Tag: Vikings & Anglo Saxons

Millennium (2008): Tom Holland

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★★★★

The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom

My goodness, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. Now at last the winter frenzy of work has been wrapped up; and today I experienced that most blissful of feelings: clearing my desk, closing down my computer and leaving the office for Christmas. No doubt the holidays will fly by very quickly, but I hope to spend a good proportion of them curled up with a good book. Luckily I have more than enough of those to choose from (though one of the novels on my to-read list is the kind of thing you might be rather surprised to see here; but more of that soon). For the last week or so, however, I’ve been kept occupied by a gripping, dense and rather enjoyable history book – a sweeping panorama of Europe in the two centuries which straddled the end of the first millennium.

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Hild (2013): Nicola Griffith

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★★★★★

A Novel

This was a rare thing: a book I came to on the strength of its subject, knowing nothing about its author, hoping that it would be a amusing read – only to find myself simply blown away by the quality of the writing. And I’m not easy to impress. All I knew at first was that this covered the same period as the excellent The King in the North, which I enjoyed so much. It has turned out to be just as brilliant, in a rather different way. This is a splendid treat of historical fiction, embracing the experiences of both men and women through the story of one remarkable protagonist.

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The Far Traveler (2007): Nancy Marie Brown

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★★★½

Voyages of a Viking Woman

I realised that I was going to get along rather well with Nancy Marie Brown when I read the opening sentence of her first chapter: ‘The first time I saw a Viking ship in the water, I was struck with the desire to stow away on it‘. I was immediately charmed. Brown started out as a science writer, but she’s recently had the chance to return to her first love: Norse culture and mythology. Her writing is consequently an appealing blend of specialist and enthusiast.

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The King in the North (2005): Max Adams

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★★★★★

The Life and Times of Oswald of Northumbria

Published at the end of August, this book came to my attention as a Kindle recommendation from Amazon. It was a bit of a leap into the dark. I hadn’t come across Max Adams before; I hadn’t heard of the publisher; and I had no idea who Oswald of Northumbria was. No one else on LibraryThing owned the book at the time. But the opening paragraph captivated me and I decided to take the plunge.

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Vikings: Season 1 (2013)

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Vikings: Season 1

★★★★

(created by Michael Hirst)

Anyone who’s been reading this blog for a while will have noticed that I tend to get slightly overexcited about some subjects. Tudor costume, for one thing. The Trojan War, for another. And Vikings – for which we can entirely blame Dorothy Dunnett’s King Hereafter. Earlier this year, there were a lot of posters around London advertising the new drama series Vikings, made for the US-based History channel. As I don’t have Sky, I’d given up all hope of being able to watch it any time soon, but I then discovered that LoveFilm Instant has the exclusive rights in the UK and so, over the weekend, I stormed through the entire first season.

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The Pale Horseman (2005): Bernard Cornwell

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★★★

The Saxon Stories: Book II

This is the second volume in a series about the Northumbrian ealdorman Uhtred, born a Saxon but raised in captivity among the Danes as the adopted son of Earl Ragnar. The first book, The Last Kingdom, closed with a great battle at Cynuit, at which Uhtred led the Saxon forces to victory against the Danes and killed their leader Ubba Lothbrokson. This second book opens with the aftermath of the battle, as the Saxons once again fragment into their petty factions.

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The Last Kingdom (2004): Bernard Cornwell

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★★★½

The Saxon Stories: Book I

On a rather fortuitous trip to the library yesterday, I happened to see this book: the first in a series set in 9th-century Britain, at a time when the struggle between the Saxons and the Danes was at its fiercest. I haven’t read much Bernard Cornwell, despite his enormous popularity – in fact, I think Azincourt is the only book of his that I’ve read, and I can’t remember much about that. However, in the wake of King Hereafter, I thought I’d give this a go. It turned out to be a highly enjoyable read: light, full of action and (though very different from Dunnett) an interesting complement to Thorfinn’s story.

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King Hereafter (1976): Dorothy Dunnett

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Dorothy Dunnett © Olive Millward. With thanks to the Dorothy Dunnett Society

★★★★½

For the last week or so, I’ve been lost in another world – in the sea-spray glinting off a longship’s figurehead, and the sheen of sunlight on helms and spears. It is the dawn of the 11th century. Viking culture, with its pillaging, sagas and piratical leaders teeters on the edge: and, falling, begins to assume the Christian values and the lineaments of the world we know today. It is also the moment when one man, by chance or the will of the Fates, finds himself in a position to begin unifying the disparate earldoms of Alba, Caithness and Orkney into a political entity that will assume the more familiar name of Scotia. That man is here most often given his pagan, Norse name: Thorfinn. History knows him by a much more famous name. Macbeth.

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Vikings: A History (2012): Neil Oliver

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★★★★★

This post comes with a warning for overbubbling enthusiasm; but I just can’t help myself. I didn’t watch Neil Oliver’s BBC series on the Vikings, but when I spotted this companion volume, on the Book People’s stall during a Christmas fair at work, it was difficult to resist. The Vikings, like the Romans, are a shadowy but constant presence in British history and yet I don’t know as much about them as I would like.

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