River Kings: The Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads

In 2017, Cat Jarman, a bioarchaeologist, received a carnelian bead that she traced back to eighth-century Baghdad and India. She discovered that the Vikings route was far more varied than we thought, with people from the Middle East, not just Scandinavia, and that the slave trade running through the Silk Road may have been the reason for this integration. This is a major reassessment of the fierce, often-mythologized voyagers of the north and the global medieval world.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 352 pages
\n Publication date: 02 September 2021
\n Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
\n

The Sunday Times Bestseller & The Times History Book of 2021




Astonishing and compelling, Bernard Cornwell's "This superb book is like a classical symphony, perfectly composed and exquisitely performed."




THE TIMES Books of the Year




Follow bioarchaeologist Cat Jarman – and the cutting-edge forensic techniques central to her research – as she uncovers epic stories of the Viking age and follows a small 'Carnelian bead found in a Viking grave in Derbyshire to its origins thousands of miles to the east in Gujarat.




"This superb book is like a classical symphony, perfectly composed and exquisitely performed."




Dr. Cat Jarman is a bioarchaeologist, specialising in forensic techniques to research the paths of Vikings who came to rest in British soil. By examining teeth that are now over one thousand years old, she can determine childhood diet, and thereby where a person was likely born. With radiocarbon dating, she can ascertain a death date down to the range of a few years. And her research offers new visions of the likely roles of women and children in Viking culture.


In 2017, a carnelian bead came into her temporary possession.


River Kings sees her trace its path back to eighth-century Baghdad and India, discovering along the way that the Vikings route was far more varied than we might think, that with them came people from the Middle East, not just Scandinavia, and that the reason for this unexpected integration between the Eastern and Western worlds may well have been a slave trade running through the Silk Road, and all the way to Britain.


Told as a riveting story of the Vikings and the methods we use to understand them, this is a major reassessment of the fierce, often-mythologised voyagers of the north, and of the global medieval world as w.

\n Weight: 324g\n
Dimension: 130 x 198 x 30 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780008353117\n \n