BOOK REVIEW: Andrew Wawn.THE VIKINGS AND THE VICTORIANS: INVENTING THE OLD NORTH IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY BRITAIN. Woodbridge and Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 2000.

Abstract

Early in The Vikings and the Victorians, Andrew Wawn notes that he recognizes that the book "should have been called 'Some Vikings (Not real ones, mind you, but romantic reconstructions based on philologically primitive sources) and Some (though it is hard [End Page 721] to interrogate the silence and judge how many) Victorians (with selective contextualising reference to pre- and post-Victorian events, texts and individuals within and beyond the British Isles)'" but that "the book cover could not cope with this challenging alternative" (xii). This good-humored recognition of the scope and complexity of Wawn's project sets the tone for what follows: an immensely detailed and learned study of the Victorian invention of the Old North that remains accessible to the general reader.

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