Viking Empires

by Angelo Forte , Richard Oram , Frederik Pedersen

• ISBN13: 9780521829922
• ISBN10: 0521829925
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-30
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Viking Empires is a definitive new history of five hundred years of Viking civilisation and the first study of the global implications of the expansion, integration, and reorientation of the Viking World. Offering an assessment of Scandinavian society before the 790s, the book traces the political, military, cultural and religious history of the Viking Age from Iceland to the Baltic States. The authors show that it is not possible to understand the history of the Norman Conquest, the successes of David I of Scotland or the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy without considering the impact of the history of Scandinavia. The book concludes with a new account of the end of the Viking era, arguing that there was no sudden decline but the gradual absorption of the Scandinavian kingdoms into the project of the crusades and a refocusing of imperial ambitions on the Baltic and Eastern Europe.

Table of Contents

List of figures	viii
List of maps	xii
Acknowledgements	xiii
1 Viking raiders, Scandinavian kingdoms and the wider world	1	(6)
2 The beginnings	7	(47)
3 First contact: England and the continent	54	(27)
4 Ireland and Scotland	81	(37)
5 A water world	118	(52)
6 Conquest and integration, c. 950-1260	170	(14)
7 The Second Viking Age in England, c. 970-1066	184	(33)
8 The Irish Sea	217	(24)
9 Scotland and the Vikings	241	(24)
10 Orkney and Shetland	265	(34)
11 Crossing the North Atlantic	299	(29)
12 Sailing the North Atlantic	328	(24)
13 Scandinavia and European integration: reform and rebirth	352	(41)
14 Conclusions	393	(8)
Bibliography	401	(25)
Index	426