Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
by Neil Price
Archaeologist Neil Price's 640-page synthesis of the Viking Age, covering cosmology, politics, slavery, seafaring and settlement from North America to the Asian steppe, built on excavation evidence rather than later medieval or romantic retellings. This is the single general history a newcomer should read, so it replaces the whole shelf of TV-tie-in Viking books.
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More resources on Vikings & the Norse World
Saga Thing
Two medievalist professors read through the Icelandic sagas one at a time, walking chapter by chapter through plot, manuscript context and current scholarship, then closing each saga with a mock verdict. Running since 2013.
Jackson Crawford's Old Norse Channel
Channel by a credentialed Old Norse philologist. Hundreds of short lectures on Old Norse grammar and pronunciation, runes, eddic poems and saga passages, regularly testing popular claims about Norse mythology and Viking history against the manuscript and runic evidence. He explicitly separates attested medieval material from modern neopagan and white-nationalist inventions - the myth-versus-evidence skill.
The Viking Age - National Museum of Denmark
Curator-written articles on Viking-age daily life, food, religion, weapons, ships, runestones and silver hoards, each tied to excavated objects in the museum's collection such as the Jelling monuments, Mammen grave and Trelleborg ring fortresses. One museum portal instead of dozens of Viking blogs.
Viking Society for Northern Research - Free Publications Library
Free PDFs of the Society's scholarly Old Norse editions, English translations, Old Norse textbooks and monographs, plus every issue of the journal Saga-Book back to 1895, each released two years after print publication. A single door to essentially all the free serious Old Norse material, which otherwise has to be assembled site by site.
The Poetic Edda: Expanded Second Edition
Verse translation from Old Norse of the mythological and heroic poems of the Poetic Edda, with introductions and notes. This expanded edition adds Svipdagsmal and four related poems, including Eiriksmal and Krakumal, giving readers direct access to primary Norse myth and legend.
The Sagas of Icelanders (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Ten sagas and seven shorter tales in the modern scholarly translations made for the Complete Sagas of Icelanders project, including the Vinland sagas on Norse voyages to Greenland and North America, with maps and genealogies.