The Saxon chronicles (and those of France and Galicia) describe the Vikings as genuine brutes. Rude, crude and wild, tall with long hair and abundant beards, fierce eyes set in faces covered with scars, their arms covered in tattoos, blood and ritual incisions in their teeth. Witnessing them in action must have been a terrifying spectacle.
There is no doubt that they inspired dread in their victims. For the monks and peasants of western Europe in the 8th and 9th centuries, Viking raids were like solar eclipses, catastrophes of biblical proportion as the demonic horde descended. The invaders were a civilization with a rich oral culture but one that did not write its own books, so the accounts that have been passed down are recorded from the victimsâ point of view. Nonetheless, recent publications such as
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