The Vikings descended upon Europe at the close of the 8th century, invading the continent's western seas and river systems, trading, raiding and spreading terror. In the north, they settled Iceland ...and Greenland and reached North America. In the east, Swedish Varangians established a river road to the Orient. With the collapse of the Viking commercial empire, Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries struggled to survive, their hardships exacerbated by internal strife, foreign domination and the Black Death. This book details the development of Scandinavia-Sweden in particular-from the end of the Ice Age, through a series of prehistoric cultures, the Bronze and Iron ages, to the Viking period and late Middle Ages. Recent research suggests a Swedish origin of the Goths, who helped dismember the Roman Empire, and evidence of Swedish participation in the western Viking expeditions. Special attention is given to Eastern Europe, where Sweden dominated commerce through the conquest of trade towns and the river systems of Russia.
Die Buchreihe Frühe Neuzeit - begründet 1987 von Jörg Jochen Berns, Gotthard Frühsorge, Klaus Garber, Wilhelm Kühlmann und Jan-Dirk Müller - dient der Grundlagenforschung in Editionen, Monographien ...und Sammelbänden. Dabei strebt sie nicht die großräumige Überschau an, die vorschnelle Synthese oder prätentiöse Konstruktion, sondern nimmt den Umweg über die Arbeit am Detail und die Erkundung verschütteter Traditionszusammenhänge.
Cassiodorus—famed throughout history as one of the great Christian exegetes of antiquity—spent most of his life as a high-ranking public official under the Ostrogothic King Theoderic and his heirs. ...He produced the Variae, a unique letter collection that gave witness to the sixth-century Mediterranean, as late antiquity gave way to the early middle ages. The Variae represents thirty years of Cassiodorus's work in civil, legal, and financial administration, revealing his interactions with emperors and kings, bishops and military commanders, private citizens, and even criminals. Thus, the Variae remains among the most important sources for the history of this pivotal period and is an indispensable resource for understanding political and diplomatic culture, economic and legal structure, intellectual heritage, urban landscapes, religious worldview, and the evolution of social relations at all levels of society during the twilight of the late-Roman state. This is the first full translation of this masterwork into English.
This work traces the origins of religion to the "Agricultural Revolution" and is the first to do so. Through the ancient Vedic literature, the archaeological record, and through chemistry, the author ...identifies how early Indo-Europeans produced the Soma of the Rig-Veda, Haoma, and the Greek Kykeon, the center of the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries.
Rome's Gothic Wars is a concise introduction to research on the Roman Empire's relations with one of the most important barbarian groups of the ancient world. The book uses archaeological and ...historical evidence to look not just at the course of events, but at the social and political causes of conflict between the empire and its Gothic neighbours. In eight chapters, Michael Kulikowski traces the history of Romano-Gothic relations from their earliest stage in the third century, through the development of strong Gothic politics in the early fourth century, until the entry of many Goths into the empire in 376 and the catastrophic Gothic war that followed. The book closes with a detailed look at the career of Alaric, the powerful Gothic general who sacked the city of Rome in 410.
