"A History of the Vikings" by Gwyn Jones

A History of the Vikings
by Gwyn Jones

http://www.amazon.com/History-Vikings-Gwyn-Jones/dp/0192801341/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-7534501-9212006?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190506418&sr=8-1

I've spent a lot of time reading up on Islamic history, but I recently decided I haven't delved nearly as much as I should into the Scandinavian side of my heritage. So I went looking for a good general history of the Viking age in particular in hopes of connecting with my ancient roots on that end, especially since I grew up with those images and motifs very much a part of my life.

I poked around on Amazon until I found this book which was labelled by a bunch of people as a classic and supposedly excellent all-encompassing work. My opinion? I started off thinking "good gravy, this author is clearly smart, but he doesn't know jack about how to write a readable history". Jones has encyclopedic knowledge, but that manifests itself in a writing style that is not only full of run-on sentences (I know, motes and beams, I'm terribly guilty of that too) but endless lists of un-referenced personal and place names. "Just like when Olaf Sigvigtrigbjornisudsiwhozenfluzenwagentragenbjornarsson went off raiding in the fjords of Trondelskaggerakskeveigen with his famous cousin Eirik Steinarsonenvovenbobbenbjornentornen for the legendary king of Upsalawalatralalalalaland..." is the kind of sentence fragment that comes to mind. The man just doesn't know how to give any context and clearly expects the reader to know long lists of names and places and important moments in history that the first-time reader just plain can't know. On top of that, he is old-school in his use of English. I believe the book was first published in the 60s (from research that went back much further) and updated again in the 1980s. He comes from a different generation in how he writes and in how he expects the reader to take it in.

All those things said, my view of the book did change as I read it and I finished it glad to have read it and genuinely feeling I got a decent broad overview of the viking era, historically and culturally. Firstly, I was determined to finish the book and not just give up after 100 pages, so I simply compartmentalized my brain to accept that I wouldn't be able to know all the names, places, and dates would just have to go with the flow. As time went on, while I didn't know all the names, enough of a framework was built up in my mind (from minimally sufficient repetition of those details in the text) to allow me to feel I understood at least generally where specific items he mentioned fit into the bigger picture. The sheer volume of his facts allowed that.

Secondly, he covers a very broad scope of topics. Historical events, personalities, economics, culture, warfare, voyages, interactions with other cultures and societies, daily life, pagan and Christian religion, archaeology, ancient primary sources and many other topics all get a decent treatment. One walks away feeling they really got a glimpse into what society on a micro and macro level was really like, at least as best as can be understood a thousand years later.

Also, I don't doubt some of his conclusions likely seem dated since the book is quite old (not that I would have enough knowledge to know which conclusions would be off), but Jones has a fundamentally humble and skeptical mind that seeks aggressively not to draw conclusions where the facts as known don't justify them. So, for example, the Viking sagas recorded mostly a couple hundred years after the end of the Viking age in Iceland - taken relatively literally by many in the past - receive very critical treatment for the vast portion of them which cannot be corroborated by other means. Culturally painful perhaps to those who have relied on them, but logically the safest thing to do to make sure what a historian does claim to know is based on solid footing and not hopeful conjecture.

Oh, and for me personally being as fascinated as I am with Islamic culture, I really like the fairly deep coverage that Viking contacts with the Islamic world received. The Vikings travelled far and wide and at this time the Islamic empires were some of the wealthiest, most powerful, and most "civilized" in the world at the time (having inherited and expanded upon much of the cultural legacy of Rome, the Byzantines, the Persians, and others). So cultural interactions were inevitable and quite interesting. It was particularly interesting to read some of the first-hand primary source accounts of such interactions and see pictures of viking hoards of wealth that included Arabic coins in readable Kufic script.

All in all, not having read any other books to compare this to on the topic and having seen the comments on the book from others who know the topic much better than I do, I would recommend it. Just be prepared to deal with the book on its own terms, its not an easy read even if it did get more readable as it went along.