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Informationen zum Autor James Reston, Jr. Klappentext Accomplished historical author James Reston, Jr., presents the enthralling saga of how the Christian kingdoms converted, conquered, and slaughtered their way to dominance in Europe as the year 1000 approached. Through Reston's brilliant narrative and engaging portraits of the unforgettable historical characters who embodied the struggle for the soul of Europe, students are introduced to a pivotal period in history during which an old order was crumbling, and terrifying, confusing new ideas were gaining hold in the populace. From the righteous fury of the Viking queen Sigrid the Strong-Minded, who burned unwanted suitors alive; to the brilliant but too-cunning Moor, al-Mansur the Illustrious Victor; to the aptly named English king Ethelred the Unready; to the abiding genius of the age, Pope Sylvester II-warrior kings and concubine empresses, maniacal warriors and religious zealots bring this stirring period to life.As Olaf Trygvesson sailed across the North Sea toward home, he must have felt the nobility and the grandeur of his holy mission. He was a hybrid of Odysseus and Michael, avenger, exile, and zealot all in one. He was coming, in justice and in glory, as the royal scion of Harald Fairhair's race, as the king of whom great deeds were predicted in the name of Norway and in the name of Christ. He was returning to avenge the death of his father, the exile of his mother, the slavery of his youth. His passion was to convert his heathen homeland, and he was prepared for holy war. By his athletic stature, by his superior skill in the martial art, by his campaigns across the Baltic and through England, and by his zealot's faith, he was the Viking warrior non pareil: bold, cruel, and skilled. As he approached Norway's shore, Olaf possessed no fine sense of what Christianity meant, especially its gentler side. But he must have had some sense of the calendar. The world was approaching the thousandth year after Christ's birth, and with it, Christ the King would come a second time. There would be a final climactic battle between the forces of good and evil. It was not hard for Olaf to view Earl Hacon as the Antichrist. The earl was the murderer of his father, the rapist of Norway's daughters, and the high priest of heathenism. Nor was it hard to imagine Hacon's soldiers as the forces of Gog and Magog. If there was any imagery in the Christian bible to which a Viking warrior, raised in the heathen tradition, could relate, it was the magical language of Revelation. For beasts and monsters, giants and trolls were the most familiar of notions. "And as I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy," reads Revelation 13 about the first beast. "And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his meat, and his great authority." How different was that from the apocalypse of the heathens? For in the villages and temples of Olaf's upbringing, in Norway and in Russia, there had been talk of Ragnarok, that terrible end-time when the world sinks into moral chaos, into anxiety and greed, into an intoxication with gold, when brothers kill brothers and incest is rampant. In this wolf's age, Odinn becomes an agent of violent death and is himself killed violently, when war breaks out between the Vanir and the Aesir, and the gods mete out punishment to oath breakers, murderers, rapists. In the day of Ragnarok, the wolf will swallow the sun. Another wolf will seize the moon. The earth and the mountains will tremble so violently that trees will be uprooted, mountains will crash down. The sun will go black. The earth will sink into the sea. And the heavens will ...
