The Vikings

‘A vivid and living picture of the Viking adventure’ 

1. Times Literary Supplement

The Vikings launched their first British raid at Lindisfarme Abbey in 793 but to start the story here would mean bypassing centuries of Scandinavian history. Gwyn Jones’s chronicle begins 12,000 years prior, when the ancient clans of Sweden, Denmark and Norway hunted, tracked and fished for survival, honing their boat-building and marksmanship skills. So, when the prosperous population needed more arable land, the seafaring Norsemen had a weapons cache and sturdy vessels ready to launch, and their first port of call was Northumbria.

Subjugation is rarely achieved through peaceful negotiation, but during an age of raiding and pillaging, there was nothing exceptional about the Vikings’ colonising tactics. Their bad press is largely due to bad timing: the religious scholars who first recorded the antics of the Norsemen were themselves victims of Viking raids and their unflattering accounts of wanton violence and tyranny remained unchallenged for centuries in a largely illiterate British Isles.

Sifting the historical evidence from centuries of speculation and prejudice, Jones presents the authentic facts of the Viking discovery of America, Greenland and the Faroes, Svein Forkbeard and his conquest of England, and the trade in silks, weapons and slaves that extended through the whole of mainland Europe. Best of all, he shows the significance of Norse art and culture: their comprehensive myth-system and its influence on the Viking world-view; the beliefs that encouraged them to cross the oceans and risk their lives with such abandon.

Journalist, writer and television presenter Magnus Magnusson wrote the introduction to our edition, his anecdotes of Jones revealing both his exuberant personality and scholarly learning. There are 12 maps and plans throughout – plus a stunning endpaper map – that display attacks, settlements and ancient provinces. Twenty-six beautifully reproduced colour plates display treasures and sites from the Viking Age: the intricately carved, towering Runic stones from Jelling, a keepsake of a Valkyrie virgin warrior who chose those destined to be slain in battle, and detail from a Hylestad wood carving where the legendary Sigurd tastes the blood of a dragon’s heart.