Looking for a book(s) covering early Scandinavian history.

by doelling

The only book I've read about Scandinavian history is Sagas of the Icelanders (not exactly historically accurate, I know), and I'm having trouble finding books about early Scandinavian history at local bookstores. I'm specifically looking for overviews of pre-Viking Era Scandinavia (fine if they go into the Viking Era too) if anyone has some to recommend.

VikingPaul

In general there is not a ton of written stuff written about Scandinavia before the medieval period besides Tacitus' "Germania" and Jordanes "Getica" (that I can think of right now) thus most information we have is based off archaeology. There isn't really a ton of books in English as most of it is scholarly articles/journals from Scandinavian countries or Germany.

If you want Vendel period (or Sweden during the Migration Period) with Viking Age there is "The Scandinavians from the Vendel Period to the Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective". In general Migration Period Germanic tribes would have more sources and while not directly about people living in Scandinavia, many of the tribes came from parts of Scandinavia and have strong cultural ties. This fact can be displayed through the fact that there are 13th century Icelandic sagas that tell stories of conflicts during the Migration period and the characters that are the heroes with stories being told about are ideally distant kin for them to be sagas worth telling. Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks discusses the fighting between the Goths(the original Goths coming from southern Sweden) and the Huns. Völsunga saga discusses the fighting between the Burgundians and the Huns.

Thus if you want to look at Migration Period Germanic tribes, maybe start with "The Early Germans (The Peoples of Europe)". I don't know a ton about mainland Europe during the Migration Period and would like to learn about other books or articles that would expand my knowledge there too.

If you want to look at Bronze Age artifacts there is "Gods and Heroes of the European Bronze Age" which I found was fun to look through.

Nersen

In english I have not come across any, but I have some recommendations from my bachelors if you can read Norwegian (although I know that will be far fetched).

Sorry!