The Vikings in Britain and Ireland

The impact of Scandinavian invaders on the peoples of the Britain and Ireland was incalculable. Raiders on a sometimes large scale, they initially attacked coastal and river settlements, but ended up building towns and political entities which reshaped all the countries of the archipelago.

Clare Downham's compelling new book reproduces a wide range of fascinating surviving material, ranging from chronicles to inscriptions on monuments. It brings together sometimes fragmentary, tantalizing works from our remote past to create a picture of a time which was--for the raiders--remarkable and exciting, and, through innumerable vicissitudes, a time when Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England began to stabilize as political areas, alongside such now long-vanished entities as the Kingdom of the Isles and the Danelaw.

For anyone interested in this period, Downham's book is a superb, atmospheric and surprising source-book, showing how much the Scandinavians reshaped the British Isles, but also the limits of their impact.