Far better contemporary sources from the later Viking Age are available to document the activities of men and their uses of ships from c.950-1100, and Judith Jesch undertakes in this book the first systematic and comparative study of the runic inscriptions and skaldic verse that provide such copious contemporary evidence of the activities of men and their uses of ships in this period. The core is a critical survey of the vocabulary of ships and their crews, of fleets and sailing and battles at sea, based on the runic inscriptions and skaldic evidence from c.950-1100. This nautical vocabulary is studied within the larger context of 'viking' activity in this period: what that activity was and where it took place, its social and military aspects, and its impact on developments in the nature of kingship in Scandinavia.

JUDITH JESCH is Reader in Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham, and author of Women in the Viking Age.  less