What do you think?
Rate this book
Viking wars
- GenresHistory
509 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2018
1 person is currently reading
44 people want to read
About the author
Max Adams
14 books184 followersI am an archaeologist, woodsman and traveller. I live in the North-east of England where I write about landscape and history. My next non-fiction work, to be published in Autumn 2017, is called Alfred's Britain - a history and archaeology of the British Isles in the Viking Age. The King in the North has been a non-fiction bestseller since its publication. In the Land of Giants, my latest non-fiction book, is a series of journeys, mostly on foot, through Dark Age landscapes.
In May 2016 I published my first novel, The Ambulist.
In May 2016 I published my first novel, The Ambulist.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 27, 2022
This book was originally published as Alfred’s Britain: War and Peace in the Viking Age and I couldn’t help wondering if it was changed to Viking Wars for the benefit of American readers, whose knowledge of British kings generally stops with Arthur and Camelot. The author is clearly ambivalent about the word Viking, and in the second paragraph of the Author’s Note stresses that, while it is invariably associated with Scandinavian raiders, it could apply to any ethnic or national group. He prefers to use the word as a verb: “to go a-Viking,” but that is not likely to catch on.
The book traces the events from the first recorded raid in 789 AD to the expulsion of the last Scandinavian king from York in 954. There was no Britain at this time, and the word is used here only in its geographic sense. There were only small kingdoms such as Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, Gwynedd, Deira, and many others, constantly at war with each other. There remained some cultural holdovers from the days of the Romans, and these traditions worked against the defenders when the Northmen attacked. For example, many towns and settlements were unwalled, and religious institutions relied on the weight of their authority to protect them.
The Britains also retained a sense of military honor which was entirely foreign to the Vikings, who were were there, initially at least, solely for plunder and slaves, and would swear to any oath, to any god, with no intention whatsoever of keeping their word. The author discusses this at one point, saying that the British kings may not have been as foolish as they appeared, repeatedly accepting promises they must have known would not be kept. However, there were circumstances when knowingly accepting a false oath could be useful if it bought time to rest and regroup.
There is also an odd use of terminology in this book. The author tries to humanize the attackers and normalize their behavior in a brutal and violent age. Nevertheless, it is jarring when he occasionally refers to them as entrepreneurs, as if they had landed in Britain to sell trinkets rather than plunder and despoil, torturing priests for sport, and burning anything they could not carry off.
In 865 the Vikings landed to stay, no longer as raiders but as conquerors and settlers. The defenders still had no effective response to the attackers. The Vikings were superb professional soldiers, far superior to the ad hoc militias of peasants with clubs and scythes. Their longboats were the marvels of the age, swift, sturdily built, and able to make long ocean crossings yet with such a light draft they could navigate far up rivers in only two feet of water. They could slip behind defending forces and stage hit and run attacks with impunity. They also made good use of the Roman roads for rapid advances, and bought or stole horses for advance reconnoitering or to spread terror. Many of the local noblemen realized that buying them off was their only option.
The book has a number of good photographs, but key to understanding the events of the time is the included maps. It is a good idea to keep them bookmarked, or readers can quickly loses themselves in a welter of unfamiliar rivers and place names. This is especially true for an American, but I suspect even natives would need to peek at the maps from time to time. There is also a different kind of map, one I have not seen before but which definitely has some value in clarifying the author’s discussions, especially of roads, rivers, and trade routes. The author created stylized maps in the manner used by metro systems, and while they sacrifice detail and distort distances, they actually do a good job. One of them, on page 281, clearly shows how Watling Street served as a dividing line between kingdoms by looking at towns and showing which had Saxon names and which Scandinavian.
It is a truism of military history that successful armies train their enemies in how to fight them, and while it took a generation for the beleaguered native kingdoms to develop new strategies, they proved effective. In France a bridge was built over the Seine to prevent the Vikings from coming upriver to Paris, and armies began to professionalize. A weakness of the invaders was that they were individually brave and capable, but fared poorly against trained soldiers fighting together. The Vikings were defeated decisively in France and decided to try their luck again against Britain, where they had been successful before.
This time, however, they were fighting Alfred the Great, who truly deserves the title. He fortified river crossings and towns, and established permanent garrisons of trained soldiers, so the invaders were restricted both in their movements and their ability to live off the land. When they stood to fight they were decisively defeated and scattered to their fortified places, where they could be starved out. Alfred also formed strong defensive alliances with the kingdom of Mercia to his north, and received the perhaps reluctant submission of minor kingdoms from Wales to Sussex, including London, which at the time was not much of a prize economically or politically.
Alfred’s sons and grandsons continued his successes, and the book ends with King Eadred crushing the Vikings near York, driving out their last king and adding Northumbria to the Saxon kingdom. It is a triumphant place to end the book, because from there it was all downhill for the them, with incompetent rulers and scheming nobles weakening the kingdom. In 1016 Knut of Denmark would invade and sweep the Saxons aside, sending their king into exile, and in 1066 the Normans would invade, conquer, and set the stage for modern Britain.
This book relies on the historical record where it exists, but that is fragmentary and open to various interpretations in many cases. To supplement it archaeology is used, and is very helpful in understanding the ebb and flow of events. In particular, the study of coins struck during this era tells a remarkable story of economic and political power. In one case the coins even contradict the official record, which records a strong and unified kingdom, but the few and poor quality coins of that reign tell a different story. Archaeological digs can tell a great deal about how people lived, worked, and worshiped, as well as showing the changing fates of cities and towns as fortifications appeared and were successively increased to deal with evolving threats.
Many books quickly skip over Dark Age Britain, rushing from the end of Roman rule to William the Conqueror, and this book is good for filling in the gaps. I previously read the author’s In the Land of Giants: A Journey Through the Dark Ages, and enjoyed it, and I liked this one as well. There is a lot of detail here that may be too much for readers wanting just a brief introduction to the subject, but for those willing to dig deeper, it is worth their time.
The book traces the events from the first recorded raid in 789 AD to the expulsion of the last Scandinavian king from York in 954. There was no Britain at this time, and the word is used here only in its geographic sense. There were only small kingdoms such as Wessex, Mercia, East Anglia, Gwynedd, Deira, and many others, constantly at war with each other. There remained some cultural holdovers from the days of the Romans, and these traditions worked against the defenders when the Northmen attacked. For example, many towns and settlements were unwalled, and religious institutions relied on the weight of their authority to protect them.
The Britains also retained a sense of military honor which was entirely foreign to the Vikings, who were were there, initially at least, solely for plunder and slaves, and would swear to any oath, to any god, with no intention whatsoever of keeping their word. The author discusses this at one point, saying that the British kings may not have been as foolish as they appeared, repeatedly accepting promises they must have known would not be kept. However, there were circumstances when knowingly accepting a false oath could be useful if it bought time to rest and regroup.
There is also an odd use of terminology in this book. The author tries to humanize the attackers and normalize their behavior in a brutal and violent age. Nevertheless, it is jarring when he occasionally refers to them as entrepreneurs, as if they had landed in Britain to sell trinkets rather than plunder and despoil, torturing priests for sport, and burning anything they could not carry off.
In 865 the Vikings landed to stay, no longer as raiders but as conquerors and settlers. The defenders still had no effective response to the attackers. The Vikings were superb professional soldiers, far superior to the ad hoc militias of peasants with clubs and scythes. Their longboats were the marvels of the age, swift, sturdily built, and able to make long ocean crossings yet with such a light draft they could navigate far up rivers in only two feet of water. They could slip behind defending forces and stage hit and run attacks with impunity. They also made good use of the Roman roads for rapid advances, and bought or stole horses for advance reconnoitering or to spread terror. Many of the local noblemen realized that buying them off was their only option.
The book has a number of good photographs, but key to understanding the events of the time is the included maps. It is a good idea to keep them bookmarked, or readers can quickly loses themselves in a welter of unfamiliar rivers and place names. This is especially true for an American, but I suspect even natives would need to peek at the maps from time to time. There is also a different kind of map, one I have not seen before but which definitely has some value in clarifying the author’s discussions, especially of roads, rivers, and trade routes. The author created stylized maps in the manner used by metro systems, and while they sacrifice detail and distort distances, they actually do a good job. One of them, on page 281, clearly shows how Watling Street served as a dividing line between kingdoms by looking at towns and showing which had Saxon names and which Scandinavian.
It is a truism of military history that successful armies train their enemies in how to fight them, and while it took a generation for the beleaguered native kingdoms to develop new strategies, they proved effective. In France a bridge was built over the Seine to prevent the Vikings from coming upriver to Paris, and armies began to professionalize. A weakness of the invaders was that they were individually brave and capable, but fared poorly against trained soldiers fighting together. The Vikings were defeated decisively in France and decided to try their luck again against Britain, where they had been successful before.
This time, however, they were fighting Alfred the Great, who truly deserves the title. He fortified river crossings and towns, and established permanent garrisons of trained soldiers, so the invaders were restricted both in their movements and their ability to live off the land. When they stood to fight they were decisively defeated and scattered to their fortified places, where they could be starved out. Alfred also formed strong defensive alliances with the kingdom of Mercia to his north, and received the perhaps reluctant submission of minor kingdoms from Wales to Sussex, including London, which at the time was not much of a prize economically or politically.
Alfred’s sons and grandsons continued his successes, and the book ends with King Eadred crushing the Vikings near York, driving out their last king and adding Northumbria to the Saxon kingdom. It is a triumphant place to end the book, because from there it was all downhill for the them, with incompetent rulers and scheming nobles weakening the kingdom. In 1016 Knut of Denmark would invade and sweep the Saxons aside, sending their king into exile, and in 1066 the Normans would invade, conquer, and set the stage for modern Britain.
This book relies on the historical record where it exists, but that is fragmentary and open to various interpretations in many cases. To supplement it archaeology is used, and is very helpful in understanding the ebb and flow of events. In particular, the study of coins struck during this era tells a remarkable story of economic and political power. In one case the coins even contradict the official record, which records a strong and unified kingdom, but the few and poor quality coins of that reign tell a different story. Archaeological digs can tell a great deal about how people lived, worked, and worshiped, as well as showing the changing fates of cities and towns as fortifications appeared and were successively increased to deal with evolving threats.
Many books quickly skip over Dark Age Britain, rushing from the end of Roman rule to William the Conqueror, and this book is good for filling in the gaps. I previously read the author’s In the Land of Giants: A Journey Through the Dark Ages, and enjoyed it, and I liked this one as well. There is a lot of detail here that may be too much for readers wanting just a brief introduction to the subject, but for those willing to dig deeper, it is worth their time.
Displaying 1 of 1 review