For description of the dangers of raiding and looting along with the upside rewards, we can look at comments in Norse Warfare: A Portrayal of Combat, Raids, and Plunder in the Viking Age by Martina Sprague. This post continues in a series of discussions of comments from the book. Losses from sailing during the Viking […]
Vikings did not have superior weapons, battle techniques, or leadership when compared to those they fought. Norse Warfare: A Portrayal of Combat, Raids, and Plunder in the Viking Age by Martina Sprague indicates it was primarily their tactics that give them an advantage. Fast, low-draw ships which could be rowed to shore then beached anywhere […]
Great discussion of the Viking way of war can be found in Norse Warfare: A Portrayal of Combat, Raids, and Plunder in the Viking Age by Martina Sprague. I will summarize a lot of comments in the book, starting with an explanation why even though they had the same weapons and essentially the same techniques […]
Previous posts here and here accumulated time estimates involved to construct and outfit a medium-sized Viking longship. The starting point for this series of discussions is Neil Price’s book, Children of Ash and Elm / A history of the Vikings. How do we roll those separate amounts in hours, days, and years to one number? […]
Previous post accumulated many detail data points of what time would be involved in constructing a medium-size Viking longship. This post continues the discussion and accumulates the time estimates. Wild guesses to fill in the blanks The Price text does not make any guesses on the time to cook the tar to seal the ship, […]
For a summary of the damage the Viking raids inflicted in Frankia (roughly consider that as France or western Europe) from around 830 A.D. through around 890 A.D., consider the analysis by Neil Price in Children of Ash and Elm / A history of the Vikings. He points out in about a century the Vikings […]
Sometimes you just gotta’ laugh at news reports… With surprise that is not news to anyone who’s ever read more than one actual book on the Vikings, news reports from most media outlets are breathlessly reporting somewhere around 90 researchers in evolutionary genetics announced their research showing that there’s a lot of Western European, English, […]
Ever wondered how Vikings preserved food? Jesse Byock, in his book Viking Age Iceland, gives us insight. Lots of great stuff in the book, of which I’ll highlight a few items that caught my eye. Posts in this series: Self governance and estimates of population Homespun cloth as medium of exchange, or money Food preservation […]