This enthralling, well-documented, and vivid account chronicles the activities of those bold sea raiders of the North who terrorized Europe from the eighth to the eleventh centuries. A dramatic narrative takes readers from the White Sea in the Arctic to Africa’s Moroccan coast, from Viking operations in Russia, England, and Ireland, to daring exploits in Iceland, Greenland, and America.Written by a former curator of the British Museum’s Department of Medieval Antiquities, the volume is one of the first complete accounts of the Nordic raiders. Amply illustrated and written with freshness and vigor, this perennially appealing story of conquest will be valuable to scholars and students of Nordic history.“A titanic subject and in [the author’s] hands, it becomes absorbing drama.” — Bookman.“Undoubtedly the best and most comprehensive study … it would be hard to name a work in any tongue which could rival its treatment of the subject.” — Times [London] Literary Supplement.
The Northmen employed the name in the sense of ‘ one who fared by sea to his adventures of commerce and of war ’, and, later on, with the debased meaning of ‘ robber ’ or ‘ brigand ’ ; among the Frisians and the English the word viking seems to
