Volume 27, Number 15 · October 9, 1980
The Fury of the Northmen
By Gwyn Jones
The Vikings William Morrow
by James Graham-Campbell, by Dafydd Kidd
The British Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, distributed by, 220, 85 color plates, 55 black-and-white photographs pp., $22.95
The Viking World
by James Graham-Campbell
Ticknor & Fields, 220, 140 color plates, 75 black-and-white photographs pp., $25.00
"The Vikings" 1980, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October 4, 1980 to January 4,1981
an exhibition at the British Museum February 19, 1980 to July 20,
The Vikings are upon us again, and this time with none to echo a prayer as endlessly plausible as it was ever unverifiable: 'From the fury of the Northmen, O Lord, deliver us!' For this is a peaceful re-entry, which began as an exhibition in the heart of London, of sudden advent but long preparation, and by design revelatory of our ancient despoilers in all their manifestations at home and abroad, domestic as well as martial, cultural as well as destructive, openers-up of trade-routes, word-hoards, and world-pictures, as well as of purses and jugulars. This laudable design is reinforced by the appearance of two new books on the subject, one of them, The Vikings, by James Graham-Campbell and Dafydd Kidd, intended to serve as the exhibition's catalogue. The other, James Graham-Campbell's wideranging survey The Viking World, is no less welcome, for it is high time for a popular or, rather, public reappraisal to follow the established scholarly one. This may involve a loss of folklore along with the historical gain, but the two are not so exclusive of each other as is sometimes supposed.
Review, 4292 words
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