The Vikings Reimagined by Birkett, Tom;Dale, Roderick; ISBN 5f11aedc-9dfc-4247-96ef-2d2767c6201c, 5F11AEDC-9DFC-4247-96EF-2D2767C6201C instant download

The Vikings Reimagined by Birkett, Tom;Dale, Roderick; ISBN 5f11aedc-9dfc-4247-96ef-2d2767c6201c, 5F11AEDC-9DFC-4247-96EF-2D2767C6201C instant download

The question “who were the Vikings?” is one that scholarship is well equipped to address. We may argue (a great deal) about when the Viking Age began and ended, what drove the exodus from Scandinavia, and what exactly constituted Viking activity in the various areas of what is sometimes called the “Viking world” (a loosely defined area stretching from Greenland in the west to the Black Sea river routes in the east). New finds and new approaches to existing sources continually refine or challenge our picture of those seafarers who, as one Byzantine patriarch memorably put it (talking of the Rus’ raid on Constantinople in 860 rather than localized Scandinavian piracy), “have been stirred up from the ends of the earth, holding bow and spear” their voices “as the roaring sea. But as Driscoll demonstrates in the opening chapter of this collection, whilst there are many cases where the label “Viking” is used in a potentially misleading way, there is a broad scholarly consensus about the historical meaning of the term (if not its etymology), the contexts in which it is appropriate to use the designation in an unqualified way in academic discourse (referring to a particular group of people involved in a particular activity), and the period in which seaborne raiding was a prominent feature of Scandinavian affairs. We are also well equipped to reassess the tangible impact of the Vikings and the wider Norse expansion, in terms of the effect on settled societies, linguistic, literary, and cultural cross-fertilization, and the discovery and settling of new lands. The historical Vikings, and indeed the “Viking phenomenon” itself, are in no danger of being neglected