Reddit reviews The Vikings: A History

http://www.amazon.com/The-Vikings-A-History-ebook/dp/B002TV07E2/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368241864&sr=1-4&keywords=vikings

Pretty good book, lots of information. A bit dry though, pretty much written for people already immensely interested in the topic and not really designed to capture the attention of a random reader.

http://www.amazon.com/Vikings-Atlantic-William-F-Fitzhugh/dp/1560989955/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1368241957&sr=1-7&keywords=vikings

A little bit better in my opinion. Lots of images so you can see what is being referenced instead of trying to imagine it.

As for the figure head, I can't tell you exactly where it's from. All i can say is it's a modern interpretation of a dragon figurehead, with some embellishments, especially with the figures forming the top side rails.

I mean I'm mostly interested in investigations of historicity - like historical religious and legendary figures (Jesus, the patriarchs, Ragnar, etc.).

It's very hard to determine if Ragnar was a real person, but, interestingly, all of his 'sons' are - as is Rollo. Not much is known about Rollo before he showed up in France, but that whole arc is completely true - they gave him land in what is now called Normandy (heh) to protect against other Viking invaders. The great heathen army was also real and was led by figures such as Ivar, Bjorn, Ubbe, etc. but it's not likely that they were literally brothers.

Other real historical characters are sprinkled throughout with varying degrees of importance, like Leif, who was Ragnar's friend in the early seasons, whose father was not so subtly called Erik (ahrm).

If you think about it, though, there was almost certainly a Norse man who spearheaded the first raids to England, the very first of which actually did land at Lindisfarne (you can still visit there, so high on my list!!) - so it's likely that there really was a lauded heroic figure in the culture at that time, and the leaders of the heathen army could have been seen as 'figurative sons' - the last few episodes depicting it showed that the whole society rallied around the idea of avenging Ragnar, even if they weren't related to him, because he was such an important figure. Could be a grain of truth in that.

Anyways, it's mostly speculative. While the show gets a bit magical and tries to tie down mostly legendary tales in real characters, it is remarkably accurate in both major plot points and in the way the world is depicted. After 4 seasons of Vikings I tried to watch Marco Polo on Netflix and couldn't get more than 3 episodes in. I now have an insatiable appetite for seeing things more or less as they were - Marco Polo was NOT trained in kung fu by a fucking blind ninja. There need to be more realistic historical shows.

Bit of a rant, but I hope that if you have interest in it you go and read some of the translations of Ragnar's Sons and Beowulf and stuff like that! I know Michael recommended some books, but I quite like this one.

Unless I have the wrong book somehow, it's available on Kindle. Added to my wishlist for some point in the future when I actually get through all the books I've already bought. Or, you know, a few of them.