Vegard Vike

The best & fullest one-volume survey of Vikings from a strictly *military* angle is this 400pp treasure chest, translated from Norwegian.

In general I strongly reject thematic (as opposed to chronological) sectioning for historical surveys of this type, but due to this book's more specialised scope, its most uniquely useful part is precisely its first - also thematical - half, separately detailing organisation, training, art of war, fortification... Plus weapons, in a rich chapter which is the contribution authored by Vegard Vike.… (mais)

This is a popular, and richly illustrated, history of the military side of the Viking Age. Structurally, the first several chapters deal thematically with subjects such as weaponry, tactics, and shipbuilding, followed by a number of chapters each giving a chronological account of viking activities in a particular region (Scotland, Ireland, England, Francia, Iberia, Russia and Ukraine, Byzantium, Greenland and America).

It's mostly quite good, especially the thematic chapters. If I'd object to anything - apart from a few minor errors I noted - it's the authors' selective skepticism: sometimes they accept late sources, such as the Icelandic sagas, or even modern interpretations of them*, unquestioningly, while sometimes they treat chroniclers much closer to what they're describing with great circumspection: I can't spot any principle at work here.

* The most questionable example is perhaps the identification of Macbeth with the Scots ruler Karl Hundason from the Orkneyinga Saga. This may well be correct - Macbeth was king of Scots at the time the saga puts Karl's activities - but the book simply substitutes Macbeth's name for Karl's when retelling the saga's account of his war with the Orcadians, leaving the naive reader with no clue there is a question here at all.… (mais)