A comprehensive and thrilling history of the Vikings for fans of the History Channel series
From Harald Bluetooth to Cnut the Great, the feared seamen and plunderers of the Viking Age ruled Norway, Sweden, and Denmark but roamed as far as Byzantium, Greenland, and America. Raiders and traders, settlers and craftsmen, the medieval Scandinavians who have become familiar to history as Vikings never lose their capacity to fascinate, from their ingeniously designed longboats to their stormy pantheon of Viking gods and goddesses, ruled by Odin in Valhalla. 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 with its skaldic poetry is combined with the latest archaeological discoveries to reveal a sweeping picture of the Norsemen, one of history's most amazing civilizations.
Impeccably researched and filled with compelling accounts and analyses of legendary Viking warriors and Norse mythology, The Vikings is an indispensable guide to medieval Scandinavia and is a wonderful companion to the History Channel series.
Chapter 2. The culture of northern Heathendom
Chapter 3. The causes of the Viking Age
Chapter 4. ‘The devastation of all the islands of Britain by the Heathens’
Chapter 5. The Vikings in the Carolingian Empire
Chapter 8. The settlement of Iceland
Chapter 9. Rollo and the Norman colony
Chapter 10. The master-builder
Chapter 12. When Allah met Odin
Chapter 13. A piece of horse’s liver
Chapter 14. Greenland and North America
Chapter 15. Ragnarök in Iceland
Chapter 16. St Brice, St Alphege and the wolf
Chapter 18. Heathendom’s last bastion