Viking: Hammer of the North

by Magnus Magnusson

Echoes of the Ancient World Series

Contents:
Preface
The land of Thule: pre-Viking Scandinavia
The dragon ships: the great age of Viking expansion
Hammer and cross: the coming of the new religion
The great void: creation and doom in the Viking cosmology
Odin, the all-father: lord of the gallows and lord of the slain
Storm and harvest: Thor, Frey, Freyja: gods of the earth and sky
Loki and Baldur: the father of lies and the shining god
Choosers of the slain: Valkyries and the spirits of the otherworld
The way to Hel: death and its after-life
Sacred stones: Norsemen at worship
The heroic ethic: the legend of Sigurd and the code of the warrior.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Mythology, Medieval

128 pages, Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Magnus Magnusson, KBE, was an Icelandic television presenter, journalist, translator and writer. He was born in Iceland but lived in Scotland for almost all of his life, although he never took British citizenship. He came to prominence as a BBC television journalist, and was best known as the presenter of the BBC television quiz programme Mastermind, which he hosted for 25 years.

Under Icelandic naming conventions, his name would have been Magnús Sigursteinsson (Magnús, son of Sigursteinn), but his family adopted British naming conventions and he took his father's surname. Although born in Reykjavík, Magnusson grew up in Edinburgh, where his father, Sigursteinn Magnússon, was the Icelandic consul.

Reviews

[Dimitri · Rating 3 out of 5]

The surrounding archeology may be outdated, but the mythology isn't.
It's no big surprise Thor was in some ways more popular than Odin, but making sense of Norse logic from a monotheistic perspective is harder: the Cosmos will end with all Gods slain in battle, but with a cyclic rebirth.

[Margot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very well done. A nice mixture of history and Norse legend.

I'd hoped to use aspects of Norse legend in my own book but the stories are pretty far out for my use.

What I will try to capture is the Viking spirit, which is more (and less!) than the stereotype. Magnussen sums it up at the end: "The Norse ideal was a man of open, generous disposition, a man imbued with qualities of compassion and kindness, not ruthless but firm and fair, even tempered but capable of passion, physically accomplished and strong in a fight, but not a bully. Such was the ideal man of honour. But when the die was cast, when circumstances and cruel fate drew him into a situation which he could not avoid without losing honour, when he was agaonizingly trapped between duty and emotion, there was no running away. If he had to kill, he killed, and if he had to die, he died well, like Hogni, laughing at death itself.

A fitting name for the author of this book. :D

[Peter Swanson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I admit to having only read one chapter in its entirety. I skimmed the rest of the book well enough to know that I was already familiar with much of the history told there, and that I didn't really need to know the interlocking family trees of mythical Norse figures. The photographs of Norse art works will make the book worthwhile, even to someone who's not very interested in history.