Vikings & Anglo-Saxons!
We are a hardy race, being independent booksellers, so of course we are interested in those Norse entrepreneurs who made Europe a lively place in the so-called Dark Ages.
One of the standard-setting writers about medieval Scandinavia was Nobel Prize-winning Sigrid Undset. I have assembled all her works that we carry on this page, even though they technically do not involve Viking culture and history (a few are even contemporary to Undset’s own time). Other than that, she needs no defense as one of the greatest of historical novelists.
Many books have emerged on the conflicts, the tensions, and the meldings between the Vikings and the inhabitants of what would become the British isles, so I have expanded the topic to include the Picts, the Druids, and Anglo-Saxons.
The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe
The Edge of the World: A Cultural History of the North Sea and the Transformation of Europe
Saints and spies, pirates and philosophers, artists and intellectuals: they all criss-crossed the grey North Sea in the so-called "dark ages," the years between the fall of the Roman Empire and the beginning of Europe's mastery over the oceans. Now the critically acclaimed Michael Pye reveals the cultural transformation sparked by those men and women: the ideas, technology, science, law, and moral codes that helped create our modern world.
This is the magnificent lost history of a thousand years. It was on the shores of the North Sea where experimental science was born, where women first had the right to choose whom they married; there was the beginning of contemporary business transactions and the advent of the printed book. In The Edge of the World, Michael Pye draws on an astounding breadth of original source material to illuminate this fascinating region during a pivotal era in world history.