World History: History of Scandinavia

BEOWULF AND THE FIGHT AT FINNSBURG
edited, with Introduction, Bibliogrpahy, Notes, Glossary, and Appendices by Fr. Klaeber. B&W maps, drawings, photos illustrate. Condition: UNREAD 1950 D. C. Heath hardcover(gilt letering) - no DJ issued. Third edition. This book, most likely, was produced in the 1980s - 1990s - too clean to be a 60+ year old book. Content: Reviewer: "Klaeber's book is generally regarded as the essential guide to reading Beowulf in the original Old English (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) language. The complete Old English poem is included in this book as well as a thorough discussion of its numerous aspects. It would probably be good to buy a book on Old English grammar." [1 copy available]
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THE BLOOD AXE: Story of Viking Kings Knut & Olav
by Eileene Harrison Beer. Condition: NEW 2001 Agreka Books Trade Paperback, first edition, first printing. Tiny edgewear. B&W maps. Content: Historic figures in the Viking Era of 995-1035 A.D., Danish King Knut the Great and Norwegian King Olav Haraldson (Saint Olav) were arch enemies. The savage battle at Holy River was only one of many of their interlaced destinies in these latter years of the Viking era. As lifelong rivals, they clashed sword and axe time and again in their contest for power. The days of piracy nearly ended, the campaigns of sea-roving Norsemen were undertaken for exploration, trade, and political control. The early 11th century life in the Christian north was more sophisticated than in the isolated and primitive times of the early Vikings. Now the graceful longboat fleets were even more spectacular, the men just as daring, valiant, and lusty, the women as spirited, courageous, and beautiful. It was a unique period when the northland was in a flux, a period unfamiliar to most people other than scholars of Scandinavian history, and never before presented in a story-telling style. Lightly fictionalized to humanize history, the story is based on fact, geological discovery, and accepted legend, and little needing any embellishment. The Blood Axe did exist. It belonged to Olav and later his son Magnus the Good. Packed with colorful insights into life and thought as it was in the political and religious transitional period of 995-1035 A.D., this epic tale touches on evangelical zeal, pagan rites, violent sea and land battles, folk medicine, conjugal love and tender liaisons, heroism and treachery, honor, loyalty, and treason, joy and suffering. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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FINDING ATLANTIS: A True Story of Genius, Madness, and an Extraordinary Quest for a Lost World
by David King B&W photos, maps, diagrams illustrate. Condition: NEW 2005 Harmony Books hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first edition, first printing. Content: Center stage in this history of a history book is the rollicking, fantastical figure of Olof Rudbeck (1630-1702). After reading Rudbeck's monumental Atlantica (1679), historian King unpacks its plausible but reckless chains of reasoning and reassembles the mass into a marvelous account of the Swedish scholar's obsessions. Rudbeck was a professor of medicine at Uppsala University, and his restless mind seems to have seldom been idle. Rudbeck switched from physiology, in which he made his name as discoverer of the lymphatic system, to the study of the Viking sagas, just then coming to scholarly light. Connecting the sagas with the gods of Norse and Greek mythology, and with Plato's lost continent of Atlantis, Rudbeck proposed an astounding theory: Atlantis was located in Sweden! Odd though the idea was, King explains that Rudbeck's protomodern research methods in archaeology and etymology gained acceptance for his theory. Restoring this colorful eccentric to life, King reveals his talent for narrative flow and portraiture in a biography that will thoroughly inveigle history readers. [1 copy available]
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GREAT NORSE, CELTIC AND TEUTONIC LEGENDS
by Wilhelm Wagner. A few B&W art reproductions illustrate. Intro by W.S.W. Anson. Condition: NEW 2003 Dover Trade Paperback, no printing given. Unabridged repro of the 1907 original edition. Content: Captivating collection of legends and romances encompasses the principal hero-lays of the great epic cycles of the Teutonic Middle Ages — Hegeling and Nibelung legends, Beowulf, Knights of the Round Table, the Rhine legend of Lohengrin, and many more. Inspiring reading, both in and out of the classroom. [1 copy available]
$ 4.19 +$ 3.19 media shipping.

NJAL'S SAGA (Wordsworth Classics of World Literature series)
Translated by Lee M. Hollander. Intro by Thorsteinn Gylfason. Condition: NEW 1998 Wordsworth (UK) Trade Paperback, first printing. Content: Njal's Saga is the finest of the Icelandic sagas, and one of the world's grat prose works. Written c. 1280, about events a couple of centuries earlier, it is divided into 3 parts: the first recounts the touching friendship between noble Gunnar and the Statesman Njal, together with the fatal enmity between their wives. The second part works out the central tragedy of the saga, while the third describes the retribution wrought by Flosi and Kari. The saga is remarkable not only for the details of everyday life - the farming, the feasting and the charcoal-burning - but also for the social structures of the society in which that life took place - the Althing or Parliament, the lawmaking and the lawgiving. Exciting and informative. [1 copy available]
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THE SAGA OF ERIK THE VIKING (Winner of the Children's Book Award)
by Terry Jones. Wonderful color illustrations (many full-page) by Michael Foreman. Condition: UNREAD 1985 Puffin (UK) large soft cover, first printing. Tiny edge wear. Content: Courage is what Erik and his band of men need as they set sail in search of 'the land where the sun goes at night'. They also need strength, skill, and wit to fight the treachery, evil and fury that they meet from such characters as the Old Man of the Sea and the Enchantress of the Fjord. Reviewer: "The boys from Monte Python have done it! After reading this book, I was thoroughly satisfied. The illustrations are lovely, and the stories are filled with meaning that you will carry with you always. The tales weave into each another to make on big journey. Each ends up with a moral, therefore making it important for children AND adults to read (since we seem to thinkg growing up means to forget childhood "lessons"). Learn them again with this pleasing book, it will keep you fingering through the pages until there are no more." [1 copy available]
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THE VIKING
by Alan Baker. B&W decorations. Funeral of a Viking painting cover art. Condition: NEW 2004 John Wiley hardcover & DJ (in mylar jacket), first edition, first printing. Content: One moment they were a mere speck on the sea; the next, a murderous force slashing its way into unprotected monasteries and villages; routing proud armies; and pillaging villages and kidnapping innocents. For three centuries, the Vikings rained terror on Europe. As fearsome as these warriors were, however, there was far more to Viking life and culture than battle. Yes, the Vikings were indeed "savage and bloodthirsty conquerors, pillagers and pirates," but they also had a "gentler side," according to this engaging overview of their history and culture. Historian Baker draws on archaeological studies, numismatics, Norse sagas and shell-shocked medieval chroniclers to give a balanced assessment of the Vikings. He details their weapons and armor, appreciates their fast, sturdy longboats, salutes their fierce fighting style (as epitomized by the berserkers, Vikings whose "rational minds had been obliterated by an animalistic lust for blood" induced, perhaps, by alcohol and hallucinogenic mushrooms), and surveys the "relentless rain of terror and death" they visited on a Europe that dubbed them "the revenge of Satan." But marauding, he contends, was just a sideline (often commuted to extortion payments) to more constructive pursuits like farming, trading and craftsmanship. The Vikings also had an intriguing culture, most evocatively displayed in a long chapter on their distinctive mythology, full of legends about the brutish Thor, the wily Loki, the unreliable Odin and their rather promiscuous goddess consorts. And Baker recounts the great Viking voyages of exploration and colonization to Iceland, Greenland and North America. Still, to set against the Vikings’ mitigating achievements, there was the marauding, not to mention their bizarre funeral customs, which could involve a disturbing fusion of ritual sex and human sacrifice. At the end of Baker’s book, as the Vikings settle down and are Christianized, readers may breathe a sigh of relief to see this colorful civilization pass into history. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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THE VIKINGS (Osprey Military)
by Ian Heath. B&W photos of artifacts and drawings plus wonderful color plates by Angus McBride. Condition: UNREAD 1999 Osprey hardcover (pictorial boards - no DJ issued), no printing given. Content: This book is everything you have grown to expect from Osprey books, Military and otherwise. Detailed history plus wonderful graphics. Great homeschooling book for grades 8+. Questions encouraged. [1 copy available]
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THE VIKINGS AND AMERICA
by Erik Wahlgren. 103 illustrations. Condition: NEW 1987 Thames & Hudson Trade Paperback, no printing given. Content: Did Vinland, that mysterious "land of grapevines" that the Viking Leif Eriksson discovered and christened almost a thousand years ago, ever exist? Do the clues in the sagas of a North American location point to a specific place on a modern map? How much more of the New World may these pre-Columbian adventurers have explored? Drawing upon the clues found in ancient manuscripts and a deep knowledge of the historical and archaeological evidence, Wahlgren addresses these questions in a marvelously readable account. Excavations at L'Anse aux Meadows in northern Newfoundland show that the Vikings did indeed reach the North American continent around A.D.1000, presumably from their base in Southern Greenland. Other supposed Viking discoveries such as the Kensington Stone are dismissed as frauds, but legitimate finds from Arctic Canada to New England suggest Viking exploration far to the north and the south. Eventually, a worsening climate and attacks by native peoples ended the first European presence in the New World. [1 copy available]
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THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND
by Morgan Llywelyn. Fab B&W drawings by David Rooney. B&W photos of sites and artifacts. Condition: NEW 2004 O'Brien (Ireland) trade paperback, second printing. Content: In Irish history the Vikings are often seen merely as attackers. Morgan Llywelyn gives a fascinating account of the wider picture - how the Vikings significantly influenced Irish art and trade and the growth of towns and cities. We witness their first landing as a raiding party, through to their settlement and gradual merging with the Irish by intermarriage and trade. She explores the customs and traditions as well as the arts and crafts which have become part of the Irish way of life. Cameos of the lives of individual Vikings, some real, some fictitious, bring a liveliness and freshness to the retelling of events which only an author of historical fiction can achieve. Authentic drawings as well as photographs of excavations and artefacts support the text. [1 copy available]
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THE VINLAND SAGA
illustrated by Jarle Rosseland. Text translated from the Icelandic by Anne Holtsmark. Beautiful full-page color illustrations from the "Vinland Suite" by Jarle Rosseland. Condition: Very gently pre-read, IF at all, 2000 Rosseland (Oslo) hardcover (pictorial boards - no DJ issued), no edition given. Content: [Note: Part of the text is large print & for older children - grade 5+) but the intro material is definitely for adult history buffs.] Not only is this the story (translation) of "The Saga of the Greenlanders" and "Eric the Red," but also of the "Vinland" sculpture by Rosseland which is now at the Chicago Athenaeum Museum, Schaumburg, Illinois. A somewhat "odd" book, IMHO, but it works and is very informative and the artwork is excellent. Questions encouraged. [1 copy available]
$ 35.59 + $ 3.19 media shipping. Priority & International shipping available.