Deschutes Public Library

The Viking wars, war and peace in King Alfred's Britain, 789-955, Max Adams

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

genealogical tablesmapsillustrations

index present

non fiction

The Viking wars

abstracts summaries

1085206308

Max Adams

war and peace in King Alfred's Britain, 789-955

A history of Britain in the violent and unruly era between the first Scandinavian raids in 789 and the final expulsion of the Vikings from York in 954. In 865, a great Viking army landed in East Anglia, precipitating a series of wars that would last until the middle of the following century. It was in this time of crisis that the modern kingdoms of Britain were born. In their responses to the Viking threat, these kingdoms forged their identities as hybrid cultures: vibrant and entrepreneurial peoples adapting to instability and opportunity. Traditionally, Alfred the Great is cast as the central player in the story of Viking Age Britain. But author Max Adams, while stressing the genius of Alfred as war leader, law-giver, and forger of the English nation, has a more nuanced narrative approach to this conventional version of history. The Britain encountered by the Scandinavians of the ninth and tenth centuries was one of regional diversity and self-conscious cultural identities, depicted in glorious narrative fashion in The Viking Wars

Part I. The tiger in the smoke, 789-878. 1. Landscape with figures -- 2. Central places -- 3. The incoming tide -- 4. The end of days -- Part II. Newton's cradle, 879-918. 5. The balance of power -- 6. Arrivals and departures -- 7. Fragmentary annals -- 8. Politics by other means -- Part III. Going native, 919-955. 9. Innate affinities with ambiguity -- 10. Lawyers, guns and money -- 11. A house of cards -- 12. The illusory prize