The Vikings and the Victorians: Inventing the Old North in Nineteenth-Century Britain

In many ways the Victorians invented the vikings: the term `viking', in its modern incarnation, is first recorded just thirty years before the young Princess Victoria's coronation, yet within fifty years it featured in the titlesof dozens of poems, plays, prize essays, published lectures, and parlour songs. Old Icelandic Edda and saga were used to legitimise everything from buccaneering Victorian mercantilism and imperial expansion to jury trial and women's rights, and regional consciousness flourished with the rediscovery of the viking contribution to local legend and place names.This is the first book-length treatment of the Victorians' fascination with the Old North. Walter Scott, William Morris, Edward Elgar and Rudyard Kipling appear alongside amateur enthusiasts from Lerwick to the Isle of Wight; the material examined, published and unpublished, includes novels, poems, lectures, periodicals, saga-stead travel, philology, art and music. Andrew Wawn draws this wide range of source material together to give a comprehensive account of the construction and translation of the viking age in nineteenth-century Britain.ANDREW WAWN is Professor of Anglo-Icelandic Studies at the University of Leeds. Fascinating and impressively scholarly... As Wawn points out, the Victorians not only more or less invented the Vikings as we know them, but also developed this creation into what amounted to a national obsession. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Hazelling the ground: of stockfish and saga; Georgian case-studies; protectors of Northern Arts. Part 2 Creating the canon: dead kings of Norroway; Frithiof of Sognefjord; George Dasent and "Burnt Njal"; the Eddas. Part 3 Philology and mercury: the Errander of Cheapinghaven; William Morris and the Old Grey North. Part 4 Living the Old North: travels, trips and trots; telling Viking tales; the invisible college. Part 5 Coda: "Vikinglife" after Victoria.

Review :
In its broad canvas and energetic research, its pace and wit and it learning lightly worn, Wawn's book is exemplary, work of humane and original scholarship. SAGA-BOOK OF THE VIKING SOCIETY It is a shock to realise that [the Vikings] had to be invented, from horned helmet to Hel-shoes, for the most part in the 19th century. The process is [here] laid out in fine detail... His book also quietly illustrates the powerful intellectual life of unglamorous provincial Britain, where Northern shippers and manufacturers fashioned a new ancestry and a growing independence. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT [TS] Fascinating and impressively scholarly ... a remarkable achievement. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT [Heather O'Donoghue] Delightful, erudite... With immense knowledge and a sense of humor, Wawn has brought a world of great importance brilliantly to life.