336 pages
Size: 23 x 15 cm
ISBN: 9781843830276
Binding: Paperback
First published: 2003
Price: £19.99 / $37.95

Available again as print on demand

William the Conqueror's invasion in 1066 was not the only attack on England that year. On September 25, 1066, less than three weeks before William defeated King Harold II Godwinson at the battle of Hastings, that same Harold had been victorious over his other opponent of 1066, King Haraldr Hardrádi of Norway at the battle of Stamford Bridge. It was an impressive victory, driving an invading army of Norwegians from the earldom of Northumbria; but it was to cost Harold dear. In telling the story of this neglected battle, Kelly DeVries traces the rise and fall of a family of English warlords, the Godwins, as well as that of the equally impressive Norwegian warlord Hardrádi.

KELLY DEVRIES is Associate Professor, Department of History, Loyola College in Maryland.

Reviews

This very accessible narrative...tells the story of 'the first two important battles of 1066', Fulford Gate and Stamford Bridge, and of the leaders of the opposing English and Norwegian factions.
CHOICE

The evidence of later 12th- and 13th-century Norse sagas, Snorri Sturlusson's Heimskringla, and the less well known Norwegian Kings Sagas...present far more detail about the invasion and its battles than the more widely accepted sources could possibly allow... He places the invasion in a broad context. He outlines the Anglo-Scandinavian nature of the English kingdom in the eleventh century, traces the careers of the major leaders, and devotes a chapter each to the English and Norwegian military systems.
JOURNAL OF MILITARY HISTORY [US]

Contents

1. Introduction
2. Anglo-Scadinavian England
3. Harold Harðráði
4. Godwin and his Family
5. Harold Godwinson
6. The Conflict Between Harold and Tostig Godwinson

7. The Norwegian Military

8. The English Military

9. The Invasion

10. The Battle of Stamford Bridge

11. Aftermath

208 pages
Size: 23 x 15 cm
ISBN: 9780859916080
Binding: Hardback
First published: 2001
Price: £50.00 / $95.00

The accounts in the Vinland sagas of the great voyages to the northeast coast of America in the early years of the eleventh century have often been obscured by detailed argument over the physical identity of the West Atlantic land which its Scandinavian discoverers named Vinland.

Geraldine Barnes leaves archaeological evidence aside and returns to the Old Norse narratives, Groenlendinga saga (Saga of Greenlanders) and Eiriks saga rauda (Saga of Eric the Red), in her study of the writing and rewriting of the Vinland story from the middle ages to the late twentieth century. She sets the sagas in the context of Iceland's transition from paganism to Christianity; later chapters explore the Vinland story in relation to issues of regional pride and national myths of foundation in nineteenth and early twentieth-century America, to the ethos of popular imperialism during the same period in English literature, and, in the late twentieth century, to postcolonial concerns. 

GERALDINE BARNES is associate professor of English, University of Sydney.

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