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Byzantium and the Viking World
That there were contacts between Byzantium and the Viking world is well-known in outline, and many scholars have published work on particular aspects of those contacts. But our literary sources offer very few narratives of these contacts, beyond Byzantine accounts of Rus attacks and the Rus’ Primary Chronicle’s materials on Russo-Byzantine trade-agreements and the conversion of Prince Vladimir c.988. Not only are narrative sources lacking for contacts between Byzantium and the wider Viking world: we also lack a conceptual framework within which to place the numerous and disparate items of evidence of contacts. As a result, modern works of synthesis on the subject are exceedingly rare, and seldom very effective. The book that we aim to publish soon should amount to an illuminating, authoritative synthesis. Among the contributors are archaeologists and specialists in runes, numismatics, sagas, and Byzantine literary sources.