Last Apocalpyse - Hardcover

Reston Jr., James

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385483260 ISBN 13: 9780385483261

Publisher: Doubleday, 1998

Synopsis

Enter the world of 1000 A.D., when Vikings, Moors, and barbarians battled kings and popes for the fate of Europe.

As the millennium approached, Europeans feared the world would end.  The old order was crumbling, and terrifying and confusing new ideas were gaining hold in the populace.  Random and horrific violence seemed to sprout everywhere without warning, and without apparent remedy.  And, in fact, when the millennium arrived the apocalypse did take place; a world did end, and a new world arose from the ruins.

In 950, Ireland, England, and France were helpless against the ravages of the seagoing Vikings; the fierce and strange Hungarian Magyars laid waste to Germany and Italy; the legions of the Moors ruled Spain and threatened the remnants of Charlemagne's vast domain.  The papacy was corrupt and decadent, overshadowed by glorious Byzantium.  Yet a mere fifty years later, the gods of the Vikings were dethroned, the shamans of the Magyars were massacred, the magnificent Moorish caliphate disintegrated: The sign of the cross held sway from Spain in the West to Russia in the East.

James Reston, Jr.'s enthralling saga of how the Christian kingdoms converted, conquered, and slaughtered their way to dominance brings to life unforgettable historical characters who embodied the struggle for the soul of Europe.  From the righteous fury of the Viking queen Sigrid the Strong-Minded, who burned unwanted suitors alive; to the brilliant but too-cunning Moor Al-Mansor the Illustrious Victor; to the aptly named English king Ethelred the Unready; to the abiding genius of the age, Pope Sylvester II--warrior-kings and concubine empresses, maniacal warriors and religious zealots, bring this stirring period to life.

The Last Apocalypse is a book rich in personal historical detail, flavored with the nearly magical sensibility of an apocalyptic age.


James Reston, Jr., is the author of ten previous books, including Galileo: A Life and Sherman's March and Vietnam.  He has written for The New Yorker, Esquire, Vanity Fair, Time, Rolling Stone, and many other publications.  His television work includes three "Frontline" documentaries, including "Eighty-Eight Seconds in Greensboro." The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars provided him with a Visiting Fellowship during the course of his work on this book.  Reston lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland.

About this title

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rld of 1000 A.D., when Vikings, Moors, and barbarians battled kings and popes for the fate of Europe.

As the millennium approached, Europeans feared the world would end. The old order was crumbling, and terrifying and confusing new ideas were gaining hold in the populace. Random and horrific violence seemed to sprout everywhere without warning, and without apparent remedy. And, in fact, when the millennium arrived the apocalypse did take place; a world did end, and a new world arose from the ruins.

In 950, Ireland, England, and France were helpless against the ravages of the seagoing Vikings; the fierce and strange Hungarian Magyars laid waste to Germany and Italy; the legions of the Moors ruled Spain and threatened the remnants of Charlemagne's vast domain. The papacy was corrupt and decadent, overshadowed by glorious Byzantium. Yet a mere fifty years later, the gods of the Vikings were dethroned, the shamans of the Magy

Reviews

Reston theorizes that the year A.D. 999?the focus of this highly colorful narrative?was a turning point in history, marking the Christian West's joining of forces against the triple heathen threat of Vikings, Hungarian Magyar tribes and the Moors in Spain. His popular history actually shuttles back and forth from the early eighth century to the death of Hungary's Christianizing King Stephen in 1038. Biographer (Galileo), television writer and journalist, Reston draws liberally from period poems, folktales, sagas, myths, legends and holy chronicles to stitch together an entertaining tapestry replete with revenge, murder, treachery, carnal lusts, rape, geopolitical royal matchmaking and snatches from Norse lyrics. Most memorable are the odd, outsize characters such as Swedish pagan queen Sigrid the Strong-Minded, who burned her spurned suitors to death in a beer hall. Reston also evokes a Byzantine court rife with conspiracy, a corrupt papacy, the end-of-the-millennium broodings of Christians and heathens alike and the cosmopolitan culture of Moorish Spain.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this lively, absorbing ``saga'' of Europe (which, the author makes clear, is as much imaginative re-creation as history) at the end of the last millennium, Reston (Galileo, 1994, etc.) depicts a turbulent Europe as expectant of an imminent apocalypse as are today's doomsayers. In his 11th book, Reston paints end-of-millennium Europe as a benighted, besieged placein 950 a.d. it seemed to many as if pagan and Muslim enemies of Christendom were on the brink of conquering the Christian kingdoms, while the Church was undermined by pervasive corruption and internecine conflict. Yet by the year 1000 the Church was ascendant everywhere, having converted the savage Norse and Magyar chiefs and helped to check the Muslim advance into the Iberian peninsula. Reston explains how this transformation occurred, bringing vibrantly alive the dominant personalities of the period, among them King Olaf Trygvesson of Norway, whose conversion to Christianity marked the beginning of the end of the ravages of the Norsemen; Gerbert of Aurillac, the brilliant intellectual man of action who helped Hugh Capet assume the throne of France and who, as Pope Sylvester II, led a revitalizing reform of Western Christianity; and the Magyar Vajk, ruler of the terrible horsemen who had terrorized Central Europe, who converted and became King Stephen of Hungary. Reston vividly evokes significant battles, including the heroic stand of the English against the Vikings at Maldon and the destruction of the Viking fleet by the Greeks on the Black Sea. He also convincingly argues that it was the conversion of pagan rulers to Christianity that truly made possible the transformation of the embattled kingdoms of 10th-century Europe into the familiar ``Christendom'' of history. Ultimately, Reston shows, the period was in fact a kind of apocalypse: As a result of all this turbulent activity, the old world died and a new one arose in its place. A thoughtful, briskly told narrative that makes the period come alive. (32 pages b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Reston is a wonderful storyteller, and here he has an epic tale to tell. The time is the last few decades of the previous millennium. As the year A.D. 1000 approaches, Christianity is conquering the pagan world, though not always by the most religious of means, while barbarians, Vikings, and Moors are trying to maintain the old order. Reston jumps into this sweeping saga and discovers more thrilling action, more heroes and villains than could be found in an Old English epic. In fact, some of the people that Reston writes about also appeared in those poems. Reston begins the book with his dog-eared copy of The Battle of Maldon in hand as he wanders about Northy Island, where Byrhtnoth commanded the English soldiers against a fierce Viking attack in A.D. 991. Reston's seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of the tenth century, combined with his disarming interpretations of the period's events, makes for fascinating reading. His intermittent reflections on what the turn of the millennium meant to Europeans gives the book an additional level of interest. Fans of Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror (1978) are the logical audience for this one. Ilene Cooper

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

As Olaf Trygvesson sailed across the North Sea toward home, he must have felt the nobility and the grandeur of his holy mission.  He was a hybrid of Odysseus and Michael, avenger, exile, and zealot all in one.  He was coming, in justice and in glory, as the royal scion of Harald Fairhair's race, as the king of whom great deeds were predicted in the name of Norway and in the name of Christ.  He was returning to avenge the death of his father, the exile of his mother, the slavery of his youth.  His passion was to convert his heathen homeland, and he was prepared for holy war.  By his athletic stature, by his superior skill in the martial art, by his campaigns across the Baltic and through England, and by his zealot's faith, he was the Viking warrior non pareil: bold, cruel, and skilled.

As he approached Norway's shore, Olaf possessed no fine sense of what Christianity meant, especially its gentler side.  But he must have had some sense of the calendar.  The world was approaching the thousandth year after Christ's birth, and with it, Christ the King would come a second time.  There would be a final climactic battle between the forces of good and evil.  It was not hard for Olaf to view Earl Hacon as the Antichrist.  The earl was the murderer of his father, the rapist of Norway's daughters, and the high priest of heathenism.  Nor was it hard to imagine Hacon's soldiers as the forces of Gog and Magog.

If there was any imagery in the Christian bible to which a Viking warrior, raised in the heathen tradition, could relate, it was the magical language of Revelation.  For beasts and monsters, giants and trolls were the most familiar of notions.

"And as I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy," reads Revelation 13 about the first beast.  "And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his meat, and his great authority."

How different was that from the apocalypse of the heathens?  For in the villages and temples of Olaf's upbringing, in Norway and in Russia, there had been talk of Ragnarok, that terrible end-time when the world sinks into moral chaos, into anxiety and greed, into an intoxication with gold, when brothers kill brothers and incest is rampant.  In this wolf's age, Odinn becomes an agent of violent death and is himself killed violently, when war breaks out between the Vanir and the Aesir, and the gods mete out punishment to oath breakers, murderers, rapists.

In the day of Ragnarok, the wolf will swallow the sun.  Another wolf will seize the moon.  The earth and the mountains will tremble so violently that trees will be uprooted, mountains will crash down. The sun will go black.  The earth will sink into the sea.  And the heavens will lose their stars.

In this final battle between the good and the evil gods, all will die.  There are no winners, only losers.  Into this chaos and conflagration, Inn riki, the Mighty One, will ride triumphantly.  And with him the world will be renewed and purified, and afterward, only innocent gods will rule.

When Olaf Trygvesson finally approached the nose of Norway, he touched land offshore on Moster Island, pitched a tent, and held a great mass.  Afterward, he considered his situation.  Should he make a big noise in the land or try to take Earl Hacon by surprise?  He decided on the latter course and moved quietly up the coast to the mouth of the Trondheim fjord.  On its southern point, he sent a few spies inland, and they came back with excellent news.  Earl Hacon was indeed in the area, and he was up to his old escapades.  He had just tried to seize the wife of a respectable farmer and had been turned back by a rabble of the farmer's friends.  Now the earl was feasting at a place called Medalhus and could not leave well enough alone.  He had sent his slaves to seize the beautiful wife of another freeholder named Orm.  But Orm was no more compliant.  He delayed the earl's messengers with food and drink while he sent a call to arms, and the farmers were gathering in great anger, ready to kill Earl Hacon.  Olaf could scarcely have wished for better intelligence.

Moving stealthily into the fjord with his five ships, he spotted the earl's three ships, lying at anchor near Vigg.  The earl's handsome son was watching over the royal fleet, and when he saw Olaf's sea stallions bearing down on him, he weighed anchor and tried to get away.  But Olaf caught up and hurled a tiller at the young man, striking him on the head and killing him instantly.  Soon after, Olaf made contact with the rebellious peasants, who by this time had blocked off the roads and were ready to pounce on the lecherous earl.

But Earl Hacon was already on the fly.  His own troops having deserted him, he took refuge in the area with his mistress, an estimable woman of great power named Thora.  Her cozy relationship with the earl was well known and it could be expected that Olaf and his farmers would come to look for the fugitive there first.  So Thora had her slave dig a hole beneath her pigsty.  Logs were placed over the hole, and manure on top of the logs.  With his slave named Kark, the earl crawled into the poke, hoping to wait out the trouble, if he could stand the smell.

As expected, Olaf soon turned up.  His rebels searched the house inside and out, and when they could not find the earl, Olaf climbed up onto a large rock next to the pigsty and gave a speech to his troops, promising great reward and honor to anyone who could find the earl and kill him.  Earl Hacon and his slave Kark heard the speech through the seeping timbers, and the earl turned on his slave suspiciously.

"Why are you so pale?" he whispered.  "Do you have a mind to betray me?"

"By no means, master," Kark replied.

"Remember this," the earl said.  "We were born on the same night.  The time between our deaths will be short."

After Olaf went away and the night came, the earl and his slave tried to sleep.  But Kark had a bad dream, and at his moans, Earl Hacon woke him up.  "What on earth is the matter with you?"

"I had a bad dream," the slave replied.  "I was at Lade, and Olaf Trygvesson was laying a gold ring around my neck."

"It will be a red ring Olaf lays around your neck if he catches you," the earl snapped.  "Take care.  From me you will enjoy good things, so do not betray me."

They tried to go back to sleep, but each was now so suspicious of the other, they tried to keep an eye open.  Eventually, the earl dropped off, and he too slept so fitfully that he cried out in his sleep.  Horror-struck, Kark woke up with such a fright that he pulled a knife from his belt and plunged it into Earl Hacon's throat, killing him.  Then thinking of the reward and honor that Olaf Trygvesson had promised from the rock, Kark cut off the earl's head, took it to Lade, and presented it proudly to Olaf.

Olaf thanked him, gave him a gold ring, and then had him beheaded.

In 996 A.D., a national assembly was held, and Olaf Trygvesson was proclaimed the king of all Norway.  One by one, the petty earls and chiefs of the country paid him homage, even the leaders of the Uplands and the Vik, who before had been in league with Svein Forkbeard, the king of Denmark.  In his first winter and summer as king, Olaf traveled along his rocky coast to consolidate his realm, as the heirs of Earl Hacon, full of vengeance, fled to Sweden.


Toward the end of the first millennium, Norway was a sparsely peopled kingdom.  It was ruled by a motley group of petty lords and cultivated by self-reliant freeholders who farmed and fished along the coast and the riverbanks and took orders from no man.  The total population of the country did not exceed fifty thousand people, and it was spread along the rocky, crenellated coastline.  The trading towns like Kaupang on the western point of the Oslofjord or Trondheim and Lade in the north had no more than about five hundred people, even in high season.  Few ventured inland, into the dense forests toward the keel of mountains that separated Norway from Sweden.  The greatest concentration of people was in the Vik, that region encompassing Oslo's fjord which was the domain of Olaf's martyred father, King Trygve.  It was there that Olaf began his crusade to Christianize his land.

In the Vik, during the summer and fall of 996 A.D., he had easy sailing.  Many of his relatives were still powerful, and the supporters of his father were legion.  In the preceding decades when the Christian king of Denmark Harald Bluetooth held sway over the area, many had converted to Christianity.  But when the Thor-loving Earl Hacon took over, the converted reverted, and once again, the gods of Aesir were transcendent.  King Olaf burned with messianic fire, however, and the days of choice were over.  Olaf gathered his relatives together and deputized them as Christ's captains.

"I shall make you great and mighty men for doing this work," he told them.  "All Norway will be Christian or die."

The east and west shores of the Oslofjord acceded immediately to the king's demand, but in th...

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385483260
• ISBN 13: 9780385483261
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320