Ebook: Vikings!

The Vikings were fierce sea warriors, ruled over by men called Svein Forkbeard and Harold Blue-tooth, worshipping Thor and Odin. For the Christian communities of western Europe, Viking was synonymous with barbarian paganism: "From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us." Certainly, few people in history have been so feared by their neighbors or so misunderstood by the modern world. To the saga writers of Iceland in the thirteenth century, the Vikings represented the ideal of heroism and valor. They went everywhere there was to go, they dared everything there was to dare.

Magnus Magnusson, who has translated Icelandic sagas into English and excavated major archaeological sites, explores in this handsome book the myth and the reality of the Vikings’ culture. We see them as the greatest traders of their day; as explorers who crisscrossed half the world in their open boats, extending the boundaries of the known world across the Atlantic to North America and eastward through the hinterland of Russia to Turkey and the Mediterranean. They served as handpicked warriors in the celebrated Varangian Guard, the Byzantine Emperor’s household guard in Constantinople. Yet these tough and fearless men introduced the very word "law" into the English language. As we learn from Mr. Magnusson’s impressive scholarship, the Vikings were also town dwellers, architects, and craftsmen. Their story — many centuries in the making — is today revealed by modern archaeology. It is a story that goes beyond valor and heroism to explain the importance of this culture’s technological development and commercial expansion to today’s reader.

In this wide-ranging book, the acknowledged authority on the subject — the creator and narrator of the PBS-TV series, "Vikings!" — acts also as expert guide to the sites and treasures of the Viking world. Magnus Magnusson allows us to sail with him up the fjords of Norway, to investigate reconstructions of Viking ships, to sift through the evidence of the Viking presence in New England, to read the ancient runes carved on lonely northern headlands. Before this authoritative account, this was a story only hinted at by the historical narratives of great poets of the Norse Sagas.

Illustrated with maps and 175 photographs in color and black and white.