The Viking World. - Hardcover

James Graham-Campbell

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0906459044 ISBN 13: 9780906459041

Publisher: Frances Lincoln Publishers Limited, 1980

Synopsis

For 300 years, from the ninth to the eleventh centuries, the power of the Vikings dominated Western Europe. Their voyaging extended westwards to America and as far south as the Mediterranean and North Africa. As well as being warriors and accomplished seamen, they were jewellers, sculptors and poets of great skill and originality: the forts, town sites, ships, burial mounds, carved stones, place names, sagas, art and artefacts they left behind substantiate their legendary exploits.

This is a revised and updated edition of James Graham-Campbell's authoritative account of the Viking world, based on recent archaeological research, with an important chapter on ships, shipwrights and seamen from Sean McGrail. The text is complemented by a wealth of illustration, including maps and reconstruction drawings. Photographs, many of them especially commissioned, portray the brilliant products of the Vikings' culture and the beauty and harshness of the natural world they faced.

About this title

About the Author

James Graham-Campbell is Professor of Medieval Archaeology at the University of London and  specialist in Viking and late Celtic archaeology. He helped set up the first British degree course in medieval archaeology at University College, London.

From Library Journal

In this general overview, edited by a leading scholar in the field, Scandinavian history and expansion from circa 750 to 1150 C.E. are explored thematically. The book's four sections cover the Vikings' origins, Viking-age Scandinavia, overseas interactions, and the end of the Viking world. The thematic organization creates confusion, often forcing one to jump centuries within a paragraph. Substandard research-e.g., King Harald Fairhair is referred to as Harald Finehair-casts doubt on the book's credibility, and the writing style can be trite ("The Vikings were a people who had great respect for the law-though that is not how they are usually thought of today"). Many superior books, such as Donald Logan's The Vikings in History (Hutchinson, 1983), Else Roesdahl's The Vikings (Allen Lane, 1987), and editor Graham-Campbell's The Viking World (Ticknor & Fields, 1980), exist for general readers.
Kurt I. Munson, St. Ambrose Univ., Davenport, Ia.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Frances Lincoln Publishers Limited
• Publication date: 1980
• ISBN 10: 0906459044
• ISBN 13: 9780906459041
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 220