Pacaritambo

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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D'AULAIRES' NORSE GODS AND GIANTS
by Ingrii & Edgar Parin D'Aulaire. Color illustrations (by the Authors?). Condition: UNREAD, but not perfect, 1986 Doubleday Books for Young Readers, no printing given. Light edgewear with pale diagonal crease bottom front cover corner. Interior clean & tight. Content: Thirty stories from Norse mythology and folklore plus Intro and a "reader's companion." Excellent selection and presentation. Color illustrations are simple, but effective. 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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MYTH: THE ICELANDIC SAGAS & EDDAS
by M. I. Steblin-Kamenskij. Condition: UNREAD 1982 Karoma Trade Paperback, no printing given. Light tanning to ivory cover edges, but NO tanning to interior pages. Content: A discussion of mythology and the Icelandic Sagas. Contents: Theories of Myth; Space & Time in the Eddic Myths; Personality in the Eddic Myths, Myth and the Rise of Personality. Critical Intro by Sir Edmund Leach. Epilogue by Anatoly Liberman.. Questions welcome. [1 copy available]
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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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NORWEGIAN FOLKTALES
selected from the collection of Peter Christen Asbjornsen and Jorgen Moe. Illustrated in B&W by Werenskiold & Theodor Kittlesen. Translated by Pat Shaw and Carl Norman. Condition: UNREAD 1982 Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library Trade paperback, 4th printing. Light foxing to fore edges and a shelfwear diagonal crease top back corner. Interior perfect. Content: Collected here in a contemporary translation. With these tales we meet witches, trolls and ogres, sly foxes and mysterious bears, beautiful princesses and country lads turned heroes. Wonderful selection. [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 AND AMERICA (Ancient Peoples & Places Series)
by Erik Wahlgren. 103 B&W photos, maps, & drawings illustrate. Condition: NEW 2000 Thames & Hudson (UK) Trade Paperback, first printing. Content: Reviewer: "A very well written, well illustrated, and fascinating recounting of Norse overseas activities in the Atlantic. After reaching and settling Iceland in the late 800s and Greenland in the late 900s, on several occasions recently settled Greenlanders indulged their exploratory and settlement urges and sailed for American shores, which Leif Eriksson had found and named Vinland ("Wineland") at his southern reach in about the year 1000. Wahlgren vividly describes the Viking background and the developing Norse culture, of which the Icelandic sagas became, many believe, the first truly notable body of literature in any Germanic language. As penetrating depictions of life, especially the better family sagas still have power to fascinate the modern reader. (This book's title can be a bit misleading since the Iceland and Greenland settlers were not "Vikings," i.e. sea raiders, but settled farmers and stockmen.) After describing the two saga versions of the Vinland story, in an interim chapter the author effectively debunks Minnesota's Kensington Stone as a hoax as well as discussing other dubious claims. The rest of the book focuses chiefly on the Vinland ventures." Questions welcome. [2 copies available]
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THE VICIOUS VIKINGS STICKER BOOK (Horrible Histories series)
by Terry Deary. Hilarious, but historically accurate, color illustrations by martin Brown. Condition: NEW 1994 CE (London) via Scholastic soft cover, second printing. Content: No one does Kid's history like Horrible Histories. Reviewer: "The facts were fun and easily memorable due to the great graphics and comic book style format." Fun and historically accurate - who could ask for anything more? Over 100 re-peelable stickers. Pair this with CE's Vicious Vikings. Grades 5 - 8. [2 copies available]
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