Author: Alexander Fenton
Publisher: John Donald
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Om Orkney- og Shetlandsøerne, Færøerne og Island.

Author: Alexander Fenton
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description

Author: National Library of Scotland
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780902220393
Category : Hebrides (Scotland)
Languages : en
Pages : 20

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Book Description

Author: Stefan Brink
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113431826X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 742

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Book Description
Filling a gap in the literature for an academically oriented volume on the Viking period, this unique book is a one-stop authoritative introduction to all the latest research in the field, and the most comprehensive book of its kind ever attempted.

Author: Olwyn Owen
Publisher: Birlinn Publishers
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
Initially they came as raiders and traders, but soon they built links with other civilizations and settled among them. They served as mercenaries at the court of Byzantium and discovered America five hundred years before Columbus. They established towns and a network of communications, exploited the riches of the East and explored the uncharted waters of the North Atlantic, colonizing uninhabited or sparsely populated lands on the margins of Europe. And early during this great outpouring of people from the Scandinavian homelands, the Vikings also came to England, Ireland and Scotland. The Sea Road takes the reader on a voyage through Viking Scotland. From Norway in the ninth century, the Vikings travelled to the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland, and established the Orkney earldom as a powerful base from which they could make inroads into northern and north-east Scotland. Continuing the voyage around the north-west coast of Scotland, the next land-fall is the Western Isles, which the Vikings came to rule as surely as they did the north, and from where their influence was to penetrate into the westerns part of mainland Scotland. Finally, the ever pragmatic Vikings established a base in south-west Scotland and forged links with a mix of peoples in the Irish Sea area. Here the Isle of Man, a Viking kingdom, was pivotal in a cultural crossroads between Ireland, northern England and south-west Scotland. But it was in the north that their influence endured. The Viking Orkney earldom came to be an important player in the politics of the emerging nation of Scotland, and its influence was felt into medieval times and beyond. Even today, the traveler to Orkney and Shetland enters a Scandinavian Scotland. This book is part of a new series produced by Historic Scotland and Canongate which provides lively, accessible and up-to-date introductions to key themes and periods in Scottish history and prehistory.

Author: Katherine Holman
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 081086813X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
The A to Z of the Vikings traces Viking activity in Europe, North America, and Asia for over three centuries. During this period people from Scandinavia used their longships to launch lightning raids upon their European neighbors, to colonize new lands in the east and west, and to exchange Scandinavian furs for eastern wine and spices and Arab silver. The Viking age also saw significant changes at home in Scandinavia--kings extended their power, Norse paganism lost ground to Christianity, and new towns and ports thrived as a result of increased contact with the wider world. This book provides a comprehensive work of reference for people interested in the Vikings, including entries on the main historical figures involved in this dramatic period, important battles and treaties, significant archaeological finds, and key works and sources of information on the period. It also summarizes the impact the Vikings had on the areas where they traveled and settled. There is a chronological table, detailed and annotated bibliographies for different themes and geographical locations, and an introduction discussing the major events and developments of the Viking age.

Author: Martin Carver
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 9781843831259
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 612

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Book Description
37 studies of the adoption of Christianity across northern Europe over1000 years, and the diverse reasons that drove the process. In Europe, the cross went north and east as the centuries unrolled: from the Dingle Peninsula to Estonia, and from the Alps to Lapland, ranging in time from Roman Britain and Gaul in the third and fourth centuries to the conversion of peoples in the Baltic area a thousand years later. These episodes of conversion form the basic narrative here. History encourages the belief that the adoption of Christianity was somehow irresistible, but specialists show theunderside of the process by turning the spotlight from the missionaries, who recorded their triumphs, to the converted, exploring their local situations and motives. What were the reactions of the northern peoples to the Christian message? Why would they wish to adopt it for the sake of its alliances? In what way did they adapt the Christian ethos and infrastructure to suit their own community? How did conversion affect the status of farmers, of smiths, of princes and of women? Was society wholly changed, or only in marginal matters of devotion and superstition? These are the issues discussed here by thirty-eight experts from across northern Europe; some answers come from astute re-readings of the texts alone, but most are owed to a combination of history, art history and archaeology working together. MARTIN CARVER is Professor of Archaeology, University of York.

Author: Ramona Harrison
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739185489
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In Human Ecodynamics in the North Atlantic: A Collaborative Model of Humans and Nature through Space and Time, Ramona Harrison and Ruth A. Maherhave compiled a series of separate research projects conducted across the North Atlantic region that each contribute greatly to anthropological archaeology. This book assembles a regional model through which the reader is presented with a vivid and detailed image of the climatic events and cultures which have occupied these seas and lands for roughly a 5000-year period. It provides a model of adaptability, resilience, and sustainability that can be applied globally. First, visiting the Northern Isles of Scotland in the Orkney Islands, the reader is taken through the archaeology from the Neolithic Period through World War II in the face of sea-level rise and rapidly eroding coastlines. The Shetland Islands then reveal a deep-time study of one large-scale Iron Age excavation. On to the northern coasts of Norway, where information about late medieval maritime peoples is explained. Iceland explores human–environment interaction and implications of climate change presented from the Viking Age through the Early Modern Era. Rounding out the North Atlantic Region is Greenland, which sheds light on the Norse in the late Viking Age and the Middle Ages.

Author: Barbara E. Crawford
Publisher: Birlinn
ISBN: 0857906186
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 475

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Book Description
The medieval earldoms of Orkney and Caithness were positioned between two worlds, the Norwegian and the Scottish. They were a maritime lordship divided, or united, by the turbulent waters of the Pentland Firth. This unlikely combination of island and mainland territory survived as a single lordship for 600 years, against the odds. Growing out of the Viking maelstrom of the early Middle Ages, it became an established and wealthy principality which dominated northern waters, with a renowned dynasty of earls. Despite their peripheral location these earls were fully in touch with the kingdoms of Norway and Scotland and increasingly subject to the rulers of these kingdoms. How they maintained their independence and how they survived the clash of loyalties are themes explored in this book from the early Viking age to the late medieval era when the powerful feudal Sinclair earls ruled the islands and regained possession of Caithness. This is a story of the time when the Northern Isles of Scotland were part of a different national entity which explains the background to the non-Gaelic culture of this locality, when links across the North Sea were as important as links with the kingdom of Scotland to the south.

Author: Judith Jesch
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317482549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
The Viking Diaspora presents the early medieval migrations of people, language and culture from mainland Scandinavia to new homes in the British Isles, the North Atlantic, the Baltic and the East as a form of ‘diaspora’. It discusses the ways in which migrants from Russia in the east to Greenland in the west were conscious of being connected not only to the people and traditions of their homelands, but also to other migrants of Scandinavian origin in many other locations. Rather than the movements of armies, this book concentrates on the movements of people and the shared heritage and culture that connected them. This on-going contact throughout half a millennium can be traced in the laws, literatures, material culture and even environment of the various regions of the Viking diaspora. Judith Jesch considers all of these connections, and highlights in detail significant forms of cultural contact including gender, beliefs and identities. Beginning with an overview of Vikings and the Viking Age, the nature of the evidence available, and a full exploration of the concept of ‘diaspora’, the book then provides a detailed demonstration of the appropriateness of the term to the world peopled by Scandinavians. This book is the first to explain Scandinavian expansion using this model, and presents the Viking Age in a new and exciting way for students of Vikings and medieval history.