Tag Archives: Kirsten Wolf

Non-fiction, Reviews

’24 Hours in the Viking World,’ by Kirsten Wolf

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I run into many people who are looking for books to introduce them to the Vikings. Kirsten Wolf’s 24 Hours in the Viking World isn’t a bad book for the purpose, in spite of some weaknesses.

The plan of the book is a little strange, but it’s part of a series of similar books set in various historical periods and places, so readers must appreciate it. Each chapter is devoted to a single hour of the day. For each hour, we focus on one Viking Age character. These characters’ locations and historical dates are not coordinated – the reader is shuttled back and forth in time and space.

We see men commit murders, build ships, and compose poems. We see women give birth, prepare feasts, and take up unaccustomed weapons in defense. Each situation is described in detail, so that some aspect of Viking life is illuminated. New Viking enthusiasts will learn much here.

The weakness of the book is in the dramatizations The author, an academic at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, knows her material but is not gifted in scene-setting or dialogue. The dialogue is too modern (in my view), with characters delivering lines like “Hang in there.” And the characters – especially the men – are generally more sensitive in their conversations with their wives than I suspect real Viking men were. The characters, in short, talk like modern people dressed up in Viking clothes.

On the plus side, author Wolf is not a partisan of the “Lagertha Party” in Viking studies. When she recounts the famous Vinland episode where Leif Eriksson’s sister Freydis brandishes a sword to scare off the “scraelings,” we’re told she has no idea how to use a sword. I’m not sure I’d have gone that far myself, sexist though I am. Ditto for her statement that Icelandic women had “no legal rights.”

One chapter involves a baker at Hedeby in Denmark. Oddly, his name is given as Hans Jensson. That’s a bizarre name choice for a Viking, as both “Hans” and “Jens” are colloquial versions of the Christian “John.” And it took time for those adaptations to evolve. I don’t think those names existed as such in the Viking Age.

Still, 24 Hours in the Viking Age isn’t a bad introduction to Viking everyday life. I recommend it moderately.

Non-fiction, Reviews

‘Viking Age: Everyday Life During the Extraordinary Era of the Norsemen,’ by Kirsten Wolf

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[Personal note: I apologize for my continued absence from this blog. I thought I’d be doing more blogging while I had a few weeks of winter break, but I scheduled myself a number of projects, and they’ve taken more time than I expected. And now I’m just a week away from classes again. lw]

I approached Kirsten Wolf’s book, Viking Age: Everyday Life During the Extraordinary Era of the Norsemen, with anticipation. For years a book with a similar job description, Jacqueline Simpson’s Everyday Life in the Viking Age, has been a standard for Viking buffs and reenactors. It’s well-researched, readable, and useful. But it’s old now, and we’ve learned a lot since Simpson wrote. We need a new book in that vein.

This book is not it.

That’s not to say it’s worthless. I’ll admit I learned some things reading it. But I’m not as sure of those things as I’d like to be, because the book contains too many “facts” that are just plain wrong.

The author states twice that the Battle of Svold took place in Norway (it took place in the Baltic). She states that Olaf Tryggvason was the great-grandson of Harald Fairhair (historians aren’t sure nowadays). She says that Olaf Tryggvason made the Greenlanders accept Christianity (no historian believes that anymore).

Most of the gross mistakes seem to be associated with King Olaf Tryggvason’s career. Perhaps the author’s reading has been deficient in that area. Prof. Wolf teaches Old Norse literary studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. I hesitate to criticize a professor in a university system in which I am a student, but she seems weak on material outside her specialty. I suspect the book was a rush job, probably done under deadline.

A special weakness of this volume is the illustrations. The book is lavishly illustrated, but most of those illustrations are worse than useless, except to fill up pages. The publishers opted for copyright-free pictures whenever possible, which means we are treated to a feast of 19th Century engravings, with horned and winged helmets and classical poses. In a book which fails to even mention the Cardinal Truth — “No horned helmets!” — this is inexcusable. Newcomers to the field will come away with a bundle of misconceptions.

Jacqueline Simpson’s book was illustrated with simple and useful line drawings that depicted actual archaeological finds. But hiring artists to do that sort of thing costs money, which the publishers of Wolf’s book were apparently unwilling to spend.

Not recommended.