LoveReading Says
Any historian dealing with the Vikings must firstly fight myth – those horned helmets to name but one and then there’s the sparsity of evidence from a people with so little in the way of written record. We do get a lot of sword-play and blood-lust but there are also the sharp-eyed merchants trading across the known world. But mostly it’s the swords with men fighting for dominance and allegiance. While I would have liked to know more about the lives of Viking women (about 12 pages, having checked the index) Tom Williams is very good at putting the Vikings into a historical context, looking at their legacy and the mark they made on our country. ~ Sue Baker
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Viking Britain An Exploration Synopsis
To many, the word `Viking' brings to mind red scenes of rape and pillage, of marauders from beyond the sea rampaging around the British coastline in the last gloomy centuries before the Norman Conquest. And it is true that Britain in the Viking Age was a turbulent, violent place. The kings and warlords who have impressed their memories on the period revel in names that fire the blood and stir the imagination: Svein Forkbeard and Edmund Ironside, Ivar the Boneless and Alfred the Great, Erik Bloodaxe and Edgar the Pacifier amongst many others. Evidence for their brutality, their dominance, their avarice and their pride is still unearthed from British soil with stunning regularity. This is not, however, the whole story. In Viking Britain, Thomas Williams has drawn on his experience as Project Curator of the major international exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend to show how the people we call Vikings came not just to raid and plunder, but to settle, to colonize and to rule. The impact on these islands was profound and enduring, shaping British social, cultural and political development for hundreds of years. Indeed, in language, literature, place-names and folk-lore, the presence of Scandinavian settlers can still be felt, and their memory - filtered and refashioned through the writings of people like J.R.R. Tolkien, William Morris and G.K.Chesterton - has transformed the western imagination. This remarkable new book draws upon new academic research and first-hand experience, drawing deeply from the relics and landscapes that the Vikings and their contemporaries fashioned and walked: their rune stones and ship burials, settlements and battlefields, poems and chronicles. The book offers a vital evocation of a forgotten world, its echoes in later history and its implications for the present. It is a stunning exploration of Viking Britain by a writer of immense literary power.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780008171933 |
| Publication date: |
1st September 2017 |
| Author: |
Tom Williams |
| Publisher: |
William Collins an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers |
| Format: |
Hardback |
| Primary Genre |
Non-Fiction Books of the Month
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| Other Genres: |
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About Tom Williams
Tom Williams was a curator of the major international British Museum exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend, which was the subject of extensive national and international media coverage in 2014. He has been widely quoted in the press and has appeared on BBC TV, ITV and on BBC radio. He appeared at the Hay Festival and Bath Children's Literary Festival in 2014 and is currently engaged in research/finishing his PhD at University College London. He teaches History and Archaeology at Cambridge. He is the author and editor of a number of academic and magazine articles and collections.
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