Viking Legacies

In this original and groundbreaking work of history Heather O'Donoghue brings a lifetime's worth of research to bear on illuminating the traces of the Vikings still visible in everyday life.

They came from across the sea in fearsome dragon-prowed ships – strangers with heathen gods and a taste for pillage and plunder. Raiding the coasts of Britain and Ireland, the Vikings ransacked churches, emptied treasuries and terrorized the inhabitants. But then these violent raiders seem to fade from view – what happened when they began to establish permanent camps, to interact peacefully with local communities, and to make alliances with local leaders? These Viking-age Scandinavians were now no longer Vikings in the strict sense of the word.

Challenging the popular view that the legacy of the Vikings is no more than death and destruction, Heather O’Donoghue traces the story of how a group of newcomers who were feared and despised came to play a leading part in the creation of prosperous and productive societies throughout the British Isles. Three chapters weave together archaeological, etymological and literary evidence to reveal the traces that the Scandinavian settlers left behind. We encounter churchyard crosses, still standing, that display Christian iconography alongside scenes from Norse myth; place names that hint at Old Norse-speaking founders; and echoes of Scandinavian traditions in the canonical texts of English literature such as Beowulf, Chaucer and Shakespeare. A fascinating and surprising picture emerges: despite their fiendish reputation as all-conquering raiders, the Vikings seem to disappear from historical record because they assimilated with the cultures of those they invaded. Their legacies endure in the landscape, literature and the very language still spoken today.