The Greatest Viking: The Life of Olav Haraldsson by Desmond Seward

Please visit https://thebookvoice.com/podcasts/1/audiobook/640499 to listen full audiobooks. Title: The Greatest Viking: The Life of Olav Haraldsson Author: Desmond Seward Narrator: Liam Gerrard Format: Unabridged Audiobook Length: 7 hours 14 minutes Release date: January 17, 2023 Genres: History & Culture Publisher's Summary: A ruthless Viking warrior who named his most prized battle weapon after the Norse goddess of death, Olav Haraldsson and his mercenaries wrought terror and destruction from the Baltic to Galicia in the early eleventh century. Thousands were put to the sword, enslaved, or ransomed. In England, Canterbury was sacked, its archbishop murdered, and London Bridge pulled down. The loot amassed from years of plunder helped Olav win the throne of Norway, and a century after his death he was proclaimed 'Eternal King' and has been a national hero there ever since. Despite his bloodthirsty beginnings, Olav converted to Christianity and, in a personal vendetta against the old Norse gods, made Norway Christian too, thereby changing irrevocably the Viking world he was born into. Told with reference to Norse sagas, early chronicles, and the work of modern scholars, Desmond Seward paints an intensely vivid and colorful portrait of the life and times of arguably the greatest Viking of them all.