Book Review: “Northmen: The Viking Saga” by John Haywood

Reading this definitely will make you grow horns and a huge beard! Northmen: The Viking Saga, AD 793-1241 by John Haywood (2015) is an absolute must-read for any Viking enthusiast. It’s full of facts you never knew and John Haywood’s writing style takes you on an adrenaline-fueled plundering raid throughout the ages that you’ll never forget. It will leave your life in runes.

NORTHMEN VIKING SAGA BOOK STATS:

• Published 2015
• 382 total pages
• 351 pages of text
• 12 chapters
• Avg. Ch. length = 30 pages (see rating)
• 6 maps in preface
• 8 color picture pages inset
• 1 Chronology section
• 1 Viking Kings and Rulers section
• 1 Further Reading section
• Hardcover available

MIND BLOWN! COOL THINGS I LEARNED:

• Vikings did not really wear horns
• The name Russian comes from the Viking ‘Rus’
• The Vikings conquered all the way to Constantinople in the 830s AD
• There is more than one type of Viking
• The Vikings treasured making amulets as gifts
• The Vikings were hard-core pagans
• Rollo and Ragnar never knew each other!
• Viking DNA is explained as a function of assimilation
• Viking place names are fairly common and decipherable
• The Vikings eradicated the native Scottish Picts
• The ‘blood eagle’ was real
• The Vikings were not a one-off band, they toured for over 500 years
• The city of Dublin, Ireland is a Viking town
• Silver coins prompted many Viking invasions into Eastern Europe
• The Vikings really did settle in North America (L’anse Aux Meadows)
• Vikings in western Europe were Europeanized
• The Vikings actively fought in the Crusades
• Why the ‘Viking’ culture died out is worth reading this book

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Haywood, John. 2015. Northmen: The Viking Saga, AD 793-1241 by John Haywood. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

NORTHMEN VIKING SAGA BOOK REVIEW:

This book is an in-depth, non-fictional account of the history of the Vikings, their origins, where they conquered, and how they impacted the people and cultures they interacted with. It is also a landmark in understanding how much the Vikings contributed to world history. John Haywood neatly sections his book to cover the breath of the Viking empire, which is much broader than one initially realizes. The author has a clear, fun, and engaging writing style that lucidly illuminates the personality and motivations of those Viking marauders of legend.

He adeptly overlays historical fact with modern presumptions about who the Vikings were by parsing out the different types of ‘Vikings’ from the Danes to the Norwegians to the Swedes and provides a clearly discernible analysis for each. What makes reading this book a 5-star experience for me is: (1) the chapters are organized according to region; (2) the author’s rich and engaging writing style; and, (3) it is an indispensable reference source on the subject of the Vikings because of its organization and other reference-type inclusions (see stats).

STAR RATINGS:

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