandinavia. The Romans are explicitly described as a multiracial bunch, with men from all over the Roman empire, naturally including soldiers from Africa and Asia. I think a lot of people forget about the interactions between the native Celtic peoples of Britain, the Roman empire, and the Scandinavians.
The book was written by a Nobel Laureate 110 years ago. It is the seminal fantasy novel Puck of Pook’s Hill, by Rudyard Kipling, and it was published in 1906.
It is a problematic text, but it serves to demonstrate that “racist discomfort” is an artifact of more recent colonial history - previously, diversity in fiction was an exciting demonstration of the Rich and Varied Heritage of the Glorious British Empire. Because Kipling was, of course, the definitive Great White Colonialist.
Now, if an imperialist colonial propagandist writing 110 years ago decided he wanted to tell a fantasy story about how African gold brought to England by Vikings was responsible for the signing of the Magna Carta, and he did this by having his Vikings sail to Africa with a Chinese navigator, and his intention in doing so was to show off the might and diversity of the British Empire and how its Ideals of Justice were thus knitted together “as natural as an oak growing,” then I think modern fantasy fans can probably take a seat and listen to their own great-granddaddy.
