Book Review — THE VIKING HEART: How Scandinavians Conquered the World by Arthur Herman

From a New York Times best-selling historian and Pulitzer Prize finalist, a sweeping epic of how the Vikings and their descendants have shaped history and America

Scandinavia has always been a world apart. For millennia Norwegians, Danes, Finns, and Swedes lived a remote and rugged existence among the fjords and peaks of the land of the midnight sun. But when they finally left their homeland in search of opportunity, these wanderers—including the most famous, the Vikings—would reshape Europe and beyond. Their ingenuity, daring, resiliency, and loyalty to family and community would propel them to the gates of Rome, the steppes of Russia, the courts of Constantinople, and the castles of England and Ireland. But nowhere would they leave a deeper mark than across the Atlantic, where the Vikings’ legacy would become the American Dream.

In The Viking Heart, Arthur Herman melds a compelling historical narrative with cutting-edge archaeological and DNA research to trace the epic story of this remarkable and diverse people. He shows how the Scandinavian experience has universal meaning, and how we can still be inspired by their indomitable spirit.

Published: August 2021

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My Thoughts

I’d been stalking this book for months before its release, and I swear I shrieked with joy when the publisher sent me a finished hardcover. I so wanted to love this book.

Do you sense the but?

The writing is dry, giving us more of a college textbook than narrative nonfiction feel. I could’ve lived with that had the content been more engaging, and here’s another but…

I was thrown off by the author’s constant need to insert his ancestral history, however tangential, into this story of Vikings. None of these ancestors were in the least bit relevant to the topic.

I was also dumbfounded by the author’s constant, emphatic claims that Christianity saved the Vikings, making them better people. He showed us absolutely no evidence of this because there is no evidence of this. Christianity has just as much violence in its history as any pagan religion. He simply proclaimed this as fact. Consequently, this again felt like nothing more than the author’s bias.

This book was a struggle for me to get through. I felt the content was too much of a personal mission for the author to show Vikings in general, and his ancestors specifically, as heroes who saved and shaped humanity.

*I received a free copy from Mariner Books .*

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