[books 2012] The Hammer and the Cross
54. The Hammer and the Cross: A New History of the Vikings by Robert Ferguson
I recently put a specialist academic textbook about the conversion of Scandinavia on my wish list, and someone bought it for me. At that point I realised I've probably forgotten most of what I knew about the basics, so I grabbed this from the library.
It's a pretty good general history, though it concentrated more on the Scandinavian contact with the outside world, where what I want to know is what was actually going on in the Nordic countries.
It answered some questions, though. Even at the level I was studying history, back in the early 90s, the reasons for the ferocity with which the Viking raiders treated the monastic communities of Europe were presented as unknown (aside from having figured out that that's where the Christians kept the good stuff), down to innate brutality. Ferguson posits that it was because Charlemagne and his successors had converted the Saxons and other German tribes with extreme prejudice and bloodshed. The refugees from these forced conversions made their way north. Thus the Viking raiders knew that their way of life was under threat from the church.
It also confirmed that one of the things I picked up as almost certainly wrong in Jared Diamond's Collapse is indeed wrong. Diamond proposes that one of the reasons for the failure of the Greenland colony (as if Black Death in Europe + Little Ice Age aren't enough) is that there is evidence they had a taboo against eating fish. Which makes NO SENSE whatsoever. According to Ferguson, evidence for consumption of fish has been found at archaeological investigations of the Greenland colony.
I recently put a specialist academic textbook about the conversion of Scandinavia on my wish list, and someone bought it for me. At that point I realised I've probably forgotten most of what I knew about the basics, so I grabbed this from the library.
It's a pretty good general history, though it concentrated more on the Scandinavian contact with the outside world, where what I want to know is what was actually going on in the Nordic countries.
It answered some questions, though. Even at the level I was studying history, back in the early 90s, the reasons for the ferocity with which the Viking raiders treated the monastic communities of Europe were presented as unknown (aside from having figured out that that's where the Christians kept the good stuff), down to innate brutality. Ferguson posits that it was because Charlemagne and his successors had converted the Saxons and other German tribes with extreme prejudice and bloodshed. The refugees from these forced conversions made their way north. Thus the Viking raiders knew that their way of life was under threat from the church.
It also confirmed that one of the things I picked up as almost certainly wrong in Jared Diamond's Collapse is indeed wrong. Diamond proposes that one of the reasons for the failure of the Greenland colony (as if Black Death in Europe + Little Ice Age aren't enough) is that there is evidence they had a taboo against eating fish. Which makes NO SENSE whatsoever. According to Ferguson, evidence for consumption of fish has been found at archaeological investigations of the Greenland colony.