New Viking Books

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Stewart Baldwin

New Viking Books

Legg inn av Stewart Baldwin » 31 okt 2005 07:11:42

There are two new books on the Vikings which will be of interest to
some participants of this group. Both of these books are now
available at the Auburn University library, so I can give some first
impressions about them. (Also, thanks to James Hansen, FASG, for
pointing out these two books to me.)

"Viking Empires"

First, there is "Viking Empires" by Angelo Forte, Richard Oram, and
Frederik Pedersen. Although I have not yet examined this book in
great detail, what I have seen is enough to cause concern about its
reliability. In addition to indications of carelessness (e.g., using
nominative forms when use of the genetive is clearly indicated), there
is also the fact that my brief look turned up one false citation and
another suspicious one.

The false citation comes from page 86, note 11, in which an entry in
the year 853 of Seán Mac Airt's edition of "The Annals of Inisfallen"
(Dublin, 1951) is cited as the source for a given quote. ("Olaf, son
of the king of the White Scandinavians, came to Ireland, and the
Scandinavians of Ireland submitted to him, and tribute was given to
him by the Gaels. Sigtrygg and Ivar, his two full brothers, came with
him on that expedition.") In fact there is no such quote in the cited
source. Since the quote looked familiar to me, I did some checking,
and found it (word for word) in Anderson's "Early Sources of Scottish
History (vol. 1, p. 282), which is Anderson's translation from the
so-called "Dublin Annals of Inisfallen". It is not too hard to see
what happened here. The authors (or more likely one of them) took the
quote from Anderson, and then changed the citation from the secondary
source to what they/he thought was the primary source, but did not
bother to check that source. This shoddy citation is made more
flagrant by the fact that the guilty party was evidently ignorant of
the fact that the Annals of Inisfallen (a valuable set of early
annals) and the DUBLIN Annals of Inisfallen (a much less valuable
later source) are in fact two different sources! (Talk about being
caught red-handed!)

The suspicious citation comes from a statement on pp. 45-6 (referring
to the late eighth century Danish king Sigefridus): "From Paul the
Deacon (who died around 800) we learn that this Sigefridus was the son
of Godefridus, a king of the Danes." with a citation to footnote 73,
which cites not Paul the Deacon, but "Christensen, Vikingetidens
Denmark, p. 27." I have not seen Christensen (and don't read Danish
anyway), and the editions of Paul the Deacon available to me have no
index, so this is hard for me to check, but there have been quite a
few articles on the subject without any indication of such a
reference, and I find it hard to believe that other recent authors
have ALL overlooked such a reference from a well known contemporary
writer. Can anybody provide a reading (preferably with translation)
of the relevant passage of Christensen?

"Viking Pirates and Christian Princes"

The other book, "Viking Pirates and Christian Princes" by Benjamin
Hudson, covers the kingdoms of Dublin, York, Man, and the Isles during
the tenth and eleventh centuries. Its considerable genealogical
content will make this work of more interest to readers of this
newsgroup than the other book. Although an outline of the earlier
history is included, it is not until the tenth century that the
discussion becomes very detailed. My main disappointment so far is
the lack of detailed discussion of the Viking kingdoms of Limerick and
Waterford. There will probably be more detailed discussions about
some of the things in this book, but at the moment I will mention
three significant features in Hudson's treatment of troublesome
details in the genealogy of these families.

1. The kings Ragnall (d. 920), Sitric (d. 927) and Godfrey (d. 934)
are made the sons of "Godfrey Hardacnutsson" (d. 896), king of York.
The source is Adam of Bremen, who gives the latter ("Gudred[us]")
three sons Analaph (identified by Hudson with Olaf, son of the Godfrey
who d. 934), Sigtrih, and Reginold. Hudson remarks that this does not
contradict the statement that Ragnall, Sitric, and Godfrey were
grandsons or descendants of Ivar, but does not try to specify the
exact link.

2. The Harald who was father of Gofrey (d. 989) and "Magnus" (Maccus),
kings of the Isles, and ancestor of some of the later kings of the
Isles and Man, is identified by Hudson as the Hagrold (mentioned by
Flodoard, among others) who was one of the early Norman leaders in
what is now Normandy.

3. Of the many candidates named Ragnall who might be the father of
Echmarcach, king of Dublin and the Isles, Hudson makes his father king
Ragnall of the Isles (d. 1005). (Echmarcach has been discussed here
on a number of occasions.)

(Of these, I agree with #3 and have mixed feelings about the other
two.)

Stewart Baldwin

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