
- 272 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Raider. Conqueror. King. Saint.
This is the story of Olav Haraldsson, the greatest Viking who ever lived.
A ruthless Viking warrior who named his most prized battle weapon after the Norse goddess of death, Olav Haraldsson and his mercenaries wrought terror and destruction from the Baltic to Galicia in the early eleventh century. Thousands were put to the sword, enslaved or ransomed. In England, Canterbury was sacked, its archbishop murdered and London Bridge pulled down. The loot amassed from years of plunder helped Olav win the throne of Norway, and a century after his death he was proclaimed 'Eternal King' and has been a national hero there ever since.
Despite his bloodthirsty beginnings, Olav converted to Christianity and, in a personal vendetta against the old Norse gods, made Norway Christian too, thereby changing irrevocably the Viking world he was born into. Told with reference to Norse sagas, early chronicles and the work of modern scholars, Desmond Seward paints an intensely vivid and colourful portrait of the life and times of arguably the greatest Viking of them all.
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title
- Copyright
- Prologue: The Sword in the Burial Mound
- Introduction: Norway’s Once and Future King
- Chronology
- 1 The World of a Young Norse Chieftain
- 2 Harald Fair Hair and His Successors
- 3 The Viking Olav Haraldsson
- 4 Olav Abandons the Gods
- 5 The Battle of Nesjar,1016
- 6 Building a Kingdom
- 7 The Terrible One and Other Gods
- 8 The New Religion
- 9 Olav’s Empire
- 10 Olav and the Swedish Princesses
- 11 A War on Demons
- 12 The Killing of Asbjorn Slayer of Seal
- 13 The Shadow of Knut the Great
- 14 War with Knut
- 15 Norway Rejects Olav Haraldsson
- 16 Exile in Viking Russia
- 17 Olav’s Homecoming
- 18 The Old Gods’ Revenge: Stiklestad
- 19 Olav’s ‘Return from the Dead’
- 20 The Triumph of Olav Haraldsson
- Epilogue: The Eternal King of Norway
- Acknowledgements
- Note on Translations and Spelling
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index