There was a great pestilence
Jun. 26th, 2020 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review:Ælfred's Britain - War and Peace in the Viking Age, by Max Adams
A friend recently shared an article on why it's so hard to read a book right now which resonated with me. This was a work book sale find, that had been on the shelves for a couple of years, and I decided it was time, but I was disappointed and found it hard to concentrate. I felt it wasn't really the book it purported to be: the clue is more in the subtitle than the title.
The book begins around the year 789, with the hostile arrival of raiders on the coast of Wessex, followed in subsequent years by raids on Lindisfarne and elsewhere along the North Sea shore. Initial defences were weak, and during the ninth century parts of Britain, in particular along the east coast and east midlands, but also in Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles and the island of Ireland, became settled by the Vikings. Adams paints this very much as a clash of cultures, with Britain governed by the rule of law, managed by Kings and the Church, with a generally ordered succession, stability and continuity; in contrast, the Vikings (strictly nameless tribes of Nordic / Scandinavian warriors, the word "viking" being a verb meaning to go raiding) ruled by force and had few accepted institutions to prevent upheaval. Although some became resident and became somewhat assimilated, raiding and skirmishing continued. Alfred established defences throughout Wessex and part of Mercia, holding firm a line approximating to the course of Watling Street. But perhaps only the central third of the book is given over to Alfred's time; the later chapters deal with his legacy and the emergence of something that might be called "England".
This isn't particularly a book about King Alfred, but it is about the Viking age in Britain and it did at times feel like War and Peace (which I haven't read, so that's a rather metaphorical comparison). It did feel quite diligent, but I'm uncertain what the target audience was: in the introduction to I, Claudius, Robert Graves explains his reasoning for using modern country and place-names; here, the use of æ, þ, and ð is noted but only serves to make the reading more difficult. The text is scattered with both endnotes (bibliographic) and footnotes (supplementary explanations or opinions). The overall impression is of a quite academic approach in a book that gives the outward impression of being a more lay history, and I observed afterwards that my impression corresponded to that of many readers on Goodreads.
I did learn something of Alfred, but not a great deal more than I already knew. There were interesting fragments, such as the unimportance of the modest settlement at London at the time. I had not heard of Æðelflæd and I found her story rather more interesting. In contemporary English culture, the character of St George seems quite toxic; I gather the traditional patron saint is Edmund, but given the vision experienced by Alfred prior to the Battle of Edington, I feel a case could be made for the Northumbrian St Cuthbert.
A friend recently shared an article on why it's so hard to read a book right now which resonated with me. This was a work book sale find, that had been on the shelves for a couple of years, and I decided it was time, but I was disappointed and found it hard to concentrate. I felt it wasn't really the book it purported to be: the clue is more in the subtitle than the title.
The book begins around the year 789, with the hostile arrival of raiders on the coast of Wessex, followed in subsequent years by raids on Lindisfarne and elsewhere along the North Sea shore. Initial defences were weak, and during the ninth century parts of Britain, in particular along the east coast and east midlands, but also in Orkney, Shetland, the Western Isles and the island of Ireland, became settled by the Vikings. Adams paints this very much as a clash of cultures, with Britain governed by the rule of law, managed by Kings and the Church, with a generally ordered succession, stability and continuity; in contrast, the Vikings (strictly nameless tribes of Nordic / Scandinavian warriors, the word "viking" being a verb meaning to go raiding) ruled by force and had few accepted institutions to prevent upheaval. Although some became resident and became somewhat assimilated, raiding and skirmishing continued. Alfred established defences throughout Wessex and part of Mercia, holding firm a line approximating to the course of Watling Street. But perhaps only the central third of the book is given over to Alfred's time; the later chapters deal with his legacy and the emergence of something that might be called "England".
This isn't particularly a book about King Alfred, but it is about the Viking age in Britain and it did at times feel like War and Peace (which I haven't read, so that's a rather metaphorical comparison). It did feel quite diligent, but I'm uncertain what the target audience was: in the introduction to I, Claudius, Robert Graves explains his reasoning for using modern country and place-names; here, the use of æ, þ, and ð is noted but only serves to make the reading more difficult. The text is scattered with both endnotes (bibliographic) and footnotes (supplementary explanations or opinions). The overall impression is of a quite academic approach in a book that gives the outward impression of being a more lay history, and I observed afterwards that my impression corresponded to that of many readers on Goodreads.
I did learn something of Alfred, but not a great deal more than I already knew. There were interesting fragments, such as the unimportance of the modest settlement at London at the time. I had not heard of Æðelflæd and I found her story rather more interesting. In contemporary English culture, the character of St George seems quite toxic; I gather the traditional patron saint is Edmund, but given the vision experienced by Alfred prior to the Battle of Edington, I feel a case could be made for the Northumbrian St Cuthbert.