The above is by Nancy Marie Brown, and has been an enjoyable read so far. We're kind of poking our way along since I only read it to L when we're in the car and we tend to stop and talk about various bits as we go along.

Very simplistically, Brown is writing about an historical woman called Gudrid the Far Traveler, who lived during the latter part of the 10th century. But to do this she has studied Icelandic and other sagas, interviewed historian, archaeologists and many others, helped on a dig, walked many properties, learned about the development of Viking ships, how houses were built, what people wore and ate, social mores, and more.

Reading this book you will learn not only about Gudrid (whose story is told differently in different sagas), but about many other Vikings as well, be they from Norway, Denmark, Iceland, Greenland, etc. You will also learn that sheep's milk as more Vitamin C in it than cow's milk, about a secret valley in Greenland (where Gudrid lived her first year there, until her husband died), about ornamentation of jewelry and bench boards, about the different types of turf and what they were used for.

A small excerpt:

Just as that farmstead was buried in sand by the river's changing course, the church built at Sandnes soon after Gudrid's time is now underwater. The Sandy Point has eroded significantly since her day. But the hip-high grass is still rumpled into hummocks by the turf-and stone walls of Norse buildings. These wre lived in until at least 1300, and beneath the largest, according to drawings from the first excavation, in 1932, are two walls of an older longhouse: the house Gudrid may have lived in that long horrible winter when almost everyone she knew died. The archaeologist found a corner hearth and flagstones at the front door. Thirty feet away were two small buildings "almost obliterated" by a later midden. In one was found a finely carved ship's tiller, its knob shaped like a dragon's head and its shaft decorated with a row of cats' faces. The name "Helgi" was written in runes on its side.

Another tidbit, in relation to the tiller, is that when local folks are out and about and find a piece of worked wood, they notify the national museum because wood is so rare in both Iceland and Greenland that it often indicates a former Viking abode.

Currently we're reading about hypotheses on why after hundreds of years practically everyone moved out of Greenland. In Jared Diamond's book he refers to cows as the preferred meat and goats as "despised" meat, and that the people weren't crazy about fish or seal (seal being for poor, desperate people). Brown's doing a fair job of poking holes in his theory that people left because the the land was too poor to support enough cows and that they were down to eating goats and seals so they left. It's true the land can't support a lot of cows, especially since they can't handle the cold as well as sheep and have to be kept indoors 200 days out of the year (bigger hay requirement), but goats wouldn't have been despised and Brown gives examples.

A good read for folks interested in history, sagas, and in general "old things" and old ways of living, without being the oft-times dry stuff of archaeological reports.