Reddit mentions of The Vikings: Revised Edition

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 All three of those are slightly outdated but they give a great first impression of the Age.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 Do not confuse it with the book of the same name by Graham-Campbell and Wilson, which is rather outdated.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!

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.

Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga is a good read on Viking history. For a more indepth study of Viking culture i'd recommend The Vikings by Else Roesdahl

I am by no means an expert on Viking history or early Nordic history, but I'd suggest checking out:

>Brink, Stefan, ed. The Viking World (2008). A book which combines many short chapters on any topic relevant to Vikings or the Scandinavian late Iron Age.

>The Vikings by Else Roesdahl. It gives quite a comprehensive history for anyone looking to get into the period.

I also suggest checking out this reading list on Viking history & culture. It's all quite introductory, so it should be fine for what you want it for.

Else Roesdahl's The Vikings is a pretty good place to start.

Others have also mentioned some of the sagas: Njal's Saga, The Saga of the Volsungs. Beowulf takes place in Scandinavia.

Somerville and Mcdonald's The Viking Age: A Reader is a nice collection of translated historical texts and documents. It includes a description of the Lindisfarne raids and some of the subsequent reactions of priests and kings from The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.