The temptation for Scandinavians to hark back to a more heroic era when it was they who bestrode the world was irresistible. The Scandinavian kingdoms had become a European backwater, lacking influence on the world stage and playing no part in the global empire-building activities of countries like Great Britain and France. The medieval image of the Vikings as all-conquering sea rovers came to be seen in a positive light. Vikings remained frightening barbarians, on a par with the Vandals and the Goths who had plundered ancient Rome, until the ninteenth century era of national romanticism. The main chroniclers of medieval Europe were monks and understandably, as they were frequent victims of it, they dwelled on the Vikings’ plundering, burning and captive-taking (they had little to say about rape, perhaps because, as men, they had little to fear from them on that account, at least). It is these far-flung connections, and the daring spirit that created them, that give the Vikings their enduring appeal.Īttitudes to the Vikings have shifted over the years. Other Vikings crossed the Atlantic, leaving settlements along the way in the Faeroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland, to become the first Europeans known to have set foot in North America. Vikings even penetrated the Mediterranean to attack Italy and North Africa. In the west, Vikings were active along the entire coastline of Western Europe, founding settlements in Scotland, England, Ireland and France. From their Scandinavian homelands, Vikings sailed east down the great rivers of Russia crossing the Black Sea to Constantinople and the Caspian Sea to reach Baghdad. No previous Europeans had ever seen so much of the world as the Vikings did. The Vikings were an unprecedented phenomenon in European history, not for any technological, military or cultural innovation that they contributed to – in most respects they were really rather backward and even their shipbuilding methods were conservative – but for the vast expanse of their horizons. Chapter 12: Largs, Reykholt and Hvalsey.Chapter 11: Palermo, Jerusalem and Tallinn.Chapter 10: Hedeby, Jelling and Stiklestad.Chapter 9: Maldon, London and Stamford Bridge.Chapter 8: Thingvellir, Brattahlid and L’Anse aux Meadows.Chapter 7: Kiev, Constantinople and Bolghar.Vikings in Spain and the Mediterranean 844–61 Chapter 2: Lindisfarne, Athelney and York.Chapter 1: Thule, Nydam and Gamla Uppsala.John Haywood tells, in authoritative but compellingly readable fashion, the extraordinary story of the Viking Age. In 800, the Scandinavians were barbarians in longships bent on plunder and rapine by 1200, their homelands were an integral part of Latin Christendom.
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