Books by Benjamin Hudson

The Picts is a survey of the historical and cultural developments in northern Britain between AD 300 and AD 900. Discarding the popular view of the Picts as savages, they are revealed to have been politically successful and culturally adaptive members of the medieval European world.

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• Re-interprets our definition of ‘Pict’ and provides a vivid depiction of their political and military organization
• Offers an up-to-date overview of Pictish life within the environment of northern Britain
• Explains how art such as the ‘symbol stones’ are historical records as well as evidence of creative inspiration.
• Draws on a range of transnational and comparative scholarship to place the Picts in their European context

This collection of essays offers fresh analysis of topics in the exciting area of Atlantic World studies. Challenging standard assumptions, the essays advance the argument that the Atlantic Ocean was a region that encompassed ethnic and political boundaries, in which a sub-community shaped by culture and commerce arose.

In popular imagination, the Vikings are remembered as fierce warrior seamen who campaigned through Western Europe, terrorizing British, Frankish, and Irish societies. Yet is it possible that the great Viking armies left more in their wake than carnage and destruction? The stories of two families-the Olafssons, who transformed a pirate camp in Ireland into the kingdom of Dublin, and the Haraldssons, whose rule encompassed Hebrides, Galloway, and the Isle of Man-suggest that the Vikings did indeed leave behind a much greater legacy.
Between the tenth and twelfth centuries, these two Viking families, descendants of men whom earlier chroniclers dismissed as pagan pirates, established themselves as Christian rulers whose domain straddled the Scandinavian and Celtic worlds. The Olafssons and Haraldssons carved out empires that inspired fear and made their families fabulously wealthy. From their ranks came the settlers who gave name to the Danelaw in Britain, Fingal in Ireland, and Normandy in Francia. Celebrated in Icelandic sagas and poems, Irish tales, and French history, the Olafssons and Haraldssons took part in the last successful Scandinavian invasion of Britain and the overthrow of the last Old English kingdom, even as they allied with, fought against, and married their Irish neighbors.
Though the families had come to these lands as conquerors, they soon learned the importance of cooperating with those they had vanquished. Even as they worshipped pagan gods, the Olafssons and Haraldssons both became important benefactors to the Christian church. They also played a crucial role in the economic revival of northern Europe as trading ships from their ports sailed throughout the Atlantic and the goods they produced traveled as far west as Canada. Under their rule, the seas became a connector for a shared culture, commercially, artistically, and socially.
Challenging traditional views of the Vikings' culture, Benjamin Hudson shows the role that these two great dynasties played in the Second Viking age. The rise and transformation of the Olafssons and Haraldsssons from the tenth to the twelfth centuries highlights a period and people important for understanding the political, religious, and cultural development of Europe in the High Middle Ages.

This book gives a text, an English translation, and a commentary on a medieval verse history of the kings of Ireland and Scotland from the ninth to the 11th centuries. This study examines the Prophecy of Berchán as a historical record with much to offer students of kingship among the Irish and Scots. Biographies of individual monarchs provided therein present the important events of each ones career, the length of his reign, and the circumstances of his death. This study suggests new interpretations of British and Irish history during the early middle ages.

The Kings of Celtic Scotland examines the formation and development of the early medieval Scottish Kingdom. Using a study of the individual monarchs, from the 9th to 11th centuries, the supremacy of the Scots in northern Britain is placed in the wider context of Irish and English history. This study uses family history and literature in conjunction with political narrative and places medieval Celtic history into the tradition of Scottish historical research.

Historically, a number of methodologies have influenced the appreciation of the Celts within European society. Any attempt to inscribe the Celts into the flow of European intellectual history, therefore, must rely on a number of methodological approaches. As the type of historical record necessary for research varies, so does the method of extracting relevant information from a historical record. In this collection of articles, language, law and literature are examined in order to illustrate different approaches to records while reinforcing the idea of Celtic continuity within European history.