The literature on the Viking Age is vast. A recent survey of the state of research is found in Stefan Brink with the collaboration of Neil Price, eds., The Viking World (2008), which contains detailed bibliographies and brief thematic essays by some eighty experts. Older, but still very useful, with outstanding essays and attractive illustrations is Peter Sawyer, ed., The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings (1997). Among the many treatments of the Vikings by a single author stands out Else Roesdahl, The Vikings (2nd ed., 1998), a well-conceived survey, particularly good on archeology. Gwyn Jones, A History of the Vikings (1968), has aged well thanks to its fully annotated, detailed treatment of raids and settlements; similar in scope is F. Donald Logan, The Vikings in History (3rd ed., 2005). The earlier chapters of Knut Helle, ed., Cambridge History of Scandinavia (2007), survey the Viking Age from the point of view of Scandinavia. Good general histories of medieval Scandinavia are found in Birgit Sawyer and Peter Sawyer, Medieval Scandinavia: From Conversion to Reformation, circa 800–1500 (1993), and Sverre Bagge, Cross and Scepter: The Rise of the Scandinavian Kingdoms from the Vikings to the Reformation (2014). P. H. Sawyer, The Age of the Vikings (1962; 2nd ed. 1971), still eminently readable, brought Viking studies into the modern era by setting raids and settlements in their historical context, and by its careful use of numismatic evidence.
Angus A. Somerville and R. Andrew MacDonald, eds., The Viking Age: A Reader (2010), collects relevant sources but makes little distinction between contemporary ones and high-medieval literary treatments. Many sources concerning England (including [250]the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and The Battle of Maldon) are available in translation in the first two volumes of English Historical Documents, vol. 1, c. 500–1042, edited by Dorothy Whitelock (2nd ed., 1979), and vol. 2, 1042–1189, edited by George W. Greenaway (2nd ed., 1981). Although these collections excerpt many of the European sources for the Viking raids, the most important ones are also available in their entirety in English translation. Particularly useful among year-by- year accounts are Bernhard W. Scholz with Barbara Rogers, Carolingian Chronicles: Royal Frankish Annals and Nithard’s Histories (1970); Janet Nelson, The Annals of St-Bertin (1991); Timothy Reuter, The Annals of Fulda (1992); Michael Swanton, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (1996); Simon Keynes and Michael Lapidge, Alfred the Great: Asser’s “Life of Alfred” and Other Contemporary Sources (1983); Sean Mac Airt, The Annals of Innisfallen MS. Rawlinson B 503 (1951); Sean Mac Airt and Gearóid Mac Niocaill, The Annals of Ulster (to A.D. 1131) (1983); Samuel Hazzard Cross and Olgerd P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor, The Russian Primary Chronicle: Laurentian Text (1973); Adam of Bremen, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, trans. Francis J. Tschan and Timothy Reuter (2nd ed., 2002).
Roric in Dorestad and some of his western confrères are treated in Simon Coupland, “From Poachers to Game-Keepers: Scandinavian Warlords and Carolingian Kings,” Early Medieval Europe 7 (1998): 85–114. A balanced approach to Rurik is taken in Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus, 750–1200 (1996). Norse settlement in the Danelaw and elsewhere in England is most recently analyzed in D. M. Hadley, The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and Culture (2006). Some of the Scandinavian rulers in the British Isles are treated in Benjamin Hudson, Viking Pirates and Christian Princes: Dynasty, Religion, and Empire in the North Atlantic (2005); and King Cnut’s most recent biography is Timothy Bolton, The Empire of Cnut the Great: Conquest and the Consolidation of Power in Northern Europe in the Early Eleventh Century (2009). The early history of Normandy is ably laid out in David Bates, Normandy before 1066 (1982). The Scandinavians who emigrated to Greenland and North America are conveniently treated in William W. Fitzhugh and Elizabeth I. Ward, eds., Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga (2000). The medieval sagas about them are in [251]Keneva Kunz, trans., The Vinland Sagas: The Icelandic Sagas about the First Documented Voyages across the North Atlantic (2008).
Judith Jesch, Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse (2001), systematically explores words relating to ships in Viking Age Scandinavian sources, in the process illuminating the history of Viking ships. The main research institution devoted to Viking ships is the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark. The museum and its staff have published many books and booklets on the subject as well as an abundant website, http://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/. Notable is Ole Crumlin-Pedersen, Viking-Age Ships and Ship-building in Hedeby/Haithabu and Schleswig (1997). Ibn Fadlan’s account is available in English in Richard N. Frye, Ibn Fadlan’s Journey to Russia: A Tenth-Century Traveler from Baghdad to the Volga River (2005), and in Paul Lunde and Caroline Stone, trans., Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North (2012), which also includes many other Arabic sources of northern history.
Helen Clarke and Björn Ambrosiani, Towns in the Viking Age (1991), surveys the trading centers of northern Europe from an archeological point of view. The fur trade in Russia, in the Viking Age as well as later, is accessibly treated in Janet Martin, Treasure of the Land of Darkness: The Fur Trade and Its Significance for Medieval Russia (1986). Adriaan Verhulst, The Carolingian Economy (2002), is foundational for the economic history of the Viking period.
Nora Berend, ed., Christianisation and the Rise of Christian Monarchy: Scandinavia, Central Europe, and Rus’, c. 900–1200 (2007), is an important survey of state formation and Christianization on the periphery of Europe. Sverre Bagge, From Viking Stronghold to Christian Kingdom (2010), traces state formation in Norway.
Interesting treatments of women in Scandinavian society and literature are two books by Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (1995), and Old Norse Images of Women (1996), as well as Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (1991). For insights into the physical characteristics of Viking Age Scandinavians based on examinations of their skeletons, see Kurt Brøste, Jørgen Balslev Jørgensen, Ulla Lund Hansen, and Berit Jansen Sellevold, Iron Age Man in Denmark (1984). [252]
Notable among the many surveys of northern mythology is Gabriel Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia (1964). More up-to-date treatments of religions in the North are Thomas A. DuBois, Nordic Religions in the Viking Age (1999), and Christopher Abram, Myths of the Pagan North: The Gods of the Norsemen (2011). Anders Winroth, The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe (2012), focuses on religious change but also treats the society and culture of the Vikings. Carolyne Larrington, The Poetic Edda: A New Translation (3rd ed., 2014), is the best translation of this fundamental work for the understanding of Scandinavian religion.
The corpus of skaldic poetry is being edited and translated in a detailed multivolume work under the general editorship of Margaret Clunies Ross in Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (2007–). A comprehensive introduction to Scandinavia’s medieval literature is found in Carol J. Clover and John Lindow, Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Critical Guide (2nd ed., 2005). A good presentation of runes and their use is Sven B. F. Jansson, Runes in Sweden (1987). All known Scandinavian runic inscriptions, with English translations, are available through the database Samnordisk runtextdatabas, http://www.nordiska.uu.se/forskn/samnord.htm. James Graham Campbell, Viking Art (2013), is a well-illustrated survey of Scandinavian art from the early Middle Ages.
