Chronicles of the Vikings: records, memorials and myths (review)

302 Reviews of sacred oratory in Counter-Reformation Rome, that of triumphant celebration and exaltation. The preachers celebrated the exaltation of the triumphant church, the triumphant papacy, and triumphant Rome. McGinness writes with an eloquence and a rhetorical flourish that seem appropriate for the topic. However, he seems himself infected by the triumphalism of the preachers, and consequentiy his analysis lacks balance. The best example of this is McGinness' analysis of the oratory on Rome, civitas sancta, as indicated by thefinaltwo sentences of the book (p. 192): 'With its citizens now bound by the chain of perfect love, Roma Sancta was the locus where visible and invisible worlds merged, a place whose powers threw back demons and routed heresy, division and chaos. R o m e had triumphed, she was holy, and God was pleased.' McGinness confronts the falsity of the image only by listing the names of seven historians whose work has documented the darker side of early m o d e m Rome. McGinness' erudition is commendable, but the 120 pages of notes and the excessively long quotations in Latin are unnecessarily extravagant. The greatest shortcoming of the book is its subject matter; even though I have long been interested in Counter-Reformation Rome, I found the book tedious and uninteresting. A. Lynn Martin Department of History The University of Adelaide Page, R. I., Chronicles of the Vikings: records, memorials and myths, London, British Museum Press, 1995; cloth; pp. 240; R R P AU$45.00. At first glance this would seem an idiosyncratic work, with a strong emphasis on those somewhat obscure literary and runic texts upon which its author is an authority. All this is offered, under the curious tide, Chronicles ofthe Vikings, as a study of Viking Age society and culture. In fact this is one of the most original and useful books ever to appear on the history of the Vikings and their colonies. Primarily a sourcebook, it provides selected translations of sources as diverse as runic texts, eddic and skaldic poetry, and Icelandic histories such as Landndmabdk, Libellus Islendorum and Ndregs konunga tal. Avoiding some recent questions concerning the role of Icelandic literature as historical source material, Page sticks to very traditional criteria of chronology and text-tradition. The runic and poetic sources are offered as contemporary voices of a Viking Reviews 303 civilisation which was not fully literate and which is usually only seen through the eyes of its enemies, or in the literary imagery of its Icelandic descendants. At times one may quibble over the framework into which the material has beenfitted.The chapter 'Getting to know the Vikings' is really a very succinct discussion of technical problems of complex textual issues. 'Chronicles' is a fair tide, nevertheless, insofar as it conveys the sense of a positivist approach to history/though one might hesitate to describe skaldic poems, as the author does, as 'the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time'. Page is very frank in his admission of the dubious historicity of a few favourite pieces, all the same, and where his evidence is really more relevant to medieval Iceland than to Viking Age Scandinavia, such as in the chapter 'Setdement and landholding', he makes this clear enough. The work is divided thematically, with extensive selections from sources. N e w translations are made of all the material. In the case of some texts, such as Ohthere's Voyage or the Libellus Islendorum, this is not so important, as fine translations are already available. S o m e of the translations, however, especially of the eddic and skaldic poems and of the varying recensions of Landndmabok, provide invaluable, accurate versions of sources which have rarely been available to students. The reviewer is struck by the tremendous utility of this book for the undergraduate student, on account of the quantity of original primary material which it offers for key themes of Viking history and literature. This makes it an outstanding book in a subject area where good books are far outnumbered by poor ones. The British M u s e u m Press deserves special credit for facilitating the production of a work which tackles the highly technical problems of the...