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The Vikings

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Who were “the Vikings”? The exhibition shows a selection of the art, craft, and technology of people in and from the region we call Scandinavia, who lived between about 750 and 1066 AD and ranged for various purposes over a much wider terrain stretching from Newfoundland to western Asia. Those who went raiding by sea were called Vikings, and they were usually a small and somewhat suspect minority. At some point in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, someone, and then everyone, decided to apply this word—which derives from the Old Norse for pirate—to the whole Nordic population, as if all Americans were to be called cowboys or outlaws.

Most of the stuff in the exhibition relates to a much bigger picture than that of seaborne depredation. No Vikings could have afforded the huge longship that dominates the big room, or the Jelling stone, or the brief but impressive hegemony of King Canute over most of the north of Europe. These were the work of an altogether superior class of blackguard, whose history invites speculation about state formation, urbanization, monetization, national identity, and even “joining Europe.”

Read Eric Christiansen’s full review of this exhibition in the September 25, 2014 issue of The New York Review. For more information and tickets, visit berlinerfestspiele.de.

The post The Vikings appeared first on The New York Review of Books.


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