Roman Scandinavia

Podcast: The LRB Podcast · The London Review of Books

Opublikowano: 2026-09-03

In the late 160s AD, the Roman armies of Marcus Aurelius recruited large numbers of troops from the islands east of Jutland, in what is now Denmark. After Marcus’ death in 180, his German campaigns were abandoned and the Romans withdrew to the Danube. Some of the demobilised troops returned north and ‘revolutionised their cultural world’, as Michael Kulikowski wrote recently in the LRB, ‘by adapting the lessons they had learned in Roman service’. On this episode, Michael joins Tom to discuss his review of an ‘extraordinary book’ by Dagfinn Skre, ‘which gives Scandinavia an ancient history for the very first time’. The...