The Viking

A Viking statue, a coffee pot, a ghost story, and a controversial cake: What can the things that immigrants treasured tell us about their history? Between 1870 and 1914 almost one-quarter of Iceland’s population migrated to North America, forming enclaves in both the United States and Canada. This book examines the multi-sensory side of the immigrant past through rare photographs, interviews, artefacts, and early recipes. By revealing the hidden histories behind everyday traditions, The Viking Immigrants maps the transformation of Icelandic North American culture over a century and a half.

In this extensively revised third edition of The Viking Age: A Reader, Somerville and McDonald successfully bring the Vikings and their world to life for twenty-first-century students and instructors. The diversity of the Viking era is revealed through the remarkable range and variety of sources presented as well as the geographical and chronological coverage of the readings. The third edition has been reorganized into fifteen chapters. Many sources have been added, including material on gender and warrior women, and a completely new final chapter traces the continuing cultural influence of the Vikings to the present day. The use of visual material has been expanded, and updated maps illustrate historical developments throughout the Viking Age. The English translations of Norse texts, many of them new to this collection, are straightforward and easily accessible, while chapter introductions contextualize the readings.

The Vinland Viking Saga: Book 1 History set her fate in stone...

An account of the explorations of Eric the Red and his son, Leif Ericson, in the New World, 500 years before Columbus.

In 1936, long before the discovery of the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, the Royal Ontario Museum made a sensational acquisition: the contents of a Viking grave that prospector Eddy Dodd said he had found on his mining claim east of Lake Nipigon. The relics remained on display for two decades, challenging understandings of when and where Europeans first reached the Americas. In 1956 the discovery was exposed as an unquestionable hoax, tarnishing the reputation of the museum director, Charles Trick Currelly, who had acquired the relics and insisted on their authenticity. Drawing on an array of archival sources, Douglas Hunter reconstructs the notorious hoax and its many players. Beardmore unfolds like a detective story as the author sifts through the voluminous evidence and follows the efforts of two unlikely debunkers, high-school teacher Teddy Elliott and government geologist T.L. Tanton, who find themselves up against Currelly and his scholarly allies. Along the way, the controversy draws in a who’s who of international figures in archaeology, Scandinavian studies, and the museum world, including anthropologist Edmund Carpenter, whose mid-1950s crusade against the find’s authenticity finally convinced scholars and curators that the grave was a fraud. Shedding light on museum practices and the state of the historical and archaeological professions in the mid-twentieth century, Beardmore offers an unparalleled view inside a major museum scandal to show how power can be exercised across professional networks and hamper efforts to arrive at the truth.

This essay collection is a wide-ranging exploration of Vikings, the television series that has successfully summoned the historical world of the Norse people for modern audiences to enjoy. From a range of critical viewpoints, these all fresh essays explore the ways in which past and present representations of the Vikings converge in the show's richly textured dramatization of the rise and fall of Ragnar Loobrok--and the exploits of his heirs--creating what many viewers label a "true" representation of the age. From the show's sources in both saga literature and Victorian revival, to its engagement with contemporary concerns regarding gender, race and identity, via setting, sex, society and more, this first book-length study of the History Channel series appeals to fans of the show, Viking enthusiasts, and anyone with an interest in medievalist representation in the 21st century.

He's the son of a chieftain and a princess--yet Halfdan was born a slave. Now he is becoming a man and it is time for him to meet his destiny. Though raised a slave who could only dream of freedom, young Halfdan's fate may be about to change. If freed, he may train as a Viking warrior, and come to know the glories of true brotherhood and the horrors of unspeakable evil. In the world of Vikings, a warrior's destiny is forged in the heat of battle. If the fates decree it, Hafdan may emerge as a new hero . . . a new myth . . . and perhaps a new legend.