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Vikings: still awesome
Oct. 9th, 2011 05:52 pmMan, I need to get back to reading fantastical YA books or nineteenth-century novels so I can write some proper lulzy reviews. For some reason I've been all reading serious shit lately and then trying to write serious things about them, and I am so over it. Writing serious literary criticism about things that are already serious is also really hard, for me at least; if I'm going to write serious shit I'd rather do it about semi-trashy dramatic novels like The Godfather.
Anyway, lately I was reading The Viking World, by James Graham-Campbell, which is a big glossy book with lots of pictures! I'm not usually so big on big glossy books with pictures anymore, since I am not five, but these were GREAT pictures--big full-color photographs of all sorts of Viking artifacts and carefully drawn reconstructions of Viking ships and houses and tools, and also maps, lots of maps. I do like maps.
The author of this book is (or was, when it was written) a professor at the University of London, and as such this book sometimes has those adorable dry little Britishisms that are why I always love reading history books by British people. Because this book was written in the 1980s and not, say, the 1920s, it does still manage to stay *mostly* factual, and does not go off on long tangents about how the British are totally awesome, which is good. Somewhat more impressive, since this is a thing that is apparently still popular with British history authors even though they have mostly gotten over their "everyone but us is BARBARIC HOOLIGANS" thing, is that this book does not spend a disproportionate amount of page time on the Viking occupations in the British Isles. They are discussed, certainly, but the book devotes equal amount of time to their occupations in Greenland, Vinland, Russia, etc., and of course spends most of its time talking about actual Scandinavia.
I always find it cool when I can read history books about a place and be like "I HAVE BEEN THERE I SAW THAT THING," which is a joy that had previously been reserved pretty much just for reading about certain parts of France. While I quite like reading about France, I also like reading about a lot of other places, so it is good to have expanded my base of places I can read about and feel well-traveled in doing so. Anyway, a pretty decent chunk of this book concerned the ancient Viking settlement at Birka and the burial mounds at Old Uppsala, so that was cool. Although it looks like all the really cool ruins are in Denmark, so now I am super itching to go to Denmark and see the Danewirke.
I have to admit I had an embarrassingly hard time actually being able to tell the different styles of Viking art apart from one another; mostly I was just like "They are pretty and have gripping beasts and oh my god I want that necklace" over and over again.
Also, things translated out of Futhark always sound silly. It's cute.
Anyway, lately I was reading The Viking World, by James Graham-Campbell, which is a big glossy book with lots of pictures! I'm not usually so big on big glossy books with pictures anymore, since I am not five, but these were GREAT pictures--big full-color photographs of all sorts of Viking artifacts and carefully drawn reconstructions of Viking ships and houses and tools, and also maps, lots of maps. I do like maps.
The author of this book is (or was, when it was written) a professor at the University of London, and as such this book sometimes has those adorable dry little Britishisms that are why I always love reading history books by British people. Because this book was written in the 1980s and not, say, the 1920s, it does still manage to stay *mostly* factual, and does not go off on long tangents about how the British are totally awesome, which is good. Somewhat more impressive, since this is a thing that is apparently still popular with British history authors even though they have mostly gotten over their "everyone but us is BARBARIC HOOLIGANS" thing, is that this book does not spend a disproportionate amount of page time on the Viking occupations in the British Isles. They are discussed, certainly, but the book devotes equal amount of time to their occupations in Greenland, Vinland, Russia, etc., and of course spends most of its time talking about actual Scandinavia.
I always find it cool when I can read history books about a place and be like "I HAVE BEEN THERE I SAW THAT THING," which is a joy that had previously been reserved pretty much just for reading about certain parts of France. While I quite like reading about France, I also like reading about a lot of other places, so it is good to have expanded my base of places I can read about and feel well-traveled in doing so. Anyway, a pretty decent chunk of this book concerned the ancient Viking settlement at Birka and the burial mounds at Old Uppsala, so that was cool. Although it looks like all the really cool ruins are in Denmark, so now I am super itching to go to Denmark and see the Danewirke.
I have to admit I had an embarrassingly hard time actually being able to tell the different styles of Viking art apart from one another; mostly I was just like "They are pretty and have gripping beasts and oh my god I want that necklace" over and over again.
Also, things translated out of Futhark always sound silly. It's cute.