The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in 19th-Century Britain

“The ‘Vikings’ were a Victorian creation, and the implications are huge, because the Victorians also brought assumptions about race, heredity, empire and the superiority of the Germanic world. Those assumptions had implications for how Britain saw itself and how its role as a Christian empire was perceived. There’s a massive amount of baggage bound up with the creation and perpetuation of these ideas. Again, it gets me into this business of not wanting to accept the categories and boundaries established through historiographical convention.” Read more...

The best books on Medieval Europe

Thomas Williams, Historian