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Ancient Germanic Warriors: Warrior Styles from Trajan's Column to Icelandic Sagas

Ancient Germanic Warriors: Warrior Styles from Trajan's Column to Icelandic Sagas
By Michael P. Speidel

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Product Description

Fully illustrated with over fifty photographs, this book describes the ancient fighting styles and mythical self-images of Germanic warriors from 200 BC - AD 1000 and presents vivid and fascinating survey that adds a colourful new dimension to our understanding of the history of Europe.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #526636 in Books
  • Published on: 2004-06-03
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 328 pages

Editorial Reviews

Review
'A good read with a very welcome fresh approach.' - Pat Southern

From the Back Cover
Ancient Germanic warriors played a decisive role in historical events from 200 BC, when Germanic culture first became identifiable, to AD 1000 when Christianity swept through the Nordic countries. Arising from beliefs and states of mind, a variety of warrior styles manifested themselves in differences of dress, weaponry and fighting technique. Professor Speidel details seventeen different Germanic warriors styles, including berserks, wolf-warriors, club-wielders, long-hairs, ghost warriors and horse-stabbers, and how they indicate an unbroken continuity of customs, beliefs and battle-field tactics.
The book presents a range of evidence for these diverse styles, from Roman art to early medieval bracteate amulets, and from classical texts to Beowulf, the Edda and Icelandic sagas. Fully illustrated with over forty photographs, this vivid and fascinating survey adds a colourful new dimension to our understanding of the history of Europe.

About the Author
Michael Speidel teaches ancient history at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic5
This book is simply fantastic. It is one of those few inspiring books Germanophile history-freaks cannot put down once opened.

I marvel the proud warrior traditions of our ancient Germanic forbears, and it hurts to know that these traditions vanished forever with the forced Christian domination of Europe. Michael Speidels 10 year study is probably only a scratch at the surface of all the ancient and now unknown traditions all the European people had before the Christian age.

Highly recommended.