Reddit reviews Viking Age Iceland

Since I'm a bit overwhelmed by all the questions right now, I'm going to copy and paste two answers I've given to similar question in earlier threads. (One of which is a copy-and-paste job itself.)


1. General books:

I'm going to copy and paste an answer I once gave to someone who asked me for book recommendations via private message.

>Hi there!

>No Problem! Always glad to help. If you need a quick overview over the topic or are rather unfamiliar with it The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings gives a good first impression. Else Roesdahl's The Vikings is a bit more in depth but with less pictures. There's also Peter Sawyer's Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings. All three of those are slightly outdated but they give a great first impression of the Age. If money's thight, start with Sawyer, then Roesdahl, then the atlas.

>If you want to go more in depth there's The Viking World by Stefan Brink and Neil Price. Do not confuse it with the book of the same name by Graham-Campbell and Wilson, which is rather outdated. This "Viking World" is a collection of essays by the world's leading experts on the period an the de facto standard of the discipline at the moment. It's well worth the price.

>If you are (or at least read) German (which is possible from your username) try to get the current catalogue of the Haithabu museum. It gives a good overview over that important trading settlement. Or even better: visit there! (Or any of the large Scandinavian National Museums (Moesgård, Statens Historiska museet, or the Viking ship museums in Roskilde and Oslo, respectively).

>If you are interested in the world of the sagas you can't go wrong with Jesse Byock's Viking Age Iceland.

>If you are looking for a quick ressource or if you have a specific question there's the site of The Viking Answer Lady. She appears to be a reenactor not a scholar but her answers are very well sourced and I have yet to find a major error on her site. Or you can always ask me/post to AskHistorians...

>cheers, wee_little_puppetman


Also, you might want to check out this huge annotated Viking movie list.

There's also a rather good three part BBC series on the Vikings on Youtube.

And for some quick Viking fun there's the animated short The Saga of Biorn.

Oh, one more thing: You might also enjoy Viking Empires by Angelo Forte, Richard Oram and Frederik Pedersen. It goes beyond the traditional end of the Viking Age into the Middle Ages and should therefore tie in nicely to your main interest in the crusades.



2. Sagas

Egils saga and Njáls saga are usually the ones that are recomennded for first time readers. They feel very modern in their narrative structures. Grettis saga is also quite good for a start. And then maybe Laxdæla saga. If you aren't specifically interested in Iceland and want to start with something that conforms more to the public picture of "Vikings" try Eiriks saga rauða, Jómsvíkinga saga or Sverris saga. But afterwards you have to read at least one Icelander saga (i.e. one of the ones I mentioned first)!

Icelandic sagas are fascinating but you have to commit to them. Don't be disappointed if a chapter begins with two pages of the family tree of a minor character! And always keep in mind that this is medieval literature: although it might look like it it is not history. These things were written in the 12th to 14th centuries, even if the take place much earlier!

Here's two off the top of my head that are pretty great:

Viking Age Iceland is a GREAT primer on, well, Viking Age Iceland :)

The Sagas of Icelanders is a nice entry level compilation of sagas and thaettir (excluding the amazing Njal's Saga unfortunately) that got me into the Icelandic sagas.

> Please elaborate on this. I fail to see how occupying a geographic space entitles you to deny others access to it?

Occupying the space in of itself does not, mixing your labor with the property does. For instance if I stand on a plot of land and claim ownership of it I have no valid grounds for doing so. On the other hand if I build a home on that unused land I have mixed a part of myself, my labor, with the land and thus put it to use in the process.

All ownership derives from your right of self-ownership. That is property ownership isn't an arbitrary claim but an incorporation of yourself with the property. Think of property as being a part of yourself. Chapter 6 of The Ethics of Liberty goes into greater detail regarding this principle.

> I agree with the current system of private property enforced through government. I do not think people have an inherent right to the property they occupy, because in most cases it was unjustly acquired. Therefore, I see no moral problem with property taxes.

Read my above clarification regarding what gives you right of ownership and reply again if you have questions or criticisms regarding that reasoning.

> I think that I should be the defacto owner and I should pay property taxes for the right to exclude others to this property.

Who are you going to pay property tax to? Remember I'm discussing this through an anarcho-capitalist viewpoint and thus there is no state involved. Do you believe there is no way property ownership could occur without a state to enforce it? If that is your belief I urge you to read The Not So Wild, Wild West, which discusses how American Indians developed property ownership without the need of a state and Viking Age Iceland, which discusses Iceland between the years 1000 and 1300. That span of time was a peaceful three centuries in which no state existed and all property was entirely privately owned (there was no concept of public property).

Viking Age Iceland by Prof. Jesse Byock is a good start for this kind of thing.

The idea of a free, private-propertarian society is not totally unprecedented. The most often cited examples are Midieval Age Iceland and Kowloon Walled City.