BOOK REVIEW FIVE STARS
The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman by Nancy Marie Brown
One of the best and most informative books I have read about the Viking era. It is filled with insight, well-researched and wonderfully edited. I loved this glimpse into the dynamic world of history altering courageous high seas pioneers.
EXCERPTS:
If Iceland was settled by Viking bands disgruntled with the king of Norway, there might not have been enough young women to go around. Yet a wife was essential to running a farm. There were certain things no self-respecting Viking man would do, such as weaving or sewing. No man would milk a ewe or make cheese. No Viking would cook, unless aboard ship, and even then it was considered demeaning.
Without a woman (wife, mother, sister, or daughter), a man could not be king of his own hill.
Once the Vikings were in the islands, we can assume they acted as they had in Norway. They were loyal to their king and considered anything in another kingdom fair game. Given that the coast of Norway alone had seven or eight “kingdoms” in the 700s, that made for some fairly loose rules.
History of the Vikings, “Robbing your richer neighbors was a simple way of redressing the injustices of nature.”
The Norse legacy in the British Isles is mainly linguistic. Thousands of towns have Norse names like Derby, Kirby, Wadbister, Isbister, Winskill, Skaill, Laimiseadar, Lacsabhat, Heylipoll, and Kirkapoll, while from Norse the English language gained such words as egg, ugly, ill, smile, knife, fellow, husband, birth, death, cast, take, kettle, steak, leg, skin, lost, mistake, law, and brag. Not to mention ransack.
Why did Viking hordes suddenly descend on the Western world (and some of the Eastern) between 793 and 1066? The smart answer is because they could: They owned the best ships on the seas. But what was driving them? What inspired their technology? Modern historians have not come up with any better explanations than did the medieval monks trying to see God’s purpose in the burning of their churches. According to Adam of Bremen: On account of the roughness of its mountains and the immoderate cold, Norway is the most unproductive of all countries. Poverty has forced them thus to go all over the world and from piratical raids they bring home in great abundance the riches of the lands. In this way they bear up under the unfruitfulness of their own country.
Viking sailing directions-Greenland to North America. First sail south until butter softens, then turn west. It works!
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