Tuesday 3 June 2008

Home sweet home for the Viking settlers

A BOOK by a Castletown author providing the first detailed view of Viking settlements in the Island will be published on July 1.

It is written by a leading specialist in the study of Viking archaeology, Sir David Wilson — who was director of the British Museum between 1977 and 1992.

It is thanks to his parents' decision to move to the Island more than 60 years ago that he developed an interest in Viking Age archaeology.

The Vikings in the Isle of Man focuses on the Island between the end of the 9th Century and the middle of the 11th Century and looks at the 'wealth of its archaeological remains, its remarkable series of sculptured memorial stones, its place names, and even its present day literature' which are seen by historians as a 'useful microcosm of a settlement in the West'.

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