North Sea Saga is the story of the North Sea and the people living around it over the ten thousand years or so of its existence. The story runs from Stone Age totem-poles to twentieth century oil rigs, from log boats to cruise liners. Neolithic farmers, Bronze Age warriors, Roman Empire builders, Dark Age Kings, Viking raiders, medieval merchants, commercial and national rivals in the modern world are the characters of the Saga, along with shipbuilders, mariners, pirates, fishermen, oilmen and all the people of the coastal zones who have struggled to make a living by the sea and sometimes suffered grievously on account of it.

The North Sea is north-west Europe's home waters, small as the world's seas go but historically rich in its resources and inclusive in the communications it affords between such contrasting zones as Norway's and Scotland's highlands and the lowlands of Holland and East Anglia. This book explores the long coastlines and the long histories of all the lands around the North Sea, to reveal how much they share in a common saga of human experience in one of the most successful and progressive regions of the world.