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Winroth, Anders. The Age of the Vikings. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 2014. Pp. 304.$29.95. ISBN: 978-0-691-14985-1.   Reviewed by Michael H. Gelting in The Medieval Review        Danish National Archives/University of Aberdeen        mhg@sa.dkHaving made his mark initially as an historian of medieval canon law with his book The Making of Gratian's Decretum (Cambridge, 2007), theSwedish-born Yale professor of history Anders Winroth appears by now to have turned definitely to the history of the "vikings." Following hard upon hisThe Conversion of Scandinavia (New Haven, 2012), the present bookaims to present a broader view of the development of Nordic societies withinthe traditional chronological framework assigned to the Viking Age, from theNorse raid on Lindisfarne in 793 to the defeat and death of the Norwegianking Harald "Hardruler" at Stamford Bridge in 1066. Like its predecessor, it is written in a lively and very readable style, evidently aimed at a wider readership than medieval scholars, even though it is fairly copiously annotated.The basic structure of the book may also be said to be traditional, since it begins with a chapter on the Nordic attacks on the surrounding countries,followed by a chapter on Nordic emigration and settlement abroad, proceeding from that to a discussion of the ships that were crucial to the mobility of the Nordic fighting men, and from there to trade. Then follow discussions ofthe political structures of the Nordic countries and their transformationsfrom the ninth through the eleventh century, of daily life in ruralScandinavia, and finally of Old Norse religion and of immaterial culture, inparticular poetry. The novelty of the book does not appear from its overall design, but rather from the perspectives that Winroth applies to its individual parts.One of these perspectives is that the author, in so far as the sources allow, gives equal weight to the predominantly Swedish expansion into the vast space of present-day Russia in comparison to the much more well-documented attacks upon Western Europe. No less important is hisemphasis upon the similarities between the Nordic warriors and theirEuropean counterparts in their ways of waging war, exacting tribute, andseizing plunder, with due reference to the late Timothy Reuter's seminalarticle on the topic. [1] In fact, even while emphasising the advantageswhich the "vikings" derived from their refined shipbuilding techniques,Winroth consistently questions the usual perception of the Nordic warriorsas having been particularly terrible and efficient fighters. In his view,the Norsemen's major advantage was the element of surprise that they owed to their swift ships; in open battle, they would suffer defeat more often than not.Obviously, the book invites comparison with the author's previous book on the conversion of Scandinavia. The two books share the characteristics ofreadability and broad outlook; yet they are also quite different. The Conversion of Scandinavia was a remarkably single-minded effort at deploying the economy of gift-giving, tribute and plunder upon which Nordic war lords based their power as the explanation of practically everything that happened during the Viking Age, including conversion. In the book underreview here, the ambition of writing a comprehensive survey of the periodhas made Winroth tone down this interpretation. It is expressed most clearlyin the chapter "From Chieftains to Kings" (especially 134-143), as might beexpected, but it does not pervade the entire interpretation. No doubt that makes the book more balanced; yet it also blurs what this reviewer finds to have been the most important contribution of The Conversion of Scandinavia: its tying together in a causal nexus of the Norsemen's raiding abroad and the growth of royal power at home in the Nordic countries.In this connection, the reader is left to wonder about how Winroth's interpretation relates to that of the late Georges Duby in his remarkable book The Early Growth of the European Economy (1978; French original,1973). In that book, Duby built his interpretation of the early medievalEuropean economy around precisely the mechanisms of gift-giving, tribute andplunder underpinning the power of kings and warlords. Winroth'sinterpretation of Viking Age Nordic societies seems almost like an echo ofDuby's views; yet in neither of Winroth's books on the topic is Duby's workcited more than perfunctorily. Greater attention to Duby's work might haveallowed Winroth to add further nuances to his analysis of the end of theViking Age in the book's epilogue. To be sure, Winroth does address theobvious explanatory factors: the strengthening of the defences of WesternEurope made raiding ever more hazardous, and the growth of royal power inthe Nordic kingdoms reduced the military aristocracy's freedom to launchplundering expeditions on their own. Winroth also addresses the growth ofdomestic exploitation in the shape of various forms of taxation. Yet he fails to include what was probably the most important change in the nature of domestic exploitation, in Western Europe as well as at least in parts of the Nordic countries: the shift from a predominantly pastoral to a predominantly agricultural economy, and the attendant growth of manoria structures with tenant farms.At times Winroth tends to succumb to slightly facile reasoning. Of course heis right to point out the ancient origins of the notion that Scandinaviaspawned successive waves of emigration due to domestic population growthoutstripping the native resources, and in its crude form the notion isindeed unwarranted. Yet it is slightly disturbing to see Winroth approvingof Thomas Robert Malthus' idea that population growth would always tend tobe checked by "famine, war, and disease" (51), but that in Viking AgeScandinavia that mechanism was avoided by profiting from opportunitiesabroad. It might be more relevant to point to the ideas of the late EsterBoserup, who argued that population pressure was the main driving forcebehind technological innovation and increased productivity; from such apoint of view, Norse expansion in the Viking Age might perhaps rather beseen as a factor retarding the agrarian changes that occurred in theirhomelands from the eleventh century onwards. Social structure may have had afurther retarding effect. Archaeological evidence as well as the laterlaw-books from the twelfth and thirteenth century indicate that the coregroup of Viking Age societies--not in numerical terms, but in terms of beingthe ones enjoying the full status of free men--was the owners of fairlylarge and prosperous family farms, normally equipped with menial staff inthe form of unfree thralls. Although considerably more numerous than themedieval nobility, this group had a privileged status, the maintaining ofwhich required careful management of the household's resources. An importantelement in that management appears to have been avoiding partition of thefamily property, which seems to have occurred very rarely until compulsorypartible inheritance was introduced in the laws from the twelfth centuryonwards. In the centuries after the end of the outbreaks of the Justinianicplague in the eighth century, when population numbers would have tended toincrease, this would have left a substantial number of surplus sons on thelarger farms, who would have few other options than joining the retinues ofwarlords, chieftains, and kings. [2] Winroth does acknowledge that such aphenomenon must have contributed manpower to the raiding parties and armiesof the Norsemen, but he does so only in the context of life "at home on thefarm" in the Nordic countries, where he comes close to discounting the"viking" raiding as a marginal phenomenon from the perspective of ordinaryagrarian life and production (164-165); it is not a consideration thatenters into his explanation of the raiding and settlement abroad in hisfirst chapters, where Winroth focuses exclusively on the grasping ambitionsof "power-hungry chieftains" (51). Nevertheless, Nordic settlements overseasseem to have been quite substantial, particularly in the ninth and earlytenth centuries, so that the notion of a population surplus fuelling theexpansion should not just be dismissed as the repetition of "an ancientcliché that has no basis in fact" as the author does (52). The problems of surplus young males would not have been less serious for having been caused by social constraints rather than by the insufficiency of productive resources.Despite these reservations, and the occasional factual error [3], this is avery readable and up-to-date survey of the history of the Nordic countries in the so-called Viking Age. It should work very well as an introduction ortextbook for students--provided their teacher takes care to explain to themthat the word "viking" is not a proper name, no matter how often Winrothspells it with a capital V. It was an occupational term with connotations akin to the modern word "pirate."--------Notes: 1. Timothy Reuter, "Plunder and Tribute in the Carolingian Empire," Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 35 (1985): 75-94.2. Michael H. Gelting, "The Problem of Danish 'Feudalism': Military, Legal, and Social Change in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries," in Feudalism: New Landscapes of Debate, eds. Sverre Bagge, Michael H. Gelting and Thomas Lindkvist, The Medieval Countryside 5 (Turnhout: Brepols Publishers, 2011), 159-184.3. It is a bit surprising to read on page 159 that Archbishop Unni of Bremen died in Birka in 921, when the event has previously been dated correctly to 936 (110).