A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEARAs brilliant a history of the Vikings as one could possibly hope to read Tom HollandThe Viking Age is traditionally held to begin in June 793 when Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria and to end in September 1066 when King Harald Hardrada of Norway died leading the charge against the English line at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. This book the most wideranging and comprehensive assessment of the current state of our knowledge takes a refreshingly different view. It shows that the Viking expansion began generations before the Lindisfarne raid and traces Scandinavian history back centuries further to see how these people came to be who they were.The narrative ranges across the whole of the Viking diaspora from Vinland on the eastern American seaboard to Constantinople and Uzbekistan with s as far away as China.