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  • Viking Britain

  • An Exploration
  • By: Tom Williams
  • Narrated by: Richard Trinder
  • Length: 13 hrs and 18 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (402 ratings)

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Viking Britain

By: Tom Williams
Narrated by: Richard Trinder
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Summary

A new narrative history of the Viking Age, interwoven with exploration of the physical remains and landscapes that the Vikings fashioned and walked: their rune stones and ship burials, settlements and battlefields.

To many, the word Viking brings to mind red scenes of rape and pillage, of marauders from beyond the sea rampaging around the British coastline in the last gloomy centuries before the Norman Conquest. And it is true that Britain in the Viking Age was a turbulent, violent place. The kings and warlords who have impressed their memories on the period revel in names that fire the blood and stir the imagination: Svein Forkbeard and Edmund Ironside, Ivar the Boneless and Alfred the Great, Erik Bloodaxe and Edgar the Pacifier, amongst many others. Evidence for their brutality, their dominance, their avarice and their pride is still unearthed from British soil with stunning regularity.

This is not, however, the whole story.

In Viking Britain, Thomas Williams has drawn on his experience as project curator of the major international exhibition Vikings: Life and Legend to show how the people we call Vikings came not just to raid and plunder but to settle, to colonise and to rule. The impact on these islands was profound and enduring, shaping British social, cultural and political development for hundreds of years. Indeed, in language, literature, place names and folklore, the presence of Scandinavian settlers can still be felt, and their memory - filtered and refashioned through the writings of people like J. R. R. Tolkien, William Morris and G. K. Chesterton - has transformed the Western imagination.

This remarkable new audiobook draws upon new academic research and first-hand experience, drawing deeply from the relics and landscapes that the Vikings and their contemporaries fashioned and walked: their rune stones and ship burials, settlements and battlefields, poems and chronicles. The audiobook offers a vital evocation of a forgotten world, its echoes in later history and its implications for the present. It is a stunning exploration of Viking Britain by a writer of immense literary power.

©2017 Thomas Williams (P)2017 HarperCollins Publishers
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What listeners say about Viking Britain

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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My 2017 book of the year

Wonderfully personal and poetic exploration of the subtleties involved in conflict and assimilation that took place encounters between Scandinavian and Anglo Saxon peoples of the early medieval period.

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8 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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out of the fog

this has long been my favourite period in history and the Vikings my favourite villains. this book explains to me how little i knew about it by really putting flesh on the bones of myths to make it, and them, real. the author fills in the picture showing who these people were, why they did what they did and who their enemies were. the narration is excellent too

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Really Good Educational Read

Really easy to follow and highly enjoyable learning.
I will repeat this to fully appreciate.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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all about the Vikings

really enjoyed listening exciting to think that the Vikings were all over England in some of the villages close to where I live who would have thought

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating facts narrated well

Thoroughly enjoyed learning about a part of my country’s past that I knew very little about.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Fascinating

A wonderfully welll researched , thoughtful and witty history of the Vikings in Britain.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Very extensive, Rich, imaginative and detaillier Account of the Subjekt

The Book itself is Great but it is a pity and this a criticism for Audible that the narrator had Not the raintest idea how to pronounce Anglo-Saxon or Old Norse. Striking is that he Rendered the Rune standing for th as p because it probably lookef as p to ihm sic!

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3 people found this helpful

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an enjoyable listen

a bit slow to start but makes up for it altogether. will listen again indeed

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    4 out of 5 stars
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OK

I heard quite a lot of this book, and found it rather different from the histories I normally enjoy. I am afraid that although it is well written and narrated, I just wasn't too interested to continue.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Pulls apart the thread of Vikings in Britain

My understanding of the Vikings was pretty much limited to Hagar the horrible cartoons. basically watch some old Victorian dudes imagined. This book corrected my ignorance.

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