Vikings in America (33 page)

Guttorm Sigurdsson (1204)

Inge Bårdsson (1204–17)

Erling Steinvegg (1204–07)

Filippus Simonsson (1207–17)

Håkon IV Håkonsson (1217–63)

Skule Bårdsson (1239–40)

Magnus Lagabøte (1263–80)

Eirik Magnusson (1280–99)

Håkon V Magnusson (1299–1319)

The Union of Sweden and Norway (1319–43)

Magnus Eiriksson (1319–43)

Håkon VI Magnusson (1343–80)

The Union of Denmark and Norway (1380–96)

Olav IV Håkonsson (1380–87)

Margaret I (Margrete I) (1387–89)

Eric VII of Pomerania (1389–1442)

The Kalmar Union (1397–1536)

Denmark, Norway and Sweden (1397–1523)

Christopher III of Bavaria (1442–48)

Carl I (Karl Knutsson Bonde) (1449–50)

Christian I (1450–81)

Hans (1481–1513)

Christian II (1513–23)

The Norwegian king list contains many examples of two men claiming the throne, and both reigning over part of Norway during a period of civil war. Norwegian kings frequently ruled neighbouring countries. Thus Knut the Great – Canute – was King of Norway, King of Denmark and King of England.

Alan, Tony, 2004,
The Vikings – Life, Myth and Art
, Barnes and Noble, New York

Binns, Alan, 1980,
Viking Voyagers – Then and Now
, Heinemann, London

Cotterell, Arthur, 1999,
Norse Mythology
, Sebastian Kelly, Oxford

Ellis Davidson, H.R., 1979,
Gods and Myths of Northern Europe
, Penguin, Middlesex

Foote, Peter G., and Wilson, David M., 1974,
The Viking Achievement
, BCA, London

Gordon, E.V., 1974,
An Introduction to Old Norse
, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Graham-Campbell, James, and Kidd, Dafydd, 1980,
The Vikings
, British Museum Publications, London

Guerber, H.A., 1929,
Myths of the Norsemen from the Eddas and Sagas
, George G. Harrap & Co, London

Hagen, Anders, 1966,
The Viking Ship Finds
, Universitetets Oldsaksamling, Oslo

Jones, Gwyn, 1984,
A History of the Vikings
, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Linklater, Eric, 1955,
The Ultimate Viking
, Macmillan, London

Magnusson, Magnus, 1979,
Viking Hammer of the North
, Orbis Publishing, London

Magnusson, Magnus, 1980,
Vikings!
, Bodley Head, London

Musset, Lucien, 1951,
Les Peuples Scandinaves au Moyen Age
, Presse Universitaires de France, Paris

Orchard, Andy, 2002,
Cassell's Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend
, Cassell, London

Sweet, Henry, 1895,
An Icelandic Primer
, Oxford University Press, Oxford

Wilson, David, 1971,
The Vikings and their Origins – Scandinavia in the First Millennium
, BCA, London

Balneaves, Elizabeth, 1977,
The Windswept Isles – Shetland and its People
, John Gifford, London

Davis, Graeme, 2007,
The Early English Settlement of Orkney and Shetland
, John Donald, Edinburgh

Leirfall, John,
West Over Sea – Reminders of Norse Ascendency from Shetland to Dublin
, The Thule Press, Shetland

Linklater, Eric, 1965,
Orkney and Shetland
, Robert Hale, London

Livingstone, W.P., 1948,
Shetland and the Shetlanders
, Nelson, London

Palsson, Hermann and Edwards, Paul, 1987,
Orkneyinga Saga, The History of the Earls of Orkney
, Penguin Books, London

Kjorsvik Schei, Liv, and Moberg, Gunnie, 1988,
The Faroe Islands
, Birlinn, Edinburgh

The Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 1959,
The Faroe Islands
, Copenhagen

Williamson, Kenneth, 1948,
The Atlantic Islands – The Faeroe Life and Scene
, Collins, London

Williamson, Kenneth, and Morton Boyd, J., 1963,
A Mosaic of Islands
, Oliver and Boyd, London

Bjorn Thordarson, 1953,
Iceland Past and Present
, Hlathbuth, Reykjavik

Davis, Graeme, 2004,
A Brit in Iceland
, Shakespeare Centre Press, Newcastle

von Linden, Franz-Karl, and Weyer, Helfried, 1974,
Iceland
, Almenna Bokafelagith, Reykjavik

Magnusson, Magnus, 1992,
Iceland Saga
, Bodley Head, London

Smiley, Jane, 2000,
The Sagas of Icelanders
, Penguin Viking, New York

Sveinbjorn Johnson, 1930,
Pioneers of Freedom – An Account of the Icelanders and the Icelandic Free State 874–1262
, The Stratford Company, Boston, Massachusetts

Garnett, Eve, 1968,
To Greenland's Icy Mountain – The Story of Hans Egede, Explorer, Coloniser, Missionary
, Heinemann, London

Hertling, Birgitte, 1993,
Greenlandic for Travelers
, Atuakkiorfik, Nuuk

Malaurie, Jean, 1982,
The Last Kings of Thule
, Jonathan Cape, London

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, undated,
Greenland Arctic Denmark
, Copenhagen

Stefansson, Vilhjalmur, 1943,
Greenland
, George G. Harrap & Co, London [arguably the best book on Greenland ever written]

The Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, undated,
Greenland
, Ringkjobing

Alexander, Bryan and Cherry, 1996,
The Vanishing Arctic
, Cassell, London

Baird, Patrick D., 1965,
The Polar World
, Longmans, London

Banks, Mike, 1957,
High Arctic
, J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd, London

Beatie, Owen and Geiger, John, 1992,
Buried in Ice
, Madison Press Books, Toronto

Confrey, Mick and Jordan, Tim, 1998,
Icemen – A History of the Arctic and its Explorers
, Boxtree, London

Fiennes, Ranulph, 1995,
To the Ends of the Earth
, Mandarin, London

Hodgson, Stuart, 1976,
Stories from Pangnirtung
, Hurtig, Edmonton

Illingworth, Frank, 1951, ‘Wild Life Beyond the North',
Country Life
, London

Miles, Hugh and Salisbury, Mike, 1985,
Kingdom of the Ice Bear
, BBC, London

Mueller, Fritz, 1981,
The Living Arctic
, Methuen Publications, Ontario

Nansen, Fridtjof, 2002,
Farthest North – The Exploration of the
Fram
1893–1896
, Birlinn, Edinburgh

Norman Smith, I. (ed.), 1964,
The Unbelievable Land
, The Queen's Printer, Ottawa

Officer, Charles and Page, Jake, 2001,
A Fabulous Kingdom – The Exploration of the Arctic
, OUP, Oxford

Schledermann, Peter, 1997,
The Viking Saga
, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London

Shackleton, Edward, 1936,
Arctic Journeys
, Hodder and Stoughton, London

Stefansson, Evelyn, 1945,
Within the Circle
, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York

Weems, John Edward, 1967,
Peary –The Explorer and the Man
, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston

Young, Steven B., 1976,
To the Arctic – An Introduction to the Far Northern World
, Wiley, New York

The Arni Magnusson Institute, 2000,
New Lands New Faith – Christianity and the Vinland Voyages in Mediaeval Manuscripts
, Reykjavik

Harris, Leslie, 1968,
Newfoundland and Labrador – A Brief History
, Dent & Sons, Canada

Hodding Carter, W., 2000,
An Illustrated Viking Voyage
, Pocket Books, New York

Ingstad, Helge, 1969,
Westward to Vinland
, translated from Norwegian by Erik J. Friis, Book Club Associates, London

Lomax, Judy, 1992,
The Viking Voyage – With Gaia to Vinland
, Hutchinson, London

Magnusson, Magnus and Palsson, Hermann (translators), 1978,
The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America
, Penguin, London

Wahlgren, Erik, 2000,
The Vikings and America
, Thames and Hudson, London

Ambrosini, Maria Luisa, 1996,
The Secret Archives of the Vatican
, Barnes and Noble Books, New York

Cary, M., and Warmington, E.H., 1929,
The Ancient Explorers
, Methuen, London

Evans, Admiral Sir Edward, 1946,
British Polar Explorers
, Collins, London

Fitzpatrick-Alper, Ann, 1991,
Forgotten Voyager – The Story of Amerigo Vespucci
, Carolrhoda Books, Minneapolis

McGhee, Robert, 2002,
The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher – An Elizabethan Adventure
, The British Museum Press, London

Mowat, Farley, 1998,
The Alban Quest – The Search for a Lost Tribe
, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London

Simpson, Colin, 1967,
The Viking Circle
, Hodder and Stoughton, London

Sinclair, Andrew, 2004,
The Sword and the Grail
, Birlinn, Edinburgh

1
. A forceful criticism of forged Viking artefacts and curious theories is contained in the chapter “Buckram Vikings” in Wahlgren (1986): “Let oddball deviancy be taken for what it is. Seen with the humour it deserves the occasional hoax, the inevitable daffy theory, help to give us perspective on the equivocal human condition” (p. 120). While undoubtedly right to warn against the strange theories and forgeries which seem to gather around the topic of Vikings in America it has to be noted that the twenty or so years since the publication of Wahlgren's book has seen evidence appear which supports theories which Wahlgren may have seen as “daffy”.

2
. The idea of Vikings in California is promoted by numerous web sites, including an eBook
The Last Viking
by John N Harris (1999) at
http://www.spirasolaris.ca
. Here Vinland is identified with California. Evidence is in my view very thin indeed, though not totally lacking. Certainly the evidence is too slight to persuade me that the Vikings managed voyages through the ice-choked North West passage and Bering Straight. Unless some unexpected, strong, new evidence should come to light I do not see how this theory can be upheld. A Knights Templar colony in the New World on Viking foundations is a staple of much of the extensive popular writing around the Templars. An example is Steven Sora's
The Lost Colony of the Templars, Verrazano's Secret Mission to America
(2005). These ideas need evidence if they are to be taken seriously.

3
. The Vikings fought for the Byzantine emperors at least from the early tenth century. A Viking bodyguard was adopted in 988AD by Byzantine Emperor Basil II, with an initial strength of 6,000 Vikings, later formalised as the Varangian Guard. Over four centuries in countless battles throughout the Mediterranean region the Varangian Guard became famed for its un-swerving loyalty, for its military excellence, and for its brutality.

1
. “Ohthere sæde his hlaforde, Ælfrede cyninge, thæt he ealra Northmonna northmest bude” – Othere told his lord, King Alfred, that he of all the North Men lived the furthest north.

2
. The two major sources of information for Viking ships are the two Viking ship museums:
The Viking Ship Museum
, Roskilde, Denmark, and
The Viking Ship Hall
, Oslo, Norway. Several replicas have been built and sailed on routes known to have been used by the Vikings, including the North Atlantic.

3
. A description of the fleet of Sweyn Forkbeard on a visit to Normandy in 1013 from
Encomium Emmae Reginae
(otherwise known as
Gesta Cnutonis Regis
), an encomium written around 1041 in honour of Queen Emma of Normandy.

4
. The first historical use of the name Pict is of course later, but it has long been conventional to use the name Pict for the people who built the brochs.

5
. The Irish discovery of the Faroe Islands is firmly accepted in the Faroe Islands, and was a subject of a 1994 Faroese Post Office commemorative stamp. The archaeological record shows oat pollen from 650
AD
, demonstrating that the islands were inhabited from at least this time. The Irish seem to be the only candidates.

6
. Sigmundur Brestisson's story is told in
Faereyinga Saga
. He brought Christianity to the Faroe Islands in
AD
999 by the expedient of offering the head man of the Faroe Islands the choice between beheading or accepting Christianity. In a subsequent fight Sigmundur supposedly escaped death by swimming from Skuvoy to Suthuroy islands (an improbable if not wholly impossible distance in view of the cold waters), only to be murdered on his arrival in Suthuroy.

7
. The story of the voyage to Thule Ultima is from Diodorus Siculus (book V), itself a restatement of now lost work by Timaeus and from an informant Pytheas of Marseilles. The voyage is often called Pytheas's voyage, though there is no reason to think Pytheas himself made it – rather he reported on it. Scholarly reflection on the story has yielded remarkably little to add to the bare outline of the narrative. Writers have been consistent in reflecting admiration for the achievement of the Pytheas voyage.

8
. The large coracle which was used for sea voyages is sometimes called a
currach
, with the name
coracle
reserved for the single person boats used on rivers and lakes. However
currach
does not have wide currency, and I have used
coracle
throughout.