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In 2017, DNA tests revealed to the collective shock of many
scholars that a Viking warrior in a high-status grave in Birka,
Sweden, was actually a woman. The Real Valkyrie weaves together
archaeology, history and literature to reinvent her life and times,
showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians
have imagined. Nancy Marie Brown links the Birka warrior, whom she
names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade
route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines Hervor's
adventures intersecting with larger-than-life but real women,
including Queen Gunnhild Mother-of-Kings, the Viking leader known
as the Red Girl, and Queen Olga of Kyiv. Hervor's short, dramatic
life shows that much of what we have taken as truth about women in
the Viking Age is based not on data but on nineteenth-century
Victorian biases. Rather than holding the household keys, Viking
women in history, the sagas, poetry and myth carry weapons. In this
compelling narrative, Brown brings the world of those valkyries and
shield-maids to vivid life.
In the early 1800's, on a Hebridean beach in Scotland, the sea
exposed an ancient treasure cache: 93 chessmen carved from walrus
ivory. Norse netsuke, each face individual, each full of quirks,
the Lewis Chessmen are probably the most famous chess pieces in the
world. Harry played Wizard's Chess with them in Harry Potter and
the Sorcerer's Stone. Housed at the British Museum, they are among
its most visited and beloved objects. Questions abounded: Who
carved them? Where? Ivory Vikings explores these mysteries by
connecting medieval Icelandic sagas with modern archaeology, art
history, forensics, and the history of board games. In the process,
Ivory Vikings presents a vivid history of the 400 years when the
Vikings ruled the North Atlantic, and the sea-road connected
countries and islands we think of as far apart and culturally
distinct: Norway and Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, and Greenland
and North America. The story of the Lewis chessmen explains the
economic lure behind the Viking voyages to the west in the 800s and
900s. And finally, it brings from the shadows an extraordinarily
talented woman artist of the twelfth century: Margret the Adroit of
Iceland.
*A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITOR'S CHOICE* "An impassioned,
informative love letter to Iceland." —New York Times Book Review
"This compelling and highly readable book offers a
thought-provoking examination of nature of belief itself"
—Bookpage, starred review In exploring how Icelanders interact
with nature—and their idea that elves live among us—Nancy Marie
Brown shows us how altering our perceptions of the environment can
be a crucial first step toward saving it. Icelanders believe in
elves. Why does that make you laugh?, asks Nancy Marie
Brown, in this wonderfully quirky exploration of our interaction
with nature. Looking for answers in history, science, religion, and
art—from ancient times to today—Brown finds that each
discipline defines what is real and unreal, natural and
supernatural, demonstrated and theoretical, alive and inert. Each
has its own way of perceiving and valuing the world around us. And
each discipline defines what an Icelander might call an elf.
Illuminated by her own encounters with Iceland’s Otherworld—in
ancient lava fields, on a holy mountain, beside a glacier or an
erupting volcano, crossing the cold desert at the island’s heart
on horseback—Looking for the Hidden Folk offers an intimate
conversation about how we look at and find value in nature. It
reveals how the words we use and the stories we tell shape the
world we see. It argues that our beliefs about the Earth will
preserve—or destroy it. Scientists name our time the
Anthropocene: the Human Age. Climate change will lead to the mass
extinction of numerous animal species unless we humans change our
course. Iceland suggests a different way of thinking about the
Earth, one that offers hope. Icelanders believe in elves— and you
should, too.
Five hundred years before Columbus, a Viking woman named Gudrid
sailed off the edge of the known world. She landed in the New World
and lived there for three years, giving birth to a baby before
sailing home. Or so the Icelandic sagas say. Even after
archaeologists found a Viking longhouse in Newfoundland, no one
believed that the details of Gudrid's story were true. Then, in
2001, a team of scientists discovered what may have been this
pioneering woman's last house, buried under a hay field in Iceland,
just where the sagas suggested it could be. Joining scientists
experimenting with cutting-edge technology and the latest
archaeological techniques, and tracing Gudrid's steps on land and
in the sagas, Nancy Marie Brown reconstructs a life that
spanned--and expanded--the bounds of the then-known world. She also
sheds new light on the society that gave rise to a woman even more
extraordinary than legend has painted her and illuminates the
reasons for its collapse.
A good horse can make its rider "king for a while," according to
Icelandic poetry. But finding a good horse requires a keen and
practiced eye. One must see beyond the obvious
attributes--appearance, color, and size--to discern a horse's true
personality and temperament. Nancy Marie Brown puts her eye to the
test when she travels to Iceland to find the perfect Icelandic
horse she can bring home to her Pennsylvania farm and make her own.
She arrives in Iceland shaken by tragedy, uncertain of the
language, lacking confidence in her riding skills; but she's
determined to make her search a success. She finds inspiration in
the country's austere and majestic landscape, which is alive with
the ghosts of an adventure-filled past. In the glacier-carved
hinterland, she rides a variety of Icelandic horses--some spirited,
willful, even heroic; others docile, trusting, or tame. She also
meets an assortment of horse owners, who can be as independent as
the animals they breed. Evocative, clear-headed, and richly
described, this book is for anyone who has at some time in their
life searched for something perfect.
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