The Vikings

In the space of less than 300 years, from the mid-eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries CE, people from what are now Norway, Sweden and Denmark left their homelands in unprecedented numbers to travel across the Eurasian world. Over the last half-century, archaeology and its related disciplines have radically altered our understanding of this period, and beyond the stereotypical Viking raider. The Vikings explores why we now perceive them as a cosmopolitan mix of traders and warriors, craftsworkers and poets, explorers and settlers. It details how, over the course of the Viking Age, their small-scale rural, tribal societies gradually became urbanised monarchies firmly emplaced on the stage of literate, Christian Europe and in the process transformed the cultures of the North, created the modern Nordic nation states, and left a far-flung diaspora with legacies that still resonate today. Written by leading experts in the period and exploring the society and economy, identity and world-views of the early medieval Scandinavian peoples, and their unique religious beliefs that are still of enduring interest a millennium later and, this book presents students with an unrivalled guide through this widely studied and fascinating subject, revealing the fundamental impacts of the Vikings in shaping the later course of European history.