It is always a pleasure to read a book by an author who is so enthralled with his subject that the entertainment value is nearly as great as the educational value. For more than fifty years, Eric Wahlgren studied the Vikings; first as a linguist involved in analyzing the great Icelandic sagas, and later, as more reliable archaeological evidence became available, he tried to apply the clues uncovered in his literary studies to the question of how far Viking explorers had penetrated into North America.
In particular, Wahlgren sought to discover the location of Vinland, the mysterious “land of grapevines” discovered by Leif Eriksson nearly a thousand years ago, and believed by many scholars to be L’Anse aux Meadows, a Viking settlement in northern Newfoundland. By the end of his life, Wahlgren was convinced that Vinland was in fact much farther south, though its definitive location has yet to be discovered. But in the course of his research, he amassed a wealth of information about these little-understood people, which he reports in a delightfully idiosyncratic voice.
To set the record straight, Vikings were not depraved barbarians who killed out of bloodlust and quaffed wine from the skulls of their fallen enemies. (Neither did they wear helmets adorned with horns.) They were, however, among the most fearlessly adventurous and highly romanticized people who have ever inhabited the earth. Although the savagery of their raids is well documented, Wahlgren asserts the Vikings were no more bloodthirsty than countless other peoples throughout history driven by population pressure, climatic disturbances, and political upheavals. On the other side of the ledger, Vikings established the first democratic parliament, worshipped a complex pantheon of gods, and developed one of the great technological wonders of the pre-industrial world: the flexible, lightweight, supremely maneuverable Viking warship. It was this technological superiority, rather than an innately brutish character, which accounts for the Vikings’ domination of Europe for more than 300 years and their successful establishment of colonies in Iceland, Greenland, Labrador, and Newfoundland.
This wonderfully readable and even-handed book makes understandable Wahlgren’s life-long fascination with these enigmatic people. – Betsy Greenlee
