The Vikings: A History

by Robert Ferguson

Overview

A comprehensive and thrilling history of the Vikings for fans of the History Channel series, soon to return for its fifth season

From Harald Bluetooth to Cnut the Great, the feared seamen and plunderers of the Viking Age ruled Norway, Sweden, and Denmark but roamed as far as Byzantium, Greenland, and America. Raiders and traders, settlers and craftsmen, the medieval Scandinavians who have become familiar to history as Vikings never lose their capacity to fascinate, from their ingeniously designed longboats to their stormy pantheon of Viking gods and goddesses, ruled by Odin in Valhalla. Robert Ferguson is a sure guide across what he calls "the treacherous marches which divide legend from fact in Viking Age history." His long familiarity with the literary culture of Scandinavia with its skaldic poetry is combined with the latest archaeological discoveries to reveal a sweeping picture of the Norsemen, one of history's most amazing civilizations.

Impeccably researched and filled with compelling accounts and analyses of legendary Viking warriors and Norse mythology, The Vikings is an indispensable guide to medieval Scandinavia and is a wonderful companion to the History Channel series.

"Integrating archaeological, genetic, linguistic, and literary information, Ferguson realizes a Viking history bound to satisfy." -Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143118015
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/28/2010
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	94,966
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Robert Ferguson began his literary career as a radio dramatist, translating and adapting for radio works by Knut Hamsun and Henrik Ibsen for the BBC. His first literary biography was Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun, which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Best Biography Award. As well as literary biographies, Ferguson has written two novels, published in Norwegian.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations ix

List of Maps xi

Introduction 1

1 The Oseberg Ship 9

2 The culture of northern Heathendom 20

3 The causes of the Viking Age 41

4 'The devastation of all the islands of Britain by the Heathens' 58

5 The Vikings in the Carolingian empire 83

6 Across the Baltic 108

7 The Danelaw I: Occupation 132

8 The settlement of Iceland 154

9 Rollo and the Norman colony 174

10 The master-builder: Harald Bluetooth and the Jelling Stone 196

11 The Danelaw II: Assimilation 216

12 When Allah met Odin 245

13 A piece of horse's liver: The pragmatic Christianity of Håkon The Good 263

14 Greenland and North America 280

15 Ragnarök in Iceland 298

16 St Brice, St Alphege and the Wolf: The fall of Anglo-Saxon England 325

17 The Viking saint 348

18 Heathendom's last bastion 364

Notes 383

Index 421

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Integrating archaeological, genetic, linguistic, and literary information, Ferguson realizes a Viking history bound to satisfy." —-Booklist

Editorial Reviews

"Integrating archaeological, genetic, linguistic, and literary information, Ferguson realizes a Viking history bound to satisfy." -Booklist

From the Publisher

Ferguson (Enigma: The Life of Knut Hamsun; Henrik Ibsen: A New Biography) offers a comprehensive overview of the Viking age, covering mythology and tradition alongside the many bloody forays Viking warriors made into Europe and the North Atlantic between roughly 790 and 1100 C.E. Although Ferguson often notes how incomplete the source material is, he tells a full and lively story and is transparent about where records or interpretations diverge. The narrative occasionally threatens to get bogged down in a confusion of Olafs, Olavs, and Olofs, but Ferguson keeps the pace up with numerous fascinating tidbits. He describes Viking words still used in modern English, the Viking origins of major British cities, and the dark rituals the community hung onto as Christianity crept into Denmark, Scandinavia, and Iceland, eventually bringing the population into a more peaceful modernity. VERDICT Ferguson has produced a readable and accessible book that will serve as a solid introduction to Viking history, even for those with no previous knowledge of the subject.—Elizabeth Goldman, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.\

Library Journal

Scandinavian studies scholar Ferguson puts the violence back in the Viking Age in his knotty, dense, intriguing look at these restless voyagers and conquerors. The so-called Viking Age-roughly between 793 CE, with the raid on the island of Lindisfarne, and 1066, with the Battle of Hastings-got under way when the sea-faring Norsemen began their marauding infiltrations of the British Isles and the European continent, venturing as far as Muslim Spain and Constantinople. The motivation for their movement south is sometimes attributed to the overpopulation and scant resources of their Scandinavian homelands, but Ferguson debunks this idea, advancing the case of holy war in retaliation for the slaughter of Saxons by the crusading Christians under Charlemagne. These pagan seaborne raiders were violent, terrifying and merciless, and Ferguson traces their plundering devastation across a vast swath of territory: the Shetland and Orkney islands, where they wiped out the native Picts; Ireland and England, where they established strongholds; Normandy, where the Carolingian rulers appeased them by offering land and fortunes and their leader Rollo eventually converted; across the Baltic into Slavic lands; Seville and the Iberian peninsula; and Iceland and Greenland, with brief treks to Newfoundland. Ferguson notes how the study of place-names reveals the extent to which the Vikings seized control. He looks at Viking culture and pre-Christian beliefs, such as their rich cosmology and myths, skaldic verse, strong sense of communal responsibility, a view to an afterlife evident from burial ceremonies and an ingrained employment of law-the Danelaw. The author also examines King Harald Bluetooth's monumentto his conversion, the pyramidal rune-stone in Jelling, Denmark. Ferguson's scholarly study requires close attention, but the intellectual rewards are plentiful. Provides a significant deepening of our knowledge of the Vikings.

Kirkus Reviews