DM Hadley, The Vikings in England

        The popularity of the people known as the Vikings shows no sign of abating with new publications aimed at both the scholarly and general audience appearing each year. Indeed the popularity of the Vikings is such that ‘Viking’ continues to appear in the titles of new books despite a move by many scholars to stop using the problematic term ‘Viking’, replaced instead by the likes of ‘Scandinavian’, ‘Norse’, or ‘Nordic’. The author of the work under review, Dawn Hadley, was instrumental in this shift when she co-edited Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (2000). It is therefore surprising finding ‘Vikings’ appearing in the title of her latest work. However the text itself speaks of ‘Scandinavians’ so this may be assumed to be a publishing decision – ultimately, ‘Vikings’ sell books! 
        In this instance if using ‘Vikings’ helps to increase sales it is warranted as the book is the best of a number of works published in the last decade that provide a broad coverage of the activities of Vikings in various places within the British Isles. Hadley has achieved the difficult feat of writing a concise work accessible to an interested public but also of use to scholars. Part of the appeal of the work for scholars is that the book utilises the most recent scholarship to re-visit and expand the scope of the field, effectively building on many of the papers in the aforementioned Cultures in Contact. Hadley also gives fairly short shrift to the debate over numbers that dominated studies of the Scandinavian impact on England for forty years, and while it is unwise to dismiss the question it is refreshing to see more fruitful lines of enquiry being pursued. Perhaps the chapter that best demonstrates Hadley’s approach is ‘Anglo-Scandinavian political accommodation’, an area that has previously received surprisingly little attention. The chapter on burial practices is also illuminating. The work, as a whole, which concentrates on the ninth and especially tenth centuries rather than the conquests of Swein and Cnut, is hard to fault and deals with most of the more recent concerns of scholarship including ethnicity, social status, and gender. The work is also inter-disciplinary, utilising the most recent research in archaeology, numismatics, genetic and isotope material, and texts, and it is welcome to see that the linguistic evidence, especially place-names, has here been considered more fully than the author has previously. Another advantage of Hadley’s work over other recent works of broad appeal is that the text is properly referenced, containing plentiful endnotes.
        The Vikings in England is highly recommended for anyone interested in this enduringly popular subject. Dawn Hadley has managed to integrate the often conflicting evidence of different disciplines and, most importantly, has managed to say something new and interesting about the Scandinavian settlement in England.

Shane McLeod
The University of Western Australia