The Hammer and the Cross

aw_product_id: 
3450262879
merchant_image_url: 
https://cdn.waterstones.com/bookjackets/large/9780/1410/9780141017754.jpg
merchant_category: 
Books
search_price: 
10.99
book_author_name: 
Robert Ferguson
book_type: 
Paperback
publisher: 
Penguin Books Ltd
published_date: 
04/11/2010
isbn: 
9780141017754
Merchant Product Cat path: 
Books > History > Regional & national history > Europe
specifications: 
Robert Ferguson|Paperback|Penguin Books Ltd|04/11/2010
Merchant Product Id: 
9780141017754
Book Description: 
For those living outside Scandinavia, the Viking Age effectively began in 793 with an attack on the monastery at Lindisfarne, a characteristically violent harbinger of what was in store for Britain and much of Europe from the Vikings for the next 300 years, until the final destruction of the heathen temple to the Norse gods at Uppsala around 1090. Robert Ferguson is a sure guide across what he calls 'the treacherous marches which divide legend from fact in Viking Age history'. His long familiarity with the literary culture of Scandinavia - the eddas, the poetry of the skalds and the sagas - is combined with the latest archaeological discoveries and the evidence of picture-stones, runes, ships and objects scattered all over northern Europe, to make the most convincing modern portrait of the Viking Age in any language. The Hammer and the Cross ranges from Scandinavia itself to Kievan Rus and Byzantium in the east, to Iceland, Greenland and the north American settlements in the west. Beyond its geographical boundaries the book takes us on a journey to a misty region inhabited by Hallfred the Troublesome Poet, Harald Bluetooth, Ragnar Hairy-Breeches, Ivar the Boneless and Eyvind the Plagiarist, in which literature, history and myth dissolve into one another.

Graphic Design by Ishmael Annobil /  Web Development by Ruzanna Hovasapyan