The Vikings and their origins: Scandinavia in the first millenium (Library of early medieval civilizations) Book

'Never before,' wrote Alcuin of York in 793, 'has such terror appeared in Britain as we have suffered from a pagan race, nor was it thought, that such an inroad from the sea could be made.' Their devastating raids of the eighth and ninth centuries gave the Vikings an enduring reputation for piracy and destructiveness - and yet their culture was in many ways as sophisticated as the cultures of the lands which they ravaged. In Dark Age Europe they stand out for the scale of their exploits, for they conquered large areas of Britain, Normandy, Sicily, and Russia; they traded with Byzantium, Persia and India; they discovered and colonized Iceland and Greenland and reached the coast of North America. And, in the end, they did not destroy western civilization, but enriched it. Parts of their legal system, their tradition of individual freedom, their zest for exploration, and the great Icelandic sagas which reflect their heroic age - these have all become part of our northern European heritage. In this book David Wilson describes the history and culture of the Vikings from the beginning of the Christian era to the end of the Viking Age in about AD 1100. He introduces the reader to a fascinating, and by no means widely known, phase of our past - a period which is illustrated in these pages by photographs of beautiful and remarkable archaeological finds.Read More