A New History of the Viking Age
A brand-new history of the Vikings!
Penguin have just published The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of The Vikings by the UCL alumnus Robert Ferguson. Ferguson is something of a new name in Viking Studies — although he’s published widely on more modern Scandinavian topics — so it will be very interesting to see what new spin he brings to the subject (as it’s apparently forbidden to write a non-revisionist book about the Vikings these days).
Here’s how the blurb describes it:
For those living outside Scandinavia, the Viking Age effectively began in 793 with an attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne. The attack on Lindisfarne was a characteristically violent harbinger of what was in store for Britain and much of Europe from the Vikings for the next 300 years, until the final destruction of the heathen temple to the Norse gods at Uppsala around 1090. Robert Ferguson is a sure guide across what he calls ‘the treacherous marches which divide legend from fact in Viking Age history’. His long familiarity with the literary culture of Scandinavia – the eddas, the poetry of the skalds and the sagas – is combined with the latest archaeological discoveries and the evidence of picture-stones, runes, ships and objects scattered all over northern Europe, to make the most convincing modern portrait of the Viking Age in any language. The Hammer and the Cross ranges from Scandinavia itself to Kievan Rus and Byzantium in the east, to Iceland, Greenland and the north American settlements in the west. Beyond its geographical boundaries the book takes us on a journey to a misty region inhabited by Hallfred the Troublesome Poet, Harald Bluetooth, Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, Ivar the Boneless and Eyvind the Plagiarist, in which literature, history and myth dissolve into one another.
It’s certainly a handsomely-produced volume, and would I’m sure make an ideal festive gift for anybody interested in the Vikings. There are one or two things that make me initially wary about it, but I’ll reserve judgement until I’ve read the whole thing.
It’s substantially discounted at Amazon.co.uk right now, and if you buy it after clicking on this link, a tiny portion of the proceeds will go towards the upkeep of Old Norse News.
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There’s now a review of Ferguson’s book up on the Times website: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/non-fiction/article6894257.ece
Can any shed light on the relationship between thjs title and another by Robert Ferguson, advertied on Amazon.co.uk as about to appear in both hardcover and paperback – A History of the Vikings? Thanks.
Hello John,
I suspect that the alternative title refers to the American edition of the same book. I checked on Amazon.com and there certainly seems to be no difference between them. It’s interesting that Penguin seem to be planning a paperback release quite soon — but I don’t know whether that will be worldwide or just in the USA.
Thanks, Chris. I suspected it could be a case of British and American editions of the same book. For reasons not clear to me, it seems fairly common for the same book to appear in the two jurisdictions with different titles. (English speaking fans of the Icelandic detective writer Arnaldur Indridason need to note that ‘Jar City ‘ and ‘Tainted Blood’ are the same work, from Britain and America respectively.) However, I did note that Martin Arnold published two quite distinct wide-ranging studies of the Viking age within a short period of time – ‘The Vikings: Culture and Conquest’ in 2006 and ‘The Vikings: Wolves of War’ in 2007.