[Hass Fernen]

Hello, looking for the best books on migration era and viking era arms, armour, warfare, and overall material culture. With illustrations/pictures. Preferably under $50 USD and somewhere I can buy besides amazon (tend to avoid amazon) with quick shipping (quick as in preferably under a month). Also does anyone have a list of the titles that were on the myArmoury book section now that the amazon affiliate links have been removed? Thank you.

[Håvard Nygård]

Vikings at War is a book with an overview of the arms and armour of the viking age and with good illustrations. It also covers other topics as war strategies. It is under 50 dollars.

[Dan Kary]

While this isn't primarily an area I spend a lot of time reading...I do have a copy of Viking Weapons and Warfare by Kim Siddorn that looks good (I haven't read it yet, it is next up on my to read list though) and seems to fit your request. I would also direct you to the Osprey publishing books such as the Men-at-Arms and Warrior series. They certainly would fit your request.

[Hass Fernen]

[Hass Fernen]

[Carl W.]

I can't compare it to any other books re "best" but you might consider Viking Weapons and Combat Techniques by William Short. I'm happy I bought it several years ago at a visit to the Higgins museum & I still refer to it occasionally.

[Arne G.]

Oakeshott's "Dark Age Warrior", if you can find a copy, is also useful.

[Håvard Nygård]

[Mark Millman]

Dear Mr. Nygård,

While I agree with you that the Icelandic sagas need to be used with caution as sources for the study of Viking-age (793-1066 CE) combat and warfare, I'm afraid that I must take issue with some of your points. The family sagas, or sagas of Icelanders, which are what most English-speaking people think of when they say "Icelandic sagas" (and which are the source of Dr. Short's interest in Viking-age combat), do indeed overstate the prevalence and importance of violence in early-medieval Scandinavia, and particularly Iceland. That is because they specifically address the breakdown of social order and its restoration through the mechanism of feuding. The family sagas are by their nature about violence, and so overrepresent it in comparison with most people's lives. By the same token, these sagas focus on small-scale violence rather than large-scale warfare, which means they tend to have a very specific view of group conflict. For that matter, they also overrepresent high-status individuals, although perhaps not to the extent that other contemporary literature does. I note in passing that Iceland's history and society are unique, and do not correspond exactly to the situations in continental Scandinavia or in any of its colonized territories in mainland Europe or the British Isles, which is another reason for caution in generalizing saga evidence to the whole of Viking-age Scandinavia. There are also indications that the sagas' combat scenes may portray the combat of the time at which they were composed (post-Viking Age; see below) rather than of the time of the events described in them.

But the family sagas most certainly do not portray the pagan ancestors of the people who wrote them down as animals. To be fair, the most famous of the kings' sagas are about the Christianizing kings Olaf Tryggvason and St. Olaf (the Stout), and they do not treat their pagan characters well. But the family sagas by and large don't demonize pagans and by no means do they do so merely for the fact that the character is pagan, although they may impute Christian-like behavior to some of the most admirable characters. (Let me add here for those who may be less familiar with the family sagas that the scholarly consensus is that they were compiled and redacted from pre-existing oral sources, both poetry and prose tales, about prominent Viking-age inhabitants of Iceland, primarily by members of Icelandic religious institutions--i.e., monks, as Mr. Nygård says--beginning in the thirteenth century. Iceland voted peacefully to become Christian in the year 1000.)

I do, however, agree that Viking Weapons and Combat Techniques is not the best source for study of Viking-age combat and warfare. Dr. Short has revised his conclusions since it was published in 2014 and last summer published a new book, Men of Terror: A Comprehensive Analysis of Viking Combat with co-author Reynir Óskarson. As I understand it, the new book significantly revises the conclusions of the older one. I don't know how its illustrations of weapons and armor compare, although I'd be surprised if they didn't also benefit from the intervening seven years' worth of discoveries and publications.

I hope this proves helpful.

Best,

Mark Millman

[Anthony Clipsom]

Men of Terror remains very focussed on saga combat, which it assumes projects back into the Viking era. One of the features of William Short's approach is to use "Viking" sources almost exclusively. So sagas form the backbone, plus occassional references to Saxo Grammaticus, Adam of Bremen, medieval Norwegian law codes and Anglo Saxon sources (honorary Vikings?). While this does produce a fascinating analysis of fighting techniques primarily from early Medieaval Iceland, you do need to make the leap of faith that what happened in the 13th century also held for the 10th. It is also true that, by focussing on saga combat, it is much weaker on massed combat than on one-to-one or small group fights.

While I understand the idea of staying within the Scandinavian cultural sphere, I think the bringing in of a wider range of comparators, especially those actually contemporary to the Viking age, would have been beneficial.

[Ryan S.]

I think that complaining that a text about a topic like weapons, armor or vikings focuses too much on violence is silly. I don't think I need to explain why.

I do realize that there are some sources that will "correct" the idea that all Scandinavians were vikings. I am pretty sure that most of the people who think that, just haven't really thought it through, or are using the word viking differently. That is, sometimes people say viking and mean just the seafaring warriors, others mean the whole culture from which the seafaring warriors lived. This usage doesn't mean that people literally think that all Scandinavians were professional warriors. I think the closest it comes to that is when people talk about viking settlements, such as the Danelaw or Dublin. Although, I am not sure how many Scandinavian settlers in England were just farmers, or if they were mostly warriors who were also farmers, or if they left most of the farming to English slaves.

tl;dr
Viking means seafaring Nordic warrior, and everyone knows that, even people who use the word viking as an adjective to describe 8th-11th century Scandinavian culture in general.

[Sean Manning]

Back on the original topic, I think Hass would like to know what kind of information Men of Terror has on arms and armour: Are there lots of details ("these objects from this site have these dimensions ... changing from ... to ... and are made of ... with a composition of ... and applied pieces of ... for an overall weight of ...") or is the focus on the things the Norse did with arms and armour?

I think its a new book so not much information about it is available.

[Anthony Clipsom]

Men of Terror is largely made up of chapters focussing on individual weapons e.g. swords. It certainly does give dimensional, material and typological information. As a non-expert, these summaries seemed quite sound archaeologically. However, it doesn't go in-depth into particular weapons or archaeological finds in the main (one or two famous examples get a bit more coverage). There are lots of histogram plots of weapons sizes, grip lengths, points of balance rather than detailed info on individual weapons. There are some investigations of metallurgy in places, including plots of blade "ringing" which I'd not seen before.

I'd suggest, though, that they are more interested in the use of weapons than the cataloguing of the archaeology and forms, with a lot of saga analysis and lots of modern testing and reconstruction.

Hope that helps people decide on the usefulness of the book to their enquiries.