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Plot of The Shield Ring

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the plot of The Shield Ring, by Rosemary Sutcliff, as well as to discuss and analyze the social and cultural institutions which are described in the novel. The author's attitude toward these social and cultural institutions will also be discussed and evaluated.

In a broad historical context, the novel The Shield Ring deals with the last stronghold of the Vikings in Britain, at the end of the eleventh century. At that point in history, the Normans (of the Norman Conquest) had established their power and control over all of Britain, except for a small area still controlled by Viking chieftains called the Lake Land where for many years the Northmen had remained free. In this area, the Vikings practiced a culture very different from that of the Normans, their actual descendants in Normandy (France), who had become "refined" and "civilized."

The clash of the two cultures, one "refined," the other "barbaric", is part of what makes this novel dramatic, through the use of conflict. The main characters are Frytha, a Saxon child whose home the Normans burned to the ground, and Bjorn, a Viking boy without parents, whose adventures among the two cultures see their way to the final contest between the Vikings and the Normans for control of the area the Northmen possess.

This civil war is somewhat tragic, because it represents what we know to be the last stand of an adventurous and proud people against the forces of superior technology (analogies between the North and South in the American Civil war are obvious), and somehow we mourn the passing of the Viking culture, even though it had to make way for something more advanced than itself.

Once again, the irony of the situation presents itself to any informed reader. The Normans were descendants of the very men whom they were fighting. Their ancestors had been "Northmen" (hence "Normans") who had settled in France and become "civilized"...

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Plot of The Shield Ring. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 17:15, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1705140.html