Ten top books about the Vikings

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is the author of Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Saga. One of her top ten books about the Vikings, as shared at the Guardian:

The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley

Greenland was settled in around 985 by Erik the Red, who had been outlawed from Iceland for murder. The colony survived for several hundred years, but how and why it came to an end is still up for debate. This meticulously researched saga imagines life in Norse Greenland during the final decades of the settlement. I had spent several years researching this part of Norse history before I discovered this novel, including two summers exploring Norse ruins in Greenland. But reading The Greenlanders was a revelation: for the first time, I felt I understood what it might have been like to live through this society’s slow decline towards oblivion.

Read about another entry on the list.

Also see: Joe Abercrombie's top ten Viking stories.

--Marshal Zeringue