Earlier visitors… had anglicized Helsingør’s name to Elsinore. Twice a troupe of English actors came to entertain the Danish court there, and the players’ tales of the richly furbished Renaissance castle above the Sound gave Shakespeare his setting for Hamlet; Elsinore’s lasting fame was assured.

I have long been an advocate of a maritime perspective on the Viking Age. We look at maps and see the Scandinavian peninsula (Norway and Sweden) separated by a waterway from Denmark, which sticks up from the continent like a thumb. We wonder what united them as “Scandinavians.” We do this, at least, if we don’t understand the sea. The sea did not separate the Scandinavians – it united them. The sea was their grand highway, the Baltic straits their crossroads.

But I know less about the Baltic. I’ll confess, than I ought to know. I’ve kept out of that tideless sea through most of my Erling novels (except the first and last), because it fell largely in the Swedish sphere of influence. However, The Baltic, by Alan Palmer, recently showed up at a very tempting price. I figured it was time I improved my education. And the book did indeed broaden my perspective.

The Baltic is, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, a very long book. It has to be; it covers the history of a large geographical region, home to many nations, Germans, Slavs, Finno-Ugrics, Scandinavians, and others, from prehistoric times to after the fall of the Soviet Union. And I’m happy to report that it’s not dry at all. Author Palmer understands that personalities make history fascinating, and he offers a string of vivid sketches of one great figure after another, from Vikings like Harald Bluetooth through modern statesmen like Winston Churchill and Lech Walensa, brief but colorful and full of action.

One judges a book of history through measuring its content against previous knowledge, and I’m sad to say that when it comes to Vikings, my own bailiwick, the author makes at least one error (or I think he does). He states that the Swedish king Anund Jakob (who is mentioned in my last two Erling books) converted to Christianity but later apostatized. I had never heard of this, and a web search shows no information about it. I think it’s a mistake; I wish I knew the author’s source.

But taken all in all, I found The Baltic one of the most interesting works of history I’ve ever read. I do recommend it, with cautions for its considerable length.