History Book Review: Treasures of the Vikings by Tom Horne

The book has 7 chapters in addition to the introduction: Playing games: growing up a viking; Production and consumption; House and home; Clothing and adornment; Weapons and war; Trading and raiding; Faith and death. There's an index, a bibliography and picture credits at the end.

The book is heavily illustrated with each chapter having numerous pictures of relevant archaeological finds. It emphasizes the ubiquity of viking culture despite its geographic expansion. I loved the inclusion of so many items from daily life.

The chapters are fairly short, covering a decent amount of information in a superficial way. It's a nice introduction to the life of Vikings, but if you've researched the topic before you won't learn much new.

While the book has information about the objects depicted, and credits for the included photographs, I often wanted to know where the objects were currently housed and that's hard to figure out. Some of the photos are credited to institutions where they're presumably held, but others have Alamy or individual photographer credits, which is less helpful. I may be in the minority for wanting this information though.

It's a great primer on Viking life.