The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

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it's shockingly obvious that appeasement is seldom a worthwhile strategy, and is always an expensive one; the reputation of the Norse people as warriors was such that they merely needed to show up to be given boatloads of money to go away again; and the tribute in kind, not just the cash they brought home, kept the balance of hunger on the rightful owners of the land and food not the invaders. There's a really great look at a massive burial site found off the coast of Estonia as recently as 2012.

if you are seeking an accessible, yet definitive and up-to-date book on the Vikings, this is the one you want. Het tweede deel ( Het Vikingfenomeen) plaatst de Viking in zijn tijdperk, met de logica achter de plundertochten, de economische drijfveren erachter en de politiek van de krijgsheren.

Please, publishers, realise that while reducing a book’s page count may reduce costs for you somewhat, it’s a definite case of penny wise, pound foolish. Boldly imaginative in the best sense, rigorously attentive to what evidence can and can't tell us, this is a remarkable book. The Viking age is some time between 798 and 1066, roughly after their famous piracy and attacks and before their complete Christianization. This is a very comprehensive walk through the archeological evidence and giving sensible theories on what that means. It’s a story of a specific group that had their very own unique combination of complexities and contradictions, as all peoples do.

They are a person’s outer shell, that being their appearance, their personality and spirit, a person’s luck component and finally a feminine sense of family. The first part explores this realm through the Vikings’ sense of self, and of their environment, and begins by delineating the contours of its landscape both on the ground and inside their heads.Het stereotiepe beeld van een woest bebaarde, met een bijl zwaaiende krijger met een helm met hoorns blijft niet overeind. There were long paragraphs where I spaced out for a bit, reading the words but not really living them. The emphasis here is very firmly on who the Vikings really were, what made them tick, how they thought and felt. He may know more about medieval Scandinavia than anyone else alive, and he aims to show us these fascinating people as they saw themselves, not as they were perceived by those on the sharp end of their robbery.