God’s Hammer

From the bestselling author of Viking Britain, a stunning new perspective on the medieval world.

‘Surprising, original and compelling’ RORY STEWART

When we think of the Crusades, the image is usually squarely medieval: an era of pageantry, knights, castles and cathedrals. An age of violence, certainly, but one glossed with faith, chivalry and Christian derring-do.

When we think of the Vikings, we most often see barbarism and pagan menace: Norse warriors drenched in blood-sacrifice and presided over by grim, brooding gods.

Both images are false, of course, created by centuries of cultural baggage. This book sets that history right, showing how the Vikings and their descendants embraced Christianity and the mores of mainstream Western Christendom – and how that Western medieval world imbibed the values and attitudes of the Vikings’ northern home.

Telling the story of how the Vikings took up arms and the cross, this is a book that leads to extraordinary places: from Jerusalem and Istanbul to Novgorod and Tallinn, via cold northern seas and ice-shrouded northern forests. It tells stories full of adventure, horror and madness, of pilgrimages and war-paths, bodyguards and princes, holy missions and rapacious greed.

That which transformed the bounds of Christendom forever was a hammer forged in the pagan fires of the Viking Age.

Reviews

'A narrative that displays a deep understanding of their mindset … Williams weaves a compelling story of Viking engagement with “muscular Christianity”'

The Times

‘This is one of those rare books that genuinely changes how you see a familiar subject. Surprising, original and compelling, God's Hammer recasts our understanding of the Vikings, religious war and the making of Christian Europe. Highly recommended’

Rory Stewart, bestselling author of Politics on the Edge

‘Most books on the Scandinavian Viking Age end with the adoption of Christianity. Thomas Williams's new, gripping and brilliantly researched history traces how Viking raiders became crusaders. From the Holy Land to the Baltic, God's Hammer is a thrilling journey through one of the great untold stories of the Middle Ages’

Professor Aleks Pluskowski, author of The Black Cross

PRAISE FOR LOST REALMS

‘Skeptical, scrupulous, written with wit and flair’ Financial Times

‘This brilliant history of Dark Age Britain mixes serious scholarship with nods to pop culture, from Tolkien to The Wicker Man… Lost Realms is a joy to read’ The Telegraph, FIVE STAR REVIEW

‘Williams makes a compelling guide as he steers us through the darkness’ Spectator

‘Thomas Williams is an exceptionally vivid and exciting writer, and his wonderfully evocative recreations are just what the generally impoverished and bewildering evidence for early medieval Britain requires’

Ronald Hutton, author of The Witch

'Thomas Williams has blended a potent brew of mythic and material fragments to raise forgotten kings & queens (and their stories) from the grave. An historian not afraid of the dark and with eyes adapted to it – what he sees is assessed sagely and described beautifully'

Christopher Hadley, author of Hollow Places