Vikings!
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few civilisations have burned as fiercely in the popular imagination as the Norse seafarers who swept out of Scandinavia between the eighth and eleventh centuries, leaving empires trembling in their wake — and Magnus Magnusson's Vikings! stands as one of the most authoritative and vivid accounts of their world ever written. Conceived as a companion to the landmark BBC television series, the book chronicles the full arc of Viking civilisation: from the longship raids on Lindisfarne and the monasteries of Ireland, to the founding of settlements in Iceland, Greenland, and the shores of North America, to the complex mercantile and political networks that stretched from the rivers of Russia to the markets of Constantinople. Magnusson, himself of Icelandic descent, brings an insider's passion to the material, drawing on the rich tradition of the Norse sagas alongside the latest archaeological evidence to construct a portrait that is both scholarly and compulsively readable. What makes Vikings! endure is Magnusson's insistence on dismantling the cartoonish horned-helmet mythology and replacing it with something far more unsettling and admirable — a culture of extraordinary sailors, poets, lawmakers, and traders who shaped the medieval world in ways that are still felt today. His prose is muscular yet precise, balancing the sweep of historical narrative with intimate attention to artefact, rune stone, and saga verse. The book argues that the Vikings were not merely raiders but architects of a wider, interconnected North Atlantic world, and in doing so it fundamentally reframes how we understand the early Middle Ages. For anyone who wishes to grasp the true scope of Norse ambition and ingenuity, this remains an essential — and electrifying — starting point.
Author: Magnus Magnusson
Format: Hardback
Genre: History
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few civilisations have burned as fiercely in the popular imagination as the Norse seafarers who swept out of Scandinavia between the eighth and eleventh centuries, leaving empires trembling in their wake — and Magnus Magnusson's Vikings! stands as one of the most authoritative and vivid accounts of their world ever written. Conceived as a companion to the landmark BBC television series, the book chronicles the full arc of Viking civilisation: from the longship raids on Lindisfarne and the monasteries of Ireland, to the founding of settlements in Iceland, Greenland, and the shores of North America, to the complex mercantile and political networks that stretched from the rivers of Russia to the markets of Constantinople. Magnusson, himself of Icelandic descent, brings an insider's passion to the material, drawing on the rich tradition of the Norse sagas alongside the latest archaeological evidence to construct a portrait that is both scholarly and compulsively readable. What makes Vikings! endure is Magnusson's insistence on dismantling the cartoonish horned-helmet mythology and replacing it with something far more unsettling and admirable — a culture of extraordinary sailors, poets, lawmakers, and traders who shaped the medieval world in ways that are still felt today. His prose is muscular yet precise, balancing the sweep of historical narrative with intimate attention to artefact, rune stone, and saga verse. The book argues that the Vikings were not merely raiders but architects of a wider, interconnected North Atlantic world, and in doing so it fundamentally reframes how we understand the early Middle Ages. For anyone who wishes to grasp the true scope of Norse ambition and ingenuity, this remains an essential — and electrifying — starting point.