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Reddit mentions of The Viking World (Routledge Worlds)

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Reddit mentions: 12

We found 12 Reddit mentions of The Viking World (Routledge Worlds). Here are the top ones.

The Viking World (Routledge Worlds)
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Found 12 comments on The Viking World (Routledge Worlds):

u/Mediaevumed · 26 pointsr/AskHistorians

Bear with me here, I swear I will get to the food stuff, but first a bit of background.

The sources we have for these voyages (a collection of sagas and two other works known as "The Book of the Icelanders" and "The Book of Settlement") are all at least 2-4 centuries later than the supposed dates of exploration. This is a fairly typical problem in Scandinavian history. These are oral tales handed down for several generations and then written. The info in them is thus problematic. All that being said, archaeological evidence and our understanding that just because something is "fantastic" doesn't make it "fantastical" all point to a Scandinavian presence at the very northernmost areas of Canada.

North Atlantic travel and exploration consists of four major locations: Iceland, Greenland, Helluland (likely the island of Baffin in far northern Canada) and Vinland (modern Newfoundland).

Travelers to North America would have been coming from Iceland (the major North Atlantic settlement area) and Greenland (much less well settled and abandoned by the 14th century).

And now on to the food. Fish, fish, and fish would have been a primary food source. Some fresh, much of it salted and preserved. Blubber and whale meat are a possibility as well (though they probably would not have actively whaled during their voyages). Meat (seal and caribou especially if coming from Greenland), salted or even fresh. Also sea-birds. For a particularly amusing glimpse of what things might have looked like, check out this (admittedly very blurry) video of a reenactment of a voyage from Ireland to America, in which a fellow is picked up solely for his ability to catch birds and fish.

They would also have had livestock, pigs, sheep, and perhaps even cattle, that could be fresh slaughtered but would ideally have been kept for secondary production (cheese, milk, wool etc.). We know from archaeological remains and from patterns of settlement westward that these voyages would have included both men and women and thus probably were supplied with the necessary goods (including farm animals) to at least begin settlement. This means that they might also have had cereal for planting and cultivation.

It is best to think of the voyagers to America and the North Atlantic as rather distinct from the "Vikings" most famous for raiding England, Ireland and Francia in the 9th century. These are not bands of warriors looking to make money and head back home to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden. They are explorers and above all settlers, looking for new lands and new opportunities.

Sources: The first and best place to go is The absurdly large edited volume, The Viking World which has several articles on North Atlantic settlement and travel, all of which have bibliographies.

Happy reading!

u/snaresamn · 25 pointsr/AskHistorians

Well, they did have a technological advantage in the form of viking longships. These ships were long, shallow bottomed, flexible ships that were both graceful as well as being some of the fastest ships in the viking's geological sphere of influence. They were highly efficient in the sea as well as in the small rivers and fjords of Scandinavia and their shallow hulls allowed them to travel up mainland rivers, even reaching as far as Paris, France before the end of the viking age. The ships also allowed for long, fast voyages along coasts carrying vikings as far from Scandinavia as Italy, Turkey, Russia, North Africa and Canada.

Another piece of the reason they were so successful was that they often targeted under-manned monasteries, churches and small villages. 8th to 12th century England was not united by any means; you had North Umbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Wessex and all the smaller states within those areas that were not always at peace with each other, requiring fighting forces that were not seen to be as needed on the north and northeast coasts of England and modern Scotland.

Now we come to combining these two factors in viking tactics. Vikings were raiders, at least in the beginning, and were not setting out to conquer lands and steal fortifications as in your typical medieval battle. They use a hit-and-run style of raiding that left their victims little to no time to call for aid. They would spend their winters at home preparing their ships, weapons and bodies for the summer raids and after the spring crops had been planted they were off in search of the most plunder they could bring back with the smallest amount of risk involved. To a viking, it didn't matter if you were a soldier or a monk, if they engaged you in a fight and you lost, they were entitled to what you owned as they considered this a fair fight. So, in that way, they may have also had a psychological advantage as well. Other monks and god-fearing men heard account of these ruthless demons (some letters from monks who escaped the vikings survive these encounters) and fear and infamy about them spread through the British isles.

If you’re interested in further reading I highly recommend “The Viking World” https://www.amazon.com/Viking-World-Routledge-Worlds/dp/0415692628

If you’re interested in reading a letter written about the vikings by a monk whose monastery was attacked by vikings, Yale has an online transcription available here: https://classesv2.yale.edu/access/content/user/haw6/Vikings/higbald.html

u/wee_little_puppetman · 18 pointsr/AskHistorians

Since I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the questions right now, I'm going to copy and paste two answers I've given to similar question in earlier threads. (One of which is a copy-and-paste job itself.)


1. General books:

I'm going to copy and paste an answer I once gave to someone who asked me for book recommendations via private message.

>Hi there!

>No Problem! Always glad to help. If you need a quick overview over the topic or are rather unfamiliar with it The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings gives a good first impression. Else Roesdahl's The Vikings is a bit more in depth but with less pictures. There's also Peter Sawyer's Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. All three of those are slightly outdated but they give a great first impression of the Age. If money's thight, start with Sawyer, then Roesdahl, then the atlas.

>If you want to go more in depth there's The Viking World by Stefan Brink and Neil Price. Do not confuse it with the book of the same name by Graham-Campbell and Wilson, which is rather outdated. This "Viking World" is a collection of essays by the world's leading experts on the period an the de facto standard of the discipline at the moment. It's well worth the price.

>If you are (or at least read) German (which is possible from your username) try to get the current catalogue of the Haithabu museum. It gives a good overview over that important trading settlement. Or even better: visit there! (Or any of the large Scandinavian National Museums (Moesgård, Statens Historiska museet, or the Viking ship museums in Roskilde and Oslo, respectively).

>If you are interested in the world of the sagas you can't go wrong with Jesse Byock's Viking Age Iceland.

>If you are looking for a quick ressource or if you have a specific question there's the site of The Viking Answer Lady. She appears to be a reenactor not a scholar but her answers are very well sourced and I have yet to find a major error on her site. Or you can always ask me/post to AskHistorians...

>cheers, wee_little_puppetman


Also, you might want to check out this huge annotated Viking movie list.

There's also a rather good three part BBC series on the Vikings on Youtube.

And for some quick Viking fun there's the animated short The Saga of Biorn.

Oh, one more thing: You might also enjoy Viking Empires by Angelo Forte, Richard Oram and Frederik Pedersen. It goes beyond the traditional end of the Viking Age into the Middle Ages and should therefore tie in nicely to your main interest in the crusades.



2. Sagas

Egils saga and Njáls saga are usually the ones that are recomennded for first time readers. They feel very modern in their narrative structures. Grettis saga is also quite good for a start. And then maybe Laxdæla saga. If you aren't specifically interested in Iceland and want to start with something that conforms more to the public picture of "Vikings" try Eiriks saga rauða, Jómsvíkinga saga or Sverris saga. But afterwards you have to read at least one Icelander saga (i.e. one of the ones I mentioned first)!

Icelandic sagas are fascinating but you have to commit to them. Don't be disappointed if a chapter begins with two pages of the family tree of a minor character! And always keep in mind that this is medieval literature: although it might look like it it is not history. These things were written in the 12th to 14th centuries, even if the take place much earlier!

u/textandtrowel · 7 pointsr/AskHistorians

There's lots! Of course, that means it's sometimes hard to pick out highly specialized articles from more general updates on the state of the field, which I suspect is what you're going for. Don't get daunted if this seems too dense; sometimes it's just good to know a bit about what's out there.

As a starting point, I'd recommend taking a look at Brink and Price, eds., The Viking World (2008) [Amazon link so you can preview the table of contents]. I'd start with the introduction (it's short), then technology and trade, and then urbanism or any other sections that seem necessary for you.

An older book, but one that's still very influential is Hodges and Whitehouse's Muhammad, Charlemagne, and the Origins of Europe (1983). It will give you a good idea of what scholars think was happening, but there's been a lot of research and updates to it over the last 30 years. Before you cite Hodges and Whitehouse, I'd cross reference it with a more recent work, using the table of contents or index to focus your reading. In particular, I'd look at Skre's Means of Exchange (2007) (see especially Skre's intro and conclusion as well as Kilger's "Kaupang from Afar") and McCormick's Origins of the European Economy (2001). They're both great works, but based on how you described your project, I wouldn't risk getting stuck in a quagmire trying to read them both all the way through.

Finally, there's a few terrific articles that should be read if you can:

u/AtiWati · 7 pointsr/Norse

You will get more out of them without question, but is that "more" worth the effort? I don't think so, unless you want to really nerd out and/or pursue the subject academically. Get some good, recent translations by folks like Jackson Crawford or Carolyne Larrington. And then if you are still looking to squeeze some "more" out of the texts, go get some good, thorough introductive litterature to contextualize the sagas and poems you are reading, like The Vikings, A Handbook to Eddic Poetry, Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs, The Viking World etc.

And this is coming from someone who do know Old Norse.

u/Peacekraft · 4 pointsr/Norse

The Viking World edited by Stefan Brink in collaboration with Niel Price.

The book is made up of small chapters and articles usually just a few pages long each (all written by respected academics), each of which introduces and explains the main themes you encounter in the study of the Vikings and their world, with bibliographies for further reading.

I can't recommend it enough, it has helped me out even now I am reading for an MA on the Vikings.

Check out the contents page on the preview Amazon offers.

u/Subs-man · 4 pointsr/Norse

I'm no expert in Medieval or Old-Norse studies, however I've do have an interest in it & from some searching on various different aspects of the Vikings I come across these:

The Cambridge History of Scandinavia: Volume 1. Prehistory to 1520 it's a anthological survey book consisting of both historiographical and hagiographical (biographies of saints) primary & secondary sources ranging from prehistory ( before historical events were documented) through to medieval history of Scandinavia. It's quite pricey but definitely worth the money if your serious...

>The first part of the volume surveys the prehistoric and historic Scandinavian landscape and its natural resources, and tells how man took possession of this landscape, adapting culturally to changing natural conditions and developing various types of community throughout the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The rest - and most substantial part of the volume - deals with the history of Scandinavia from the Viking Age to the end of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (c. 1520). The external Viking expansion opened Scandinavia to European influence to a hitherto unknown degree. A Christian church organisation was established, the first towns came into being, and the unification of the three medieval kingdoms of Scandinavia began, coinciding with the formation of the unique Icelandic 'Free State'.

The History of Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, Denmark,Finland and Iceland) is similar to Cambridge History yet significantly cheaper

The Viking World by Stefan Brink & Neil Price is a mid-range anthological book compromising of many articles from various scholars.

>I would really appreciate material that covers linguistics.....philology, morphology and the like
As for the other categories, I would really appreciate some introductory material on archaeology.

This book will probably be the best one for you because it includes all of the above.

Myth and Religion of the North: the Religion Ancient Scandinavia this book is a good overview of the different mythologies before the christianisation of the nordics.

Women in the Viking Age is a good book on the niche subject area of Women roles within the viking age nordics & its various colonies (from Greenland to Russia). Jesch uses various pieces of evidence from archaeological finds, runic inscriptions, historical records & Old Norse literature.

I would also recommend you look into the Icelandic sagas & Eddas. I'd use SagaDB because there are many various different icelandic sagas & in a variety of languages including English, Icelandic & Old Norse. If you'd like to go about learning O.N. you check the Viking Society for Northern Research or check out the books: A New Introduction to Old Norse: I Grammar: 1 or Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas

If you're interested at all in the presence of the Vikings (and later scandinavians) in Eastern Europe check out Viking Rus: Studies on the Presence of Scandinavians in Eastern Europe

Hopefully this helps if you have any more specific questions don't be afraid to ask :)

u/MarcusDohrelius · 4 pointsr/AskHistorians

The Viking World is about as comprehensive of a volume as you could need. There are plenty of sections dealing with women in the Viking world. The work is scholarly but not unapproachable.

u/Nocturnal-Goat · 3 pointsr/Denmark

Hvis du vil have det nyeste forskning på området, så vil jeg anbefale The Viking World. Den giver et ganske godt indblik i, hvor lidt vi egentlig ved om vikingetiden og hvor meget det hele er omdiskuteret. Den forholder sig ikke kun til Skandinavien, men også deres virke i Europa og andre steder i verden.

u/toast_monster · 1 pointr/history

With English history, I would start with the Romans. The "very short introduction" books have shown up in my old reading lists on multiple occasions at university.



I would then move on to the vikings. Again look at "a very short introduction". I would also look at "The Viking World". This is the textbook I used at Uni.


(Now we get to medieval England, my favourite) Look at the history of the medieval church christianity was central to medieval life. Look at the Black Death King Death: The Black Death and its Aftermath in Late-Medieval England, it is one of my favourite books of all time and an absolute pleasure to read. This book is a very good overview of medieval Europe This book is also a very good, but brief, introduction. I would read that one before the other one.


The Hundred Years war is an important part of English and French history. The Hundred Years War is a good brief book.



Now we get to the War of the Roses (if you like game of thrones, this is what it is based on). Hicks, M. A., The war of the Roses (2003). He wrote another longer book in 2010. Both are very good, but the 2003 book is much much smaller.


I never studied the Tudors or Stuarts at uni but I am sure someone else would be able to direct you to good books. When buying books look for "University Press" books. They are written buy lecturers and professors, world leaders in their field.


The Empire Project is a very good book, but not as small as the others I have suggested (well, except for the viking age one).


Don't be disheartened by the amount of books I have suggested, I promise the majority are tiny and pictures do take up a lot of room. If you were to combine them, they probably would be as many words as 2 big books. Wait for the books to become cheap or call up a university second hand book shop to see if they have them in stock. Again I highly recommend the "a very short introduction" books if you want to get to know an area of history without making the commitment of buying larger more expensive books. If you want my old reading lists I can send them too you if you PM me.

u/depanneur · 1 pointr/AskHistorians

The Viking World edited by Stefan Brink is a great source, filled with up-to-date papers written by some of the best scholars in Viking Age history and archaeology. It has chapters detailing everything from Norse-Sami relations, Scandinavian coinage to a few chapters regarding the impact by Scandinavians on the people they interacted with. I definitely recommend it.

The impact of the Scandinavian Invasions on Celtic Speaking Peoples is a bit dated, but is cool to have as a historiographical piece because so many of their interpretations have been proven wrong by new archaeological evidence and less narrow/literal readings of cherry picked primary sources (Binchy, for example, was a genius in the field of early Irish law tracts, however only reading law tracts will give you a very skewed view of how Irish society functioned). I only bought it because it's on sale and because it includes D A Binchy's classic "Changing of the old order" paper, even though new research has shown his theory of the vikings dragging the Irish out of an "old order" to be wrong.

u/Slurri · 1 pointr/MedievalNorseStudies

The Penguin Atlas of Medieval History - Colin McEvedy 1961 for an overview.
2008, erudite conference output in Chapters 37 to 40
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Viking-World-Routledge-Worlds/dp/0415692628