Book Of Viking Age England

From shortly before AD 800 until the Norman Conquest, England was subject to raids from seafaring peoples from Scandinavia: the Vikings. They were not only raiders but also settlers and colonizers. In this book, the author assesses how far local developments responded to these events and discusses rural settlement and economy, the growth of towns, trade and exchange, craft and industry, and burial rituals and stone memorials. Features almost 100 maps, plans, reconstructions, and photographs.

From shortly before AD 800 until the Norman Conquest, England was subject to raids from seafaring peoples from Scandinavia—the Vikings. However, they were not only raiders but also traders and settlers. Using the latest archaeological evidence, the author reassesses the Viking contribution to Late Anglo-Saxon England and examines the creation of the new mixed Anglo-Scandinavian identity.

Viking Age England

This is the first ever book-length study for the nature and significance of the linguistic contact between speakers of Old Norse and Old English in Viking Age England. It investigates in a wide-ranging and systematic fashion a foundational but under-considered factor in the history and culture of the Vikings in England. The subject is important for late Anglo-Saxon and Viking Age history; for language and literature in the late Anglo-Saxon period; and for the history and development of the English language. The work's primary focus is on Anglo-Norse language contact, with a particular emphasis on the question of possible mutual intelligibility between speakers of the two languages; but since language contact is an emphatically sociolinguistic phenomenon, the work's methodology combines linguistic, literary and historical approaches, and draws for its evidence on texts in Old English, Old Norse and Anglo-Latin, and other forms of linguistic and onomastic material

In this extensively revised third edition of The Viking Age: A Reader, Somerville and McDonald successfully bring the Vikings and their world to life for twenty-first-century students and instructors. The diversity of the Viking era is revealed through the remarkable range and variety of sources presented as well as the geographical and chronological coverage of the readings. The third edition has been reorganized into fifteen chapters. Many sources have been added, including material on gender and warrior women, and a completely new final chapter traces the continuing cultural influence of the Vikings to the present day. The use of visual material has been expanded, and updated maps illustrate historical developments throughout the Viking Age. The English translations of Norse texts, many of them new to this collection, are straightforward and easily accessible, while chapter introductions contextualize the readings.

Drawing from recent archaeological and linguistic evidence, as well as more traditional literary and narrative sources, the author distinguishes between the initial phase of migrations in the ninth and tenth centuries, and the secondary period of settlement up to c. 1100 AD. He emphasizes, too, the differences in nature and intensity of the Viking impact on the societies that were slowly developing into the historic kingdoms of England and Scotland, and the more complex political structures of Wales and Ireland. Throughout the book, the effects of the Scandinavian invasions on Britain are set within the wider European context.