Here are five exciting new books about the Vikings that I belive you may like. All were written in the last few years and take a fresh look at Viking history.
Table of Contents
River Kings: A New History Of The Vikings From Scandinavia To The Silk Roads
Cat Jarman
William Collins (2021)
ISBN: 978-0-00-835307-0
Excerpt: Discover the world of the River Kings – and some River Queens. Follow bioarchaeologist and Viking specialist Cat Jarman – and the cutting-edge forensic techniques central to her research – as she uncovers epic stories of the Viking Age and follows a small carnelian bead found in a Viking grave in Derbyshire to its origins thousands of miles to the east in Gujarat.
By analysing teeth and bones that are now over one thousand years old, Dr Cat Jarman can investigate childhood diets and thereby where a person was likely born. Her methods allow her to determine dates of death down to a narrow range of a few years, and even discover relatives and find evidence of ancient disease. With this, her research offers new visions of the likely roles of women and children in Viking Age society.
In 2017, a carnelian bead came into her temporary possession. River Kings sees her retrace its path back to eight-century Baghdad and India, discovering along the way the Vikings’ expansion was far more varied than we might think, that they interacted closely with people from Eastern Europe and the Middle East, not just Scandinavia, and that this integration between Eastern and Western worlds may well have been caused by a slave trade running through the Silk Roads, and all the way to Britain.
Told as a riveting story of the Vikings and the methods we use to understand them, this is a major reassessment of the fierce, often-mythologised voyagers of the north, and of the global medieval world as we know it.
The Viking Great Army And The Making Of England
Dawn M. Hadley & Julian D. Richards
Thames & Hudson (2021)
ISBN: 978-0-500-02201-6
Excerpt: The Viking Great Army that swept through England between AD 865 and 878 altered the course of British history. Since the late 8th century, Viking raids on the British Isles had been a regular feature of life, but the winter of 865 saw a fundamental shift that would change the political, economic, and social landscape forever. Instead of making quick smash-and-grab summer raids for silver and slaves, Vikings now remained in England for the winter and became immersed in its communities. Some settled permanently, acquiring land and forming a new hybrid Anglo*Scandinavian culture. The Viking army was here to stay. Its presence was a catalyst for new towns and new industries, while transformations in power politics would ultimately see the rise of King Alfred the Great and make Wessex the pre-eminent kingdom of Anglo-Saxon England.
Drawing on the most up-to-date discoveries and the latest scientific techniques, the authors’ recent research at the Viking Great Army’s winter camp at Torksey in Lincolnshire has revolutionised what we know about its size, activities and social makeup, as has the wealth of newly discovered evidence from metal-detectorists. Unfolding like a great detective story, this account traces the movement of the Great Army across the country piecing together a new picture of Viking Age England in unprecedented detail, from swords, coins, Jewlery and the burials of great warriors to the everyday objects that ordinary farmers and craftsmen discarded. It is the definitive story of a vital period in British history.
The Children Of Ash & Elm: A History Of The Vikings
Neil Price
Allen Lane (2020)
ISBN: 978-0-241-28398-1
Excerpt: The ‘Viking Age’ is traditionally held to begin in June 793 when Scandinavian Raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, and to end in September 1066, when King Harald Hardrada of Norway died leading the charge against the English line at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. This book, the most wide-ranging and comprehensive assessment of the current state of our knowledge, takes a refreshingly different view. It shows that the Viking expansion began generations before the Lindisfarne raid, and traces Scandinavian history back centuries further to see how these people came to be who they were.
The narrative ranges across the whole of the Viking diaspora, from Vinland on the eastern American seaboard to Constantinople and Uzbekistan, with contacts as far away as China. Based on the latest archaeology, it explores the complex origins of the Viking phenomenon and traces the seismic shifts in Scandinavian society that resulted from an economy geared to maritime war. Some of its most striking discoveries include the central role of slavery in Viking life and trade, and the previously unsuspected pirate communities and family migrations that were part of the Viking ‘armies’ – not least in England.
Especially, Price takes us inside the Norse mind and spirit-world, and across the Vikings’ borders of identity and gender, to reveal a startingly different people to the barbarian marauders of stereotype. He cuts through centuries of received wisdom to try to see the Vikings as they saw themselves – descendants of the first human couple, the Children of Ash and Elm. He also reminds us of the simultaneous familiarity and strangeness of the past, of how much we cannot know, alongside the discoveries that change the landscape of our understanding. This is an eye-opening and surprisingly moving book.
Laughing Shall I Die: Lives And Deaths Of The Great Vikings
Tom Shippey
Reaktion Books (2018)
ISBN: 978-1-78023-909-5
Excerpt: Viking literature is dominated by famous last stands, famous last words, death songs and defiant gestures, all presented with grim humour. Much of this mindset is alien to modern sentiment, and academics have accordingly shunned it. And yet, it is the same worldview that has always powered the popular public image of the Vikings – with their berserkers, Valkyries and cults of Valhalla and Ragnarok – and has also been corroborated by archaeological discoveries.
Was it this mindset that powered the sudden eruption of the Vikings onto the European scene? Was it a belief in heroic death that made them so lastingly successful against so many bellicose opponents? Weighing the evidence of the sagas and poems against the accounts of the Vikings’ victims, Tom Shippey considers these questions as he plumbs the complexities of Viking psychology and 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. The most exciting book on Vikings for a generation, Laughing Shall I Die presents them for what they were: not peaceful explorers and traders, but blood-thirsty warriors and marauders.
Dragon Lords: The History And Legends Of Viking England
Eleanor Parker
I.B. Tauris (2018)
ISBN: 978-1-78453-786-9
Excerpt: Why did the Vikings sail to England? Were they indiscriminate raiders, motivated solely by bloodlust and plunder? One narrative, the stereotypical one, might have it so. But locked away in the buried history of the British Isles are other, far richer and more nuanced, stories; and these hidden tales paint a picture very different from the ferocious pillagers of popular repute. Eleanor Parker here unlocks secrets that point to more complex motivations within the marauding pagan army that in the late ninth century voyaged to the shores of eastern England in its sleek dragon-powered longships.
Exploring legends from forgotten medieval texts, and across the varied Anglo-Saxon regions, she depicts Vikings who came not just to raid but also to settle personal feuds, intervene in English politics and find a place to call home. Native tales reveal the links to famous Norsemen like Ragnar Lothbrok (‘shaggy-breeches’) and his sons Ubbe, Ivar ‘the boneless’, and Beorn (‘Bear’), celebrated particularly in the folklore and history of East Anglia and from whom the modern popular image of Vikings – fearless, ruthless, death-defying – is most probably derived. Then there is Siward, who in one legend sails from Denmark to the Orkneys and defeats a dragon which is terrorising the islands. Or Havelok the Dane, husband to an English princess but also the hero of Lincolnshire and associated especially with the port city of Grimsby, where as an orphan he was raised by the fisherman Grim who had saved his life. Each myth while full of colour, regional distinctiveness and lively human interest, shows how the legacy of the newcomers can still be traced in the landscape, place-names and local history. This elegantly written narrative will surprise and enthral all those who wonder about their own provenance and ancestry. It uncovers the quite remarkable degree to which England remains Viking to its core.