The Vikings

The Vikings provides a concise but comprehensive introduction to the complex world of the early medieval Scandinavians.

In the space of less than 300 years, from the mid-eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries CE, people from what are now Norway, Sweden, and Denmark left their homelands in unprecedented numbers to travel across the Eurasian world. Over the last half-century, archaeology and its related disciplines have radically altered our understanding of this period. The Vikings explores why we now perceive them as a cosmopolitan mix of traders and warriors, craftsworkers and poets, explorers, and settlers. It details how, over the course of the Viking Age, their small-scale rural, tribal societies gradually became urbanised monarchies firmly emplaced on the stage of literate, Christian Europe. In the process, they transformed the cultures of the North, created the modern Nordic nation-states, and left a far-flung diaspora with legacies that still resonate today.

Written by leading experts in the period and exploring the society, economy, identity and world-views of the early medieval Scandinavian peoples, and their unique religious beliefs that are still of enduring interest a millennium later, this book presents students with an unrivalled guide through this widely studied and fascinating subject, revealing the fundamental impacts of the Vikings in shaping the later course of European history.

Neil Price is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. A leading specialist on the Vikings and ancient religion, he is the author of The Vikings in Brittany (1989), The Viking Way (2002), co-editor of The Viking World (2008) and numerous other books and papers. Neil also has global archaeological interests, with recent work ranging from the Holocaust to the Jamestown settlement. He is currently researching Viking burials, historical piracy, World War II in the Pacific, and the Canton opium trade.