Brendan’s Alternate Tagline for Hammer of the Gods:
Have hammer. Will travel.
Quick synopsis:
The story of King Olaf and his conquests.
Fact for Non-History People:
Olaf attacked England which was ruled at that time by Aethelred the Unready. Aethelred later became Olaf’s godfather because that’s how they rolled back then.
Fact for History Nerds:
Olaf introduced Christianity to Shetland, Faroe, Orkney, Iceland, and Greenland. I mean, allegedly, the sources are a bit all over the place.
My Take on Hammer of the Gods:
Olaf Tryggvason, ever heard of him? Me neither! We probably should have, though. Luckily, we have Don Hollway to rectify this, and he has the unenviable task of pulling together wildly different sources of varying reliability because Vikings were not huge fans of writing stuff down.
Hammer of the Gods tells the whole story of Olaf’s life which includes murder, slavery, pillaging (of course!), tons of marriages, and even more death. Olaf travels all over the known world at the time from Russia to Ireland. Along the way, he becomes Christian and violently makes a lot of other people convert as well. For the record, that’s not how you are supposed to do it.
Hollway is great at books like this where he has to pull together a lot of history from various sources. There are a few times where I think he adds a bit too much to the narrative, but those times are few and far between. This is a fun book about someone I knew nothing about going in.
(This book was provided as a review copy by NetGalley and Osprey Publishing.)
Verdict:
A must-read for the Viking lover. Buy it here!
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