Viking Revival The Epic Battles, Deeds, and Deaths of Saga Legends Revealed in the 19th Century

Blood feuds, expeditionary raids, militant colonization, and epic battles that determined the fate of nations in northern Europe. In the nineteenth century, Anglo-Nordic scholars rediscovered their ancient history through translations of medieval sagas from Iceland in a period known as the Viking Revival. The new field of study would grow to challenge existing paradigms and historical perspectives – leading observers to question long-held assumptions about society, civilization, religion, laws, and even the origins of self-government. ‘[I]s he a viking, the page is thronged with naval expeditions; is he a skald, the saga is filled with his verses; is he a man of law’? While many British Victorians and Americans held preconceived notions about their ‘violent’ ancestors, others sought answers. Stretching from the Russian Arctic and Byzantium, to Normandy and the British Isles, to Greenland and the coast of North America, Viking explorers, adventurers, and warriors left their North Sea and Baltic homelands at the beginning of the ninth century in a diaspora that profoundly altered the medieval world – leaving behind long forgotten accounts of their deeds and downfalls. In Viking Revival, historian Benjamin J. Swenson chronicles the nineteenth century emergence of interest in Norse history and culture, the artists, images, and scholars inspired by them, and the lives of famous and infamous Vikings who forged a lasting legacy.