![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inulro24. The Conversion of Scandinavia by Anders Winroth
I got this for my birthday last year, but as it looked quite specialist I read The Hammer and the Cross and The Norsemen in the Viking Age first. It turns out I needn't have bothered because there's a good general introduction which actually takes up about half the book.
Thus, the answer to my original question, "is there really enough extant material to write a whole book about it?" is no.
There were things that I didn't already know in the general bits, most pertinently how much evidence there is for halls as described in Beowulf in the pre-Christian era.
The point of this book is that while some of the Vikings' neighbours, such as the Saxons, were forcibly converted, in Scandinavia the situation was reversed - when they travelled and raided into the rest of Europe, they saw how the more advanced, and wealthier, states were set up and that this was based around Christianity, so it was more a case of wanting to convert so as to join the mainstream of European states - The Scandinavian countries start to look something like states rather than chiefdoms about the time they start to convert.
There's also a good analysis of how we can't trust most of the conversion narrative that does exist.
So, not as exciting as I was hoping, but a really good solid book on the subject.
Note to self (again) - do not need *another* MA in Viking History and certainly do not need a PhD in said subject.
I got this for my birthday last year, but as it looked quite specialist I read The Hammer and the Cross and The Norsemen in the Viking Age first. It turns out I needn't have bothered because there's a good general introduction which actually takes up about half the book.
Thus, the answer to my original question, "is there really enough extant material to write a whole book about it?" is no.
There were things that I didn't already know in the general bits, most pertinently how much evidence there is for halls as described in Beowulf in the pre-Christian era.
The point of this book is that while some of the Vikings' neighbours, such as the Saxons, were forcibly converted, in Scandinavia the situation was reversed - when they travelled and raided into the rest of Europe, they saw how the more advanced, and wealthier, states were set up and that this was based around Christianity, so it was more a case of wanting to convert so as to join the mainstream of European states - The Scandinavian countries start to look something like states rather than chiefdoms about the time they start to convert.
There's also a good analysis of how we can't trust most of the conversion narrative that does exist.
So, not as exciting as I was hoping, but a really good solid book on the subject.
Note to self (again) - do not need *another* MA in Viking History and certainly do not need a PhD in said subject.
