THE AMAZING VIKINGS

摘要

Ravagers, Despoilers, Pagans, Heathens—Such Epithets pretty well summed up the Vikings for those who lived in the British Isles during medieval times. For hundreds of years after their bloody appearance at the end of the 8th century A.D., these ruthless raiders would periodically sweep in from the sea to kill, plunder and destroy, essentially at will. "From the fury of the Northmen, deliver us, O Lord" was a prayer uttered frequently and fervently at the close of the first millennium. Small wonder that the ancient Anglo-Saxons—and their cultural descendants in England, the U.S. and Canada—think of these seafaring Scandinavians as little more than violent brutes.