The long view of the long ships

Robert Ferguson's recently published omnibus history of the viking era [The Vikings, A History. published by Viking, appropriately enough] gets two thumbs up. If I were to teach my dream course on Northern European Life and Literature (a combo of Monks, Monsters, and Manuscripts and Swords, Sails, and Serpents), this would be one of the base texts for the course (I should dream up that syllabus and post it for feedback). The scope of the book is broad--chronologically, geographically, and topically. The general flow of the narrative starts before the 'insular big-bang' of Lindesfarne in 793, but works its way forward ending with the gradual incorporation of Sweden into European (Roman) Christendom in the 12th century. The chapters move from theater to theater--generally concerned more with the Vikings abroad than at home, but as Ferguson makes clear, the story is easier to tell when there are multiple sorts of sources, literary as well as archaeological. (Though the details of the narrative thread is lost in the North, the light is better on Watling Street, etc.)

Ferguson's strength as an author is his deep familiarity with the literary sources as well as with the archaeological record, successive historical treatments, and contemporary or near contemporary chronicles and annals. He makes measured and meaningful use of the truer sources (the poetry) to illuminate other sources. From a teaching perspective, the great virtues of the text are three-fold. First, Ferguson tells a coherent tale that helps the reader keep the big picture in view as the successive threads unfold and intertwine. Second, he let's the loose ends show so that readers can see where conjecture replaces relative certainty. He acknowledges differences of opinion among experts, generally without grinding anyone's particular axe. Third, he models a respect for the various types of sources, giving (in my interpretation) some pride of place to the work of the poets.

The only drawback to the book is probably inevitable: in covering so much, there is little time to tarry with anyone's favorites. (How can we hear so little of Egil Skallagrimson?) No unreasonable or unacceptable gaps appear, however. The one possibly controversial aspect of the interpretation implied in the work is the framing: for Ferguson, the grand sweep of the story is defined by the gradual cultural and religious transition from a separate and independent Nordic community to a post-heathen, at least nominally Christian set of societies, each integrated into larger European society. His parting view of Odin from Snorri's biography of Olaf Trygvasson--as an old man trying to smuggle horse steaks onto the King's table--is a poetic touch. Some might question the choice of making the religious shift the central organizing principle--but I think it works.

Read on--and don't forget to write!