Eaters of the Dead

Eaters of the Dead is a novel by the American writer Michael Crichton, published in 1976 and later reissued as The 13th Warrior. It was the fourth novel he published under his own name.

The book is set in the tenth century and follows Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a Muslim Arab official whose travels take him north into the country of the Vikings. He attaches himself to a company of them and is carried along on their expedition to a settlement that is being raided by an enemy nobody can describe clearly. Crichton explains in an appendix where the material came from: the opening chapters retell ibn Fadlan's own record of his journey and his observations of the Varangians, and the rest of the book is a retelling of the Old English poem Beowulf.

The errand that strands him among them is diplomatic: the Caliph of Baghdad, al-Muqtadir, sends him as an ambassador to the king of the Volga Bulgars, and the northmen take him up before he reaches the end of it. Crichton presents the novel as a translation of ibn Fadlan's manuscript that has passed through later hands, with footnotes about wording that may have been changed.