The Vikings: A History Book

List of Illustrations

List of Maps

Introduction 1

1 The Oseberg Ship 9

2 The culture of northern Heathendom 20

3 The causes of the Viking Age 41

4 'The devastation of all the islands of Britain by the Heathens' 58

5 The Vikings in the Carolingian empire 83

6 Across the Baltic 108

7 The Danelaw I: Occupation 132

8 The settlement of Iceland 154

9 Rollo and the Norman colony 174

10 The master-builder: Harald Bluetooth and the Jelling Stone 196

11 The Danelaw II: Assimilation 216

12 When Allah met Odin 245

13 A piece of horse's liver: The pragmatic Christianity of Hakon The Good 263

14 Greenland and North America 280

15 Ragnarok in Iceland 298

16 St Brice, St Alphege and the Wolf: The fall of Anglo-Saxon England 325

17 The Viking saint 348

18 Heathendom's last bastion 364

Notes 383

Index 421