What Was Life Like in the Viking Golden Age?

Autumn 865, Hedeby, the largest town of the Danes. Ship after ship pushes off into the autumn storms. On one of the last sits Toke, a comb maker who has never held a shield in a real fight. He has promised his wife Ragnhild he will be home by summer. This time the Vikings are not going to England to raid it. They are going to take it. Later sagas say the Great Army is led by Ivar the Boneless, sworn to avenge his father, Ragnar Lothbrok. We follow Toke from his workshop by the stream to the market where silver is cut and weighed, the thing where free men judge their own cases, a storm at sea in a ship built to bend, the army's winter camps in England, and the walls of York in March 867, where two English kings who hate each other come at the Vikings together. And back in Hedeby, Ragnhild runs the house, keeps the stall open, and decides for herself whether to wait. Why did a man with a trade, a house and a family climb into a warship? Not for silver alone, but for a name.