Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages

by Dan Jones

And they interacted with this invisible realm in ways far removed from the liturgical, institutionalized forms followed by the Christians, Muslims, and Jews of Europe and the Middle East, ranging from leaving offerings of food to practicing ritual human sacrifice. Historians have puzzled for generations over why the Vikings suddenly, in the course of two generations, broke their relative isolation and surged out to terrorize—and colonize—the west. Political turmoil, cultural revolution, climate change, and demographic pressure have all been proposed as causes.50 Like all huge questions, it has no straightforward answer. But for our purposes here, it seems to be that at exactly the moment that economic conditions and popular technologies were changing within the Scandinavian world, the Frankish world and its established order fell to pieces. From around the fifth century, Scandinavian boat technology had been improving, perhaps driven by the opportunities for trade around the North Sea, including the long, fjord-pocked thousand-mile west coast of Norway.