Vikings The North Atlantic saga

The old Norse excite imaginations with imagery of horn-helmeted, bearded barbarians bent on rapine and plunder, but as archaeologists have excavated around that stereotype, a more comprehensive conception of old Norse people and culture has recently emerged. For summarizing that modern view, this volume is distinctly superior. In some 30 chapters, it accents the Vikings' expansion across the islands of the North Atlantic, from Britain to Newfoundland, and proffers ideas of what impelled the Viking voyages and colonizations. Clues have been disinterred from numerous archaeological sites, where everything from pins to entire Viking ships has been recovered. The written sources, such as runic inscriptions and the Vinland Sagas, from which the editors present passages, provide their hints, and the totality of those the expert chapter authors integrate into theories of, for example, what caused the demise around 1350 of the Greenlander colonies founded by Eric the Red. Well-organized, abundantly and handsomely illustrated, this is a marvelous resource. --Gilbert Taylor

To mark the 1000-year anniversary of the first settlement of Viking explorers in North America on the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, the Smithsonian Institution has mounted a large exhibition now touring Canada and the United States. Companion to the exhibition, this large-size book is replete with high-quality color photographs, drawings, and maps of Viking sites and artifacts. While the book concentrates on the New World, there are also chapters on the Vikings in Iceland, Greenland, and France and along the coasts of Britain and the rivers of Russia. The contributors discuss the Viking saga from the perspectives of natural science, archaeology, history, oral tradition, and early writings. The Vikings are shown to have had more extensive contacts with Native Americans than previously believed, though they were never able to gain more than a temporary toehold in the New World. Recommended for academic and larger public libraries.DHarry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., New York (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.