There’s a lot of fighting in this book. The Earls of Orkney seem to have spent most of their waking hours falling out with relatives, being deposed, sailing off to Norway to enlist the help of the King of Norway, sailing back, trying, and sometimes succeeding, in displacing the new earl, and then the whole cycle repeats itself.

As a narrative it stretches on with not too much to distinguish the different earls. But as a historical document it’s fascinating. Thinking oneself into the minds of the men who led these lives requires a rethinking of most of the unwritten assumptions that underlie our everyday lives today, from the value or otherwise of each life, through to attitudes to danger, the importance of glory, whether temper should be controlled or allowed to run into revenge, and much else besides. Really, it was a different world.

Perhaps that difference is best encapsulated in the history of the Earl Rognvald Kali who decides to go off on Crusade, sets off to the Holy Land accompanied by a retinue of poets, gets there, fights for Byzantium, and then comes back and gets killed walking through the wrong door. The history pretty much ends with him. Fascinating but frustrating. What a time – and thank goodness I didn’t live in it!