Heh. A liking for Vikings

HAGAR THE HORRIBLE and pals have a bad reputation. We picture them as seafaring, bloodthirsty warmongers plundering the North Atlantic and British Isles in longboats, red hair blazing underneath horned helmets, ready to rape and pillage - and that's on a good day.

In reality, the Viking race had a complex culture that defies stereotype.

A new book, Exploring the World of the Vikings, by Richard Hall of York Archaeological Trust, investigates Viking culture from its origins in Scandinavia during the first millennium AD, through the period of raiding, trading and settling known as the Viking Age, to the last surviving settlements in 15th-century Greenland.