Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings is a book by Tom Shippey about Vikings. It explores their mindset, and in particular their fascination with scenes of heroic death. The book considers Viking psychology by weighing the evidence of the sagas against the accounts of the Vikings’ victims. It recounts many of the great bravura scenes of Old Norse literature, including the Fall of the House of the Skjoldungs, the clash between the two great longships Ironbeard and Long Serpent, and the death of Thormod the skald.
