IB DP History Class:  River Kings — were the Vikings really violent?

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Specification IB DP History

Connections with the DP DP History Key Concept: Perspectives. HL option 4: History of Europe — Unit 1: Monarchies in England and France (1066—1223).

Key terms and ideas Perspectives

Click to read the article below and then answer the questions:

River Kings — were the Vikings really violent?

This story explores what is described as an “unusually wide-ranging new history of the Vikings”. Whilst most histories of the Vikings focus on their activities in the west, this history takes a new perspective which encompasses their explorations, both violent and trading, through a network of rivers to the Black Sea, the Caspian and ultimately Byzantium.

The review writes that “Just as Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad reminded us that the eastern front of the second world war was of far greater consequence than its western theatre, so Jarman shows how the westward trading and slaving voyages of the Vikings were only half the story. The real source of Viking wealth lay far to the east.”

• How does a focus on their activities in the east change our perspective on the Vikings?

• Why have historians neglected this part of Viking history? 

• Why does our history tend to focus on what was happening in the west, rather than other parts of the world?

Ned Riley, historyrising.net