The Vikings and the Victorians

This is the first book-length treatment of the Victorians' fascination with the old north. It explores the ways in which the terms 'Viking' and 'Viking Age', both unknown in 1800, were invented, explored and popularized during the nineteenth century. The material examined - published and unpublished [...]
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This is the first book-length treatment of the Victorians' fascination with the old north. It explores the ways in which the terms 'Viking' and 'Viking Age', both unknown in 1800, were invented, explored and popularized during the nineteenth century. The material examined - published and unpublished - includes novels, poems, plays, lectures, reviews, secondary school textbooks, saga-stead travelogues, private correspondence, art and music, as well as dictionaries, grammars and scholarly editions of eddas and sagas. In the cast of characters Sir Walter Scott, William Morris, Edward Elgar and Rudyard Kipling appear alongside long-forgotten amateur enthusiasts from Lerwick to the Isle of Wight. We follow the pursuit of Viking-related archeology, dialectology, folklore, philology, runology and mythology.We see the old north used to legitimize many concepts and causes - from buccaneering mercantilism and imperial expansion to jury trial and women's rights. In drawing this wide range of materials together, Andrew Wawn presents a comprehensive and colorful account of the construction and translation of the Viking Age in Queen Victoria's Britain.Andrew Wawn is Professor of Anglo-Icelandic Studies at the University of Leeds.