Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles, 850-880 (Oxford Historical Monographs) [Hardcover]

Alfred P. Smyth (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 308 pages
• Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr (Txt) (June 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198218656
• ISBN-13: 978-0198218654
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,195,524 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A classic treatment of the subject, July 27, 2001

By 

Michael K. Smith (South Louisiana) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Scandinavian Kings in the British Isles, 850-880 (Oxford Historical Monographs) (Hardcover)

The viking invaders of Britain and Ireland in the ninth century, whom the English generically called "Danes," were not merely raiders but settlers who founded dynasties in Northumbria, the Orkneys and Hebrides, York, and Dublin that lasted for several centuries. All this activity produced an elaborate body of heroic litera-ture in Scandinavia and it is the northern viewpoint rather than the English that Smyth adopts. The first of the lot was Ragnar Loðbrok (which translates roughly as "hairy ass"), who perished sword in hand, according to tradition, in the snake pit of King Aella of Northumbria. Ragnar's ancestry is unknown and probably unprovable but his progeny claimed as their grandfather Sigurd Ring -- the "Siegfried" of the Niebelungenlied. His sons seized on their father's murder as justification for a retaliatory invasion but the process actually was one of economic and population pressure. Genealogy figures prominently in this study, since so many of the conqueror-rulers were blood-related. And what the monks of Lindis-farne recorded as pirate raids were, to the Norse, a well-organized campaign to occupy the fertile British Isles. This volume in the Oxford Historical Monograph series is a very readable treatment (supported by thorough footnotes and an extensive bibliography) of one of the main skeins of the history, language, and political tradition of England.