A Viking Way of Life
Author: Steven P. Ashby
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
Published: 2014-01-15
Total Pages: 192
ISBN-13: 1445620588
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn engaging look at life in the Viking Age.
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The Viking Way
Author: Neil S. Price
Publisher: Oxbow Books Limited
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9781842172605
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMagic, sorcery and witchcraft are among the most common themes of the great medieval Icelandic sagas and poems, the problematic yet vital sources that provide our primary textual evidence for the Viking Age that they claim to describe. Yet despite the consistency of this picture, surprisingly little archaeological or historical research has been done to explore what this may really have meant to the men and women of the time. This book examines the evidence for Old Norse sorcery, looking at its meaning and function, practice and practitioners, and the complicated constructions of gender and sexual identity with which these were underpinned. Combining strong elements of eroticism and aggression, sorcery appears as a fundamental domain of women's power, linking them with the gods, the dead and the future. Their battle spells and combat rituals complement the men's physical acts of fighting, in a supernatural empowerment of the Viking way of life. What emerges is a fundamentally new image of the world in which the Vikings understood themselves to move, in which magic and its implications permeated every aspect of a society permanently geared for war. In this fully revised and expanded second edition, Neil Price takes us with him on a tour through the sights and sounds of this undiscovered country, meeting its human and otherworldly inhabitants, including the Sámi with whom the Norse partly shared this mental landscape. On the way we explore Viking notions of the mind and soul, the fluidity of the boundaries that they drew between humans and animals, and the immense variety of their spiritual beliefs. We find magic in the Vikings' bedrooms and on their battlefields, and we meet the sorcerers themselves through their remarkable burials and the tools of their trade. Combining archaeology, history and literary scholarship with extensive studies of Germanic and circumpolar religion, this multi-award-winning book shows us the Vikings as we have never seen them before.
Vikings
Author: Gareth Williams
Publisher:
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780714123370
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn the ninth and tenth centuries, the Vikings created an unrivalled cultural network that spanned four continents. Adventurers, farmers, traders, conquerors and sailors, the Vikings were both peaceful and fierce, fighting or bargaining their way through as far as Constantinople in the East, North America and Greenland in the North, the British Isles in the West as well as into the Mediterranean. Throughout their existence, the Vikings encountered a remarkable diversity of peoples and inhabited an expansive and changing world. This beautifully illustrated book explores the core period of the Viking Age from a global perspective, examining how the Vikings drew influences from Christian Europe and the Islamic World and how they created a lasting historical impact on our world today. Highlighting an extraordinary range of objects and featuring new discoveries by archaeologists and metal-detector users, the cultural connections between Europe, Byzantium and the Middle East are explored in absorbing detail. Vikings: life and legend is published to complement a major exhibition developed jointly by the British Museum, the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen and the Museum for Prehistory and Early History, Berlin.
Children of Ash and Elm
Author: Neil Price
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-08-25
Total Pages: 629
ISBN-13: 0465096999
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe definitive history of the Vikings -- from arts and culture to politics and cosmology -- by a distinguished archaeologist with decades of expertise The Viking Age -- from 750 to 1050 -- saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture. Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology and religion, their material world. Known today for a stereotype of maritime violence, the Vikings exported new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and practices to the lands they discovered and the peoples they encountered, and in the process were themselves changed. From Eirík Bloodaxe, who fought his way to a kingdom, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most traveled woman in the world, Children of Ash and Elm is the definitive history of the Vikings and their time.
The Sea Wolves
Author: Lars Brownworth
Publisher: Crux Publishing Ltd
Published: 2014-12-09
Total Pages: 266
ISBN-13: 1909979112
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn AD 793 Norse warriors struck the English isle of Lindisfarne and laid waste to it. Wave after wave of Norse ‘sea-wolves’ followed in search of plunder, land, or a glorious death in battle. Much of the British Isles fell before their swords, and the continental capitals of Paris and Aachen were sacked in turn. Turning east, they swept down the uncharted rivers of central Europe, captured Kiev and clashed with mighty Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire. But there is more to the Viking story than brute force. They were makers of law - the term itself comes from an Old Norse word - and they introduced a novel form of trial by jury to England. They were also sophisticated merchants and explorers who settled Iceland, founded Dublin, and established a trading network that stretched from Baghdad to the coast of North America. In The Sea Wolves, Lars Brownworth brings to life this extraordinary Norse world of epic poets, heroes, and travellers through the stories of the great Viking figures. Among others, Leif the Lucky who discovered a new world, Ragnar Lodbrok the scourge of France, Eric Bloodaxe who ruled in York, and the crafty Harald Hardrada illuminate the saga of the Viking age - a time which “has passed away, and grown dark under the cover of night”.
Laughing Shall I Die
Author: Tom Shippey
Publisher: Reaktion Books
Published: 2018-05-15
Total Pages: 544
ISBN-13: 1780239505
DOWNLOAD EBOOKLaughing Shall I Die explores the Viking fascination with scenes of heroic death. The literature of the Vikings is dominated by famous last stands, famous last words, death songs, and defiant gestures, all presented with grim humor. Much of this mindset is markedly alien to modern sentiment, and academics have accordingly shunned it. And yet, it is this same worldview that has always powered the popular public image of the Vikings—with their berserkers, valkyries, and cults of Valhalla and Ragnarok—and has also been surprisingly corroborated by archaeological discoveries such as the Ridgeway massacre site in Dorset. Was it this mindset that powered the sudden eruption of the Vikings onto the European scene? Was it a belief in heroic death that made them so lastingly successful against so many bellicose opponents? Weighing the evidence of sagas and poems against the accounts of the Vikings’ victims, Tom Shippey considers these questions as he plumbs the complexities of Viking psychology. Along the way, he recounts many of the great bravura scenes of Old Norse literature, including the Fall of the House of the Skjoldungs, the clash between the two great longships Ironbeard and Long Serpent, and the death of Thormod the skald. One of the most exciting books on Vikings for a generation, Laughing Shall I Die presents Vikings for what they were: not peaceful explorers and traders, but warriors, marauders, and storytellers.
The Age of the Vikings
Author: Anders Winroth
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 2016-03-01
Total Pages: 328
ISBN-13: 0691169292
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA major reassessment of the vikings and their legacy The Vikings maintain their grip on our imagination, but their image is too often distorted by myth. It is true that they pillaged, looted, and enslaved. But they also settled peacefully and traveled far from their homelands in swift and sturdy ships to explore. The Age of the Vikings tells the full story of this exciting period in history. Drawing on a wealth of written, visual, and archaeological evidence, Anders Winroth captures the innovation and pure daring of the Vikings without glossing over their destructive heritage. He not only explains the Viking attacks, but also looks at Viking endeavors in commerce, politics, discovery, and colonization, and reveals how Viking arts, literature, and religious thought evolved in ways unequaled in the rest of Europe. The Age of the Vikings sheds new light on the complex society, culture, and legacy of these legendary seafarers.
Viking Warrior
Author: Judson Roberts
Publisher: Judson Roberts
Published: 2011-03
Total Pages: 308
ISBN-13: 0578076438
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHe's the son of a chieftain and a princess--yet Halfdan was born a slave. Now he is becoming a man and it is time for him to meet his destiny. Though raised a slave who could only dream of freedom, young Halfdan's fate may be about to change. If freed, he may train as a Viking warrior, and come to know the glories of true brotherhood and the horrors of unspeakable evil. In the world of Vikings, a warrior's destiny is forged in the heat of battle. If the fates decree it, Hafdan may emerge as a new hero . . . a new myth . . . and perhaps a new legend.
Towns in the Viking Age
Author: Helen Clarke
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 1991
Total Pages: 207
ISBN-13: 9780312060862
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Viking Age
Author: Angus A. Somerville
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2019-11-20
Total Pages: 550
ISBN-13: 148757049X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this extensively revised third edition of The Viking Age: A Reader, Somerville and McDonald successfully bring the Vikings and their world to life for twenty-first-century students and instructors. The diversity of the Viking era is revealed through the remarkable range and variety of sources presented as well as the geographical and chronological coverage of the readings. The third edition has been reorganized into fifteen chapters. Many sources have been added, including material on gender and warrior women, and a completely new final chapter traces the continuing cultural influence of the Vikings to the present day. The use of visual material has been expanded, and updated maps illustrate historical developments throughout the Viking Age. The English translations of Norse texts, many of them new to this collection, are straightforward and easily accessible, while chapter introductions contextualize the readings.
