Whew. That was a lot of names-dates-battles. I think I absorbed some info along the way, but man are my eyes sore. ( )

Wow…that was a slog. I wanted to love this book, as I’m way into Viking culture right now, but man, I couldn’t. Unfortunately it was more about who was king, when, and where they ruled and who they tried to attack. I was hoping it would delve more into the mythology and daily life stuff, but that never really happened. I also found fault in the chronology, it was all over the place jumping between years. It felt like it started to try to take it on a linear path, but that was soon dissolved. I know writing this book must have been an undertaking as there was so much lost to history, but a when a book tells you that something might have happened one way, but it could have happened a completely different way, and we will never really know, it is hard to think it credible. The other issue I had was the similarity of names, Olaf and Olav, and Hakon and Hakon and Hakon. They all had surnames, or defining characteristics, if the names are that close, stick with Hakon the Good every time you mention that Hakon. If he is just called Hakon, the reader has a hard time divining if the Hakon referred to there is Hakon the Good, Hakon the Bad, or even Hakon the Ugly…sorry bad joke there…

Again, I understand so much has been lost to history and most of it will we never know, and that makes writing a book about it so difficult. But it didn’t also need to be so difficult to read… ( )

Excellent book about Viking history. Ending less than compelling but book is a must-read if interested in the subject. Of course. it was a slow read, at least for me, since I didn't have a basic familiarity with the time period. ( )

the history of the Vikings from early depredations and settlements to formation of nation states

I found the reviews of this a bit surprising- I guess it is a bit hard to read at times, with all those names flying around, but given that Ferguson was trying to be a responsible historian, there's not much else he could have done. Viking history has to be seen from the outside, because outsiders were the ones who recorded that history for us. Stranger still are the complaints about his use of the word 'heathen,' a product, I can only assume, of peoples' bizarre inability to understand that when you're writing about the way something is perceived, you have to use the language of the perceivers. As for the goodreads reviewer who said Ferguson is 'obviously a Christian' who somehow has it in for the Vikings... uh... huh?

The central oddity of this book is Ferguson's insistence that 'The Viking Age' of marauding and rapine was a kind of clash of civilizations between Christian and Heathen, in which Charlemagne's violent imposition of the former religion provoked the Scandanavians (who are taken to be not 'primitives', but just as civilized as the nations to their south, east and west) to burn churches and murder priests. It's timely, I guess, but the best evidence he can martial suggests just as much that the Vikes attacked churches because that's where the money was, and murdered priests and nuns to spread terror, which is a pretty sound military strategy. These civilized gentlemen pretty quickly converted to Christianity and assimilated wherever they settled. But note that Ferguson's presentation is perfectly objective; his reading of the archaeological, literary, and dendrochronological evidence, as well as all sorts of other stuff) never overwhelms his presentation of that evidence. ( )