I don’t mean to imply, by the way, that the Vikings aren’t fun. This is the problem with all the empathy. One can easily end up focusing exclusively on what it was like being a Viking (cold, scary, damp, desperate, navigational excellence worn lightly) or meeting one (‘Jesus save me from the arsehole with the axe!’) when, for the vast majority of humanity, and absolutely everyone reading this book, that’s not the main thing at all. They were brilliant! Unless you met them personally, in which case they were awful. Bit like Peter Sellers.
