The Vikings History

Scott Froman History 2310

In 793 A.D., a small tidal island off the northeast coast of England known as Lindisfarne was home to the first Viking raid in history. The monastery on the island was a well-known holy place at the time. Its priests were slaughtered and the monastery was plundered of all its treasures. Shortly after the attack, leading Christian figure Alcuin deemed it the worst atrocity Britain had ever witnessed by the pagans. He did not know that this raid would become the first of many and would indicate the beginning of a time known as the Viking Age. In his book The Vikings: A History, Robert Ferguson discusses this age in great detail and analyzes its importance to Western Civilization.

Ferguson begins by claiming that one of the main problems of trying to provide a history of the Vikings is that most of the literary sources that form our knowledge of the period were actually written hundreds of years after the events they describe. These literary sources, as well as documents mentioning the Vikings from the lands which they raided, cause some of our information to become skewed and unreliable. For this reason, Ferguson states that his goal in writing this book is to satisfy the reader’s desire for information “…without burdening it with an account of the innumerable controversies that cover every field of study of the period” (8). With this goal in mind, Ferguson implies that his main argument in the book is to cover every basic aspect of the Viking Age by using a variety of sources, all while giving his own expert opinion on the time period.

In the 13th century, Icelandic historian Snorri Sturluson became concerned that people had ceased to understand Old Norse poetry. This poetry detailed Vi...

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...nd led to the founding of several new colonies. They even put several kings on the throne of England. The Vikings voyaged to new lands, settling as far as North America and bringing their Scandinavian culture with them.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Ferguson is incredibly knowledgeable in his field and gives a lot of valuable information over this fascinating subject. The only criticism I can give is that at times it is hard to keep up with him. Ferguson writes in an unchronological manner and goes back and forth in time so much that I occasionally found myself wondering what happened to the incident he was just relating. He would then return to this episode several pages later. Other than this unorthodox method of storytelling, this book was a captivating read and I would recommend it without hesitation to anyone interested in learning about the Viking Age.