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"The first major book on Vikings by a Scandinavian author to be published in English, The Wolf Age reframes the struggle for a North Sea empire and puts readers in the mindset of Vikings, providing new insight into their goals, values, and what they chose to live and die for. Tore Skeie (Norway's Most Important Young Historian) takes readers on a thrilling journey through the bloody shared history of England and Scandinavia, and on across early medieval Europe, from the wild Norwegian fjords to the wealthy cities of Muslim Andalusia. Warfare, plotting, backstabbing and bribery abound as Skeie skillfully weaves sagas and skaldic poetry with breathless dramatization as he entertainingly brings the world of the Vikings and Anglo-Saxons to vivid life. In the eleventh century, the rulers of the lands surrounding the North Sea are all hungry for power. To get power they need soldiers, to get soldiers they need silver, and to get silver there is no better way than war and plunder. This vicious cycle draws all the lands of the north into a brutal struggle for supremacy and survival that will shatter kingdoms and forge an empire..."--… (more)
User reviews
Personally, I would have liked to have had some of those "long clarifications, discussions and reservations".
There's a lot of fascinating material in this text, and it covers a period that I am tremendously ignorant of. The core of the book is an extended comparison and contrast of two great Viking warrior kings, Cnut of Denmark and St. Olav of Norway. I was interested and intrigued to find out that St. Olav was neither saintly not particularly successful at establishing a last Norwegian "regime" - but he benefitted posthumously from poets, historians, and poet-historians who seem to have whitewashed his reputation for posterity and the Christian churches of Scandinavia.
The printed text does include some sketchy source notes - although it is not really possible to connect the material in the text with the original texts which provide historian Skeie with his material.
The edition I read didn't include an index, which would have been very helpful. I also would have liked a geneological family tree.