"Battle for the Island Kingdom" by Don Hollway. A Personal Review

 

A fascinating book. A whirlwind story of regime change upon regime change, from Vikings to Anglo-Saxons to Vikings to Normans. Back and forth, up and down the tale unfolds, washing up on the English beach, then swishing back to the European Continent and back to England again. The interplay, interacting, conflict and control-seeking kept me turning pages, excited about each new chapter. Fascinating book!

And the tale does three things for readers. First, it reminds us that this is normal history and what normal world events look like. Here, inside the 21st Century, we have been coddled for the last 70 to 80 years, and have quickly forgotten that most of world history is littered with blood, dead bodies, and burnt out hamlets. And as most of the world returns to "normal" in the years ahead, we're already starting to see more of the same.

Next, this volume shows how related we are to our ancestry and ancestral actions. As Americans living in the "make it up as you go along" age, where we remake ourselves in our own image, this kind of thinking is utterly foreign to us. But Hollway has done a fine job reminding readers how we all stand on the shoulders of those who have long gone before us.

Lastly, for those who are Bible readers, this story can break through our modernist/post-modernist sensitivities, to remind us how violent the world really is in almost all of human history. After reading this work, then the next time you step into Joshua through 2 Kings, you will go, "Ah. Now I get it! Now I see why God put the stipulations down that he did to restrain such bloodlust. Oh, now I see how the flux and flow of turf wars imperiled common folk all around. Yes, now I get it!" I'm sure the author will find my application a bit surprising, but it was a very helpful rehearsal of history that puts so much of the human record back into its brutal context. This was truly a fascinating work. I highly recommend it.