The Vikings: a History - Hardcover

Robert Ferguson

3.68

1,642 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713997885 ISBN 13: 9780713997880

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2009

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

For those living outside Scandinavia, the Viking Age effectively began in 793 with an attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne. The attack on Lindisfarne was a characteristically violent harbinger of what was in store for Britain and much of Europe from the Vikings for the next 300 years, until the final destruction of the heathen temple to the Norse gods at Uppsala around 1090. 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 - the eddas, the poetry of the skalds and the sagas - is combined with the latest archaeological discoveries and the evidence of picture-stones, runes, ships and objects scattered all over northern Europe, to make the most convincing modern portrait of the Viking Age in any language. "The Hammer and the Cross" ranges from Scandinavia itself to Kievan Rus and Byzantium in the east, to Iceland, Greenland and the north American settlements in the west. Beyond its geographical boundaries, the book takes us on a journey to a misty region inhabited by Hallfred the Troublesome Poet, Harald Bluetooth, Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, Ivar the Boneless and Eyvind the Plagiarist, in which literature, history and myth dissolve into one another.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

About the Author:

Robert Ferguson is one of the world's leading scholars in Scandinavian studies. After studying in London under Peter Foote, co-author of the classic Viking Achievement, he emigrated to Norway in 1984. At the invitation of the Norwegian Government he has lectured on aspects of Norwegian and Scandinavian history and culture at embassies, universities and other cultural venues in St Petersburg, New Delhi, Mumbai, Oslo, Bergen, Prague, Warsaw, Riga, Edinburgh, Vasa, New York and at the Library of Congress in Washington. His previous books include biographies of Henrik Ibsen and Knut Hamsun, and in 2002 his Viking Age novel Siste kjaerlighet (Last Love), based on the 13th century Saga of Hallfred the Troublesome Poet, was published to critical acclaim in Norway. The Hammer and the Cross was written between 2002 and 2009 in Oslo and on the Isle of Cumbrae.

From Booklist:

Sporting monikers such as Sven Forkbeard and Harald Bluetooth, the Vikings left arresting traces in saga and chronicle, in addition to their signature destruction and massacre. Ferguson synthesizes Viking scholarship for a general audience and follows the Vikings wherever they went. Spreading from Scandinavia, they entered written records as a result of raids on Britain and Ireland in the late 700s; soon the divisive Carolingian empire, and the land that would become Russia, would experience the Viking scourge as well. But along with slaves and booty came the encounter with Christianity, among whose proselytizers numbered the fearless believers who brought the Gospel to worshippers of Odin and Thor. The pagan-Christian interface informs Ferguson’s narrative, and by emphasizing experiences of the conversion process by identifiable individuals within a centuries-long direction of Vikings forsaking their old religion, the author textures the pillage that he asserts is necessary to a complete understanding of the Viking age. Integrating archaeological, genetic, linguistic, and literary information, Ferguson realizes a Viking history bound to satisfy the interested reader. --Gilbert Taylor

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.