Beñat Elortza Larrea, Polity Consolidation and Military Transformation in Medieval Scandinavia: A European Perspective, c. 1035–1320 , The Northern World 94. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2023, xii, 382 pp.

This book poses the question to what degree do the periods of political consolidation show evidence of the ‘Europeanization’ of administrations and militaries in the North? The study proceeds from the idea that there are identifiable (Western) European developments in these areas and that other regions participate in them and are influenced by them at different points in time and degrees of change. The author consults the usual sources in Norse vernaculars and Latin: narrative texts such as individual and synoptic royal biographies, legal texts, and diplomataria.