SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Book Reviews r03
figures tend to be overcrowded but this does not spoil their
detail. Fig. V is a pair of distribution-maps of swords of
a particular make.
From the archaeological point of view, the book is of especial
interest where the manufacture of the pattern-welded blade is
described and discussed. One hopes that Mr Anstee will not be
charged with carrying an offensive weapon as he walks about the
world with a home-made pattern-welded sword under his coat.
The author and Mr Anstee between them have provided a detailed
account of a method of achieving the pattern-welded effect, and
it is pleasant to have a book in which a method is drawn and
described. This will kill for good the old confusion between
'damascening' and 'pattern-welding'.
"This search for the sword will have been worth while if by it
other students of Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse literature are saved
time and effort, and gain a glimpse into the heroic world of
weapons which the makers of that literature inherited as their
natural birthright, but which is now lost to us." This purpose
the book surely fulfils. It ought to be observed, however, that
this book is likely to cost the student some time, because it is
a plain invitation to explore the literature of an ancient mystique.
It is just the right kind of book to lay before the student.
JOHN McNEAL DODGSON
THE AGE OF THE VIKINGS. By P. H. SAWYER. London: Edward
Arnold, 1962. 254 pp., 17 figs. and 10 pls, 30s.
The aims of this book are explicit: (a) to help towards an
improved understanding of the nature of the evidence of the
different disciplines archaeology, numismatics, history,
philology - used in building up a picture of Viking civilization;
(b) to re-examine certain basic assumptions commonly made about
the Viking period; and (c) to offer an explanation of the changing
patterns of Scandinavian activity as the Viking period progressed.
It can hardly be said that Mr Sawyer has achieved any of these
aims, but Viking studies - or perhaps one should say certain
areas of Viking studies - need critical re-examination, and any
attempt, especially one as readable as this, to undertake a new
survey can only do the subject much good by enlivening
discussion.
It is perhaps inevitable, considering the scope of the field, that
Mr Sawyer appears too ambitious a polymath to be able to