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Angelo
Forte, Richard Oram, Frederik Pedersen.
Viking
Empires.
Cambridge
U.P., 2005.
Series
& number.
ISBN-10:
0521829925 | ISBN-13: 9780521829922.
Hardback.
247 x
174 mm.
462pp.
Publisher's
recommended price £25.00
Viking Empires is a definitive new
history of five hundred years of Viking civilisation and the first
study of the global implications of the expansion, integration, and
reorientation of the Viking World. Offering an assessment of
Scandinavian society before the 790s, the book traces the political,
military, cultural and religious history of the Viking Age from Iceland
to the Baltic States. The authors show that it is not possible to
understand the history of the Norman Conquest, the successes of David I
of Scotland or the relationship between the Holy Roman Empire and the
Papacy without considering the impact of the history of Scandinavia.
The book concludes with a new account of the end of the Viking era,
arguing that there was no sudden decline but the gradual absorption of
the Scandinavian kingdoms into the project of the crusades and a
refocusing of imperial ambitions on the Baltic and Eastern Europe.
Contents: 1. Viking
raiders, Scandinavian Kingdoms and the wider world; 2. The Beginnings;
3. First contact: England and the continent; 4. Ireland and Scotland;
5. A Water World; 6. Conquest and integration, c. 950–1260; 7. The
second Viking age in England, c. 970–1066; 8. The Irish Sea; 9.
Scotland and the Vikings; 10. Orkney and Shetland; 11. Crossing the
North Atlantic; 12. Sailing the North Atlantic; 13. Scandinavia and
European integration: reform and rebirth; 14. Conclusion.
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