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 The Vikings' expansion from their Scandinavian homelands across the Atlantic to North America a thousand years ago stands as one of the most remarkable achievements in the history of exploration. Between A.D.750 and 1050, seaborne Viking warriors established trade networks reaching from Baghdad to Greenland, introduced Christianity to Scandinavia, and settled the uninhabited North Atlantic islands. In about the year A.D. 1000, Leif Eriksson brought his ship to shore in what is today northeastern Canada, becoming the first European to set foot in the New World. Replete with color photographs, drawings, and maps of Viking sites, artifacts, and landscapes, Vikings celebrates and explores the Viking saga from the combined perspectives of history, archaeology, oral tradition, literature, and natural science. The book's contributors chart the spread of marauders and traders in Europe as well as the expansion of farmers and explorers throughout the North Atlantic and into the New World. They show that Norse contacts with Native American groups were more extensive than has previously been believed, but that the outnumbered Europeans never established more than temporary settlements in North America. For centuries, medieval Icelandic sagas about a territory called Vinland were the only sources of information on the Viking presence in North America, and Americans had only a vague, romanticized notion of Viking culture. The 1961 discovery of a site in northern Newfoundland called L'Anse aux Meadows marked the beginning of substantiated archaeological and scientific research. Incorporating a wealth of recent information, this generously illustrated book describes a first-millennium culture far more complex and entrepreneurial than the horned-helmeted raiders of popular imagination.  Paperback 404 pages - 8" x 10"
ZH9955 Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga $34.95
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