Cat Jarman to Viking Festival

We are extremely pleased to announce that Cat Jarman will be among the lecturers at the 8th Tonsberg Viking Festival. This year´s festival takes place on August 11th to 14th.

Cat Jarman. Photo Marc Aitken
Cat Jarman. Photo Marc Aitken

Cat Jarman is a Norwegian archaeologist living in the UK, where her book River Kings: The Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads has been received with great acclaim and become a Sunday Times bestseller and proclaimed The Times´ history book of 2021: “This superb book is like a classical symphony, perfectly composed and exquisitely performed.”

Famous author of historic novels Bernhard Cornwell is quoted with the following statement on Ms. Jarman´s book: “Astonishing and compelling”. Another quote: “Cat Jarman will transform the way you think about the Vikings”, says TV-journalist and historian Dan Snow, while Financial Times´ book critic William Dalrymple writes: “Replete with witches, human sacrifice, Greek fire and funeral orgies…one of the most thrilling works of archaeological detective work I have ever read.”

The background story is as follows: In 2017, a carnelian bead came into Ms. Jarman´s temporary possession. River Kings sees her trace its path back to eighth-century Baghdad and India, discovering along the way that the Viking´s route was far more varied than we might think, that with them came people from the Middle East, not just Scandinavians, and that the reason for this unexpected integration between the Eastern and Western worlds may well have been a slave trade running through the Silk Road, and all the way to Britain.

Her appearance at the Tonsberg Viking Festival is a unique opportunity to learn more about this exiting subject. 

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