Setting aside the familiar depiction of the Vikings as violent barbarians, Thomas Williams offers a less gory yet no less compelling narrative of the Viking Age between the arrival of the first 'ships of Northmen from Hordaland' in the eighth century and the Norman Conquest. He traces the early voyages of trade and plunder and, following war and upheaval, the colonization and settlement, and the spread and enduring cultural influence of Viking language, literature and folklore.