Angelo Forte

More of a technical history - the authors go over in great detail the Viking boats and the nuances of the names of various types of boats. They discuss the literature in detail. This is a scholarly book (read: a bit dry), but not too large and has a wealth of information that I had no idea existed.

The book is more oriented with the Viking impact on Western Europe than the eastern Baltic. Although I chose to read it to get a better idea of Canute and the Danish empire which included Britain, Norway, Denmark and much of the Western Baltic, as well as the Baltic happenings, I ended up finding out quite a bit about the Orkneys, Faeroes, Hebrides, and Shetland Islands and Iceland. The section covering travels and colonization in Iceland, Greenland, and North America is a short but worthy read. The last 100 pages deal with how Scandinavia integrated into Europe and the Viking spirit was redirected into the crusades. The last 150 pages were much smoother flowing than the first few hundred.

Who would have thought the Orkneys, Hebrides, and Shetland Island groups were independent power blocks shaping the future of Western Europe? Nevertheless, they were players of significant activity and scope for a few hundred years. Including the Isle of Man, they were equivalent to the rulers of areas such as Galloway, Anglia, Mercia, Northumbria, Strathclyde,and the other smaller kingdoms that eventually crystallized into the greater nations of England and Scotland. Even after these two stabilized, these fringe power brokers played important parts as weights or counterweights to disrupt the balance or spoilers to the plans and schemes of the larger nations. The same enclosure movement that destroyed Scottish culture and independent farmers in the 17th century also depopulated and destroyed the cultures of these once-thriving peoples. Who knew?… (meer)