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By Anders Winroth
In this booklet a MacArthur Award-winning student argues for a appreciably new interpretation of the conversion of Scandinavia from paganism to Christianity within the early heart a while. Overturning the obtained narrative of Europe's army and non secular conquest and colonization of the area, Anders Winroth contends that instead of appearing as passive recipients, Scandinavians switched over to Christianity since it used to be in person chieftains' political, fiscal, and cultural pursuits to do so.
Through a painstaking research and old reconstruction of either archeological and literary assets, and drawing on scholarly paintings that has been unavailable in English, Winroth opens up new avenues for learning ecu ascendency and the growth of Christianity within the medieval interval.
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Additional info for The Conversion of Scandinavia: Vikings, Merchants, and Missionaries in the Remaking of Northern Europe
Example text
A conservative estimate of the size of Charlemagne’s army puts it at about five thousand warriors. 43 Scandinavian battle axes, spears, and arrows were efficient, but Vikings nevertheless coveted Frankish battle swords, which were famous for their craftsmanship all over Europe and even in Baghdad. Scandinavian warriors often acquired Frankish swords; many were buried with them. 44 The most important reason for Viking success was that the raiding bands were fast, adaptable, and cleverly opportunistic.
27 In baptism he received the new name Athelstan, a good old Anglo-Saxon royal 30 The Raids of the Vikings name. 29 The Great Army stayed together, raiding and toppling kingdoms, for some thirty years. It is hard to imagine that many persons would have stayed in the army for its entire duration: the life expectancy of an early-medieval warrior cannot have been that long, and surely many returned home or settled in new homes when they were satisfied with the booty they had gathered. 30 After the breakup of the Great Army the raids continued.
20 The Vikings did relinquish Paris and the Seine valley, but they “devastated all the coastal regions, plundering and burning” farther south. ”21 There is probably an element of pious wishful thinking in these accounts, which most likely are not independent of each other. Farther south, in Aquitaine, another Viking force sailed in 844 unopposed up the Garonne, wreaking havoc on their way to Toulouse. ” King Ramiro I of Asturias defeated them close to the still-standing second-century lighthouse then known as “Farum Brigantium” and now as the Tower of Hercules.