Download or read book The Bones of Birka written by C.M. Surrisi and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2023-04-18 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How many female Viking warriors does it take to make a fact? When archaeologist Dr. Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson discovers that the bones contained in the most significant Viking warrior grave ever opened are, in fact, female, she and her team upend centuries of historically accepted conclusions and ignite a furious debate around the reality of female Viking warriors and the role of gender in both ancient and modern times. In The Bones of Birka, author C. M. Surrisi introduces young readers to the events that led up to this discovery and the impact it has had on scientists' and historians' views of gender roles in ancient societies and today. This is the inside account of the Birka warrior grave Bj 581 archaeological endeavor, including all of the dreams, setbacks, frustrations, excitement, politics, and personalities that went into this history-changing discovery. The finding has raised crucial questions about research bias, academic dialogue, and gender identity.
Download or read book The Viking Woman of Birka written by David Mullaly and published by . This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Asa was a young woman who avenged a personal assault, was forced to become a warrior and leader during her family's travels, and ultimately became responsible for defending Birka, one of the great Viking trade centers. This actual Norse woman made her mark during a violent time. A Viking burial found on the Swedish island of Birka, identified as Bj.581, contained what was recently identified as the remains of a woman warrior and leader. What was found there confirmed that she was female and presented herself as such. Testing also suggested that she traveled extensively when she was young. What we cannot know for sure is how she grew into the role which typically was filled by men in the Norse culture. This story is a riveting but plausible reconstruction of her life during a turbulent time in European and human history. David Mullaly provides a realistic context based on our limited knowledge of the period, and creates a sequence of events which could have led to her becoming the extraordinary woman that she surely came to be. Fans of the fiction of Bernard Cornwell, Robert Low, and James L. Nelson will appreciate this historical novel. Mullaly's first two novels deal with a later period of Viking history.
Download or read book The Maypop Kidnapping written by C. M. Surrisi and published by Carolrhoda Books ®. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the coastal village of Maiden Rock, Maine, Quinnie Boyd's teacher has disappeared. Quinnie thinks it's a kidnapping case, but her mom, the town sheriff, just thinks the teacher has left town. Still, Quinnie's going to follow her instincts that something's wrong. Her investigation takes her through a damp and smelly marsh, a lobster pound, and more of Maine's messiest places. She even gets help from her glamorous new neighbor, Mariella. As the girls hunt for clues around Maiden Rock, they encounter a cast of unlikely characters. And if Quinnie's hunch is right, the search may lead them right into danger . . . This hilarious and page-turning debut is the perfect whodunit story for middle school sleuths.
Download or read book The Real Valkyrie written by Nancy Marie Brown and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2021-08-31 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the tradition of Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra, Brown lays to rest the hoary myth that Viking society was ruled by men and celebrates the dramatic lives of female Viking warriors “Once again, Brown brings Viking history to vivid, unexpected life—and in the process, turns what we thought we knew about Norse culture on its head. Superb.” —Scott Weidensaul, author of New York Times bestselling A World on the Wing "Magnificent. It captured me from the very first page." —Pat Shipman, author of The Invaders 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 imagine her life and times, showing that Viking women had more power and agency than historians have imagined. Nancy Marie Brown uses science to link the Birka warrior, whom she names Hervor, to Viking trading towns and to their great trade route east to Byzantium and beyond. She imagines her life 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, law, saga, poetry, and myth carry weapons. These women brag, “As heroes we were widely known—with keen spears we cut blood from bone.” In this compelling narrative Brown brings the world of those valkyries and shield-maids to vivid life.
Download or read book Women in the Viking Age written by Judith Jesch and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 1991 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through runic inscriptions and behind the veil of myth, Jesch discovers the true story of viking women.
Download or read book The Best Mother written by Cynthia Surrisi and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Maxine wakes up on the wrong side of the bed one morning, she wonders if the problem might be her mother. What if she could try out a new mom who doesn’t make her brush her teeth or comb her hair? Enlisting Mom to help her with the search, Maxine interviews various prospects to be her new mother at the park, the toy store, and the zoo. Unfortunately, these other mothers present a host of new problems and concerns. Maybe her “old mother” was the best mother of all? For every child who’s ever wondered if the grass is greener, The Best Mother affirms that there’s nothing better than your own mother’s love.
Download or read book The Birka Warrior written by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder written by Julia Zarankin and published by Douglas & McIntyre. This book was released on 2020-09-12 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Julia Zarankin saw her first red-winged blackbird at the age of thirty-five, she didn’t expect that it would change her life. Recently divorced and auditioning hobbies during a stressful career transition, she stumbled on birdwatching, initially out of curiosity for the strange breed of humans who wear multi-pocketed vests, carry spotting scopes and discuss the finer points of optics with disturbing fervour. What she never could have predicted was that she would become one of them. Not only would she come to identify proudly as a birder, but birding would ultimately lead her to find love, uncover a new language and lay down her roots. Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder tells the story of finding meaning in midlife through birds. The book follows the peregrinations of a narrator who learns more from birds than she ever anticipated, as she begins to realize that she herself is a migratory species: born in the former Soviet Union, growing up in Vancouver and Toronto, studying and working in the United States and living in Paris. Coming from a Russian immigrant family of concert pianists who believed that the outdoors were for “other people,” Julia Zarankin recounts the challenges and joys of unexpectedly discovering one’s wild side and finding one’s tribe in the unlikeliest of places. Zarankin’s thoughtful and witty anecdotes illuminate the joyful experience of a new discovery and the surprising pleasure to be found while standing still on the edge of a lake at six a.m. In addition to confirmed nature enthusiasts, this book will appeal to readers of literary memoir, offering keen insight on what it takes to find one’s place in the world.
Download or read book Survival of the Prettiest written by Nancy Etcoff and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2011-02-02 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A provocative and thoroughly researched inquiry into what we find beautiful and why, skewering the myth that the pursuit of beauty is a learned behavior. In Survival of the Prettiest, Nancy Etcoff, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a practicing psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, argues that beauty is neither a cultural construction, an invention of the fashion industry, nor a backlash against feminism—it’s in our biology. Beauty, she explains, is an essential and ineradicable part of human nature that is revered and ferociously pursued in nearly every civilization—and for good reason. Those features to which we are most attracted are often signals of fertility and fecundity. When seen in the context of a Darwinian struggle for survival, our sometimes extreme attempts to attain beauty—both to become beautiful ourselves and to acquire an attractive partner—suddenly become much more understandable. Moreover, if we understand how the desire for beauty is innate, then we can begin to work in our own interests, and not just the interests of our genetic tendencies.
Download or read book Ancient Scandinavia written by Theron Douglas Price and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Scandinavia provides a comprehensive overview of the archaeological history of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden.
Download or read book Children of Ash and Elm written by Neil Price and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 629 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive history of the Vikings -- from arts and culture to politics and cosmology -- by a distinguished archaeologist with decades of expertise The Viking Age -- from 750 to 1050 -- saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture. Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology and religion, their material world. Known today for a stereotype of maritime violence, the Vikings exported new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and practices to the lands they discovered and the peoples they encountered, and in the process were themselves changed. From Eirík Bloodaxe, who fought his way to a kingdom, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most traveled woman in the world, Children of Ash and Elm is the definitive history of the Vikings and their time.
Download or read book Wolfskin written by Juliet Marillier and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2004-08-01 with total page 550 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this epic historical fantasy, two Viking brothers seek glory on a distant isle where magic reigns and betrayal lurks. All young Eyvind ever wanted was to perform honorable deeds as a great Viking warrior. So when his older brother Ulf hears of a magical land across the sea, ready to be conquered by men with courage, they set out in search of glory. What they find is a barren place filled with unexpected beauty, hidden treasures., and a people willing to share their bounty. Ulf's new settlement begins in harmony with the natives, led by the gentle King Engus. And Eyvind finds a treasure of his own in the king’s niece, a seer named Nessa. But there is another newcomer who is not what he seems. Somerled, the strange and lonely boy Eyvind befriended long ago, has a secret—and his own plans for the future. Soon Eyvind must make a terrible choice between loyalty and love . . .
Download or read book Northern Emporium written by Søren M. Sindbæk and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2022-07-01 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the early Middle Ages, a network of maritime trading towns – emporia – emerged along the northern coasts of Europe. These early urban sites are among archaeology’s most notable contributions to our knowledge of the period between the disintegration of the Western Roman Empire and the growth of a maritime-oriented world in the Viking Age. Ribe, on the western coast of Denmark, is one of these sites. In 2017-18 the Northern Emporium research project conducted seminal research excavations, which provided new foundations for the study of this nodal point between Western Europe, Scandinavia, and the world beyond. This first volume presents the results of these excavations and analyses to piece together the history of the emporium and its social fabric. The research employs novel, high-definition methods to explore the networks of the site, integrating an extensive use of geoarchaeology and 3D stratigraphic recording with intensive environmental sampling and artefact recovery, resulting in more than 100,000 artefact finds. The results transform our understanding of key points of the early history of the North Sea region. Through the remains of dwellings and workshops – the traces left by traders, sailors, weavers, tailors, comb makers, and skilled producers of glass beads and metal ornaments – we follow the creation of Viking Age social networks, along with some of the most iconic artistic products of this world and the daily lives of some of its notable inhabitants.
Download or read book The Viking Age written by Caroline Ahlström Arcini and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2018-05-16 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The majority of literature about the Viking period, based on artifacts or written sources, covers battles, kings, chiefs and mercenaries, long distance travel and colonization, trade, and settlement. Less is said about the life of those that stayed at home or those that immigrated into Scandinavia, whether voluntarily or by force. This book uses results from the examination of a substantial corpus of Swedish osteological material to discuss aspects of demography and health in the Viking period – those which would have been visible and recognizable in the faces or physical appearances of the individuals concerned. It explores the effects of migration, from the spread of new diseases such as leprosy to patterns of movement and integration of immigrants into society. The skeletal material also allows the study of levels of violence, attitudes towards disablement, and the care provided by Viking communities. An overview of the worldwide phenomenon of modified teeth also gives insight into the practice of deliberate physical embellishment and body modification. The interdisciplinary approach to questions regarding ordinary life presented here will broaden the knowledge about society during the Viking Age. The synthesis of the Swedish unburnt human skeletal remains dated to the Viking age will be a valuable resource for future research and provides an in-depth view on Viking age society.
Download or read book Valkyrie written by Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-04-02 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: LONGLISTED FOR THE 2020 CUNDILL HISTORY PRIZE Valkyries: the female supernatural beings that choose who dies and who lives on the battlefield. They protect some, but guide spears, arrows and sword blades into the bodies of others. Viking myths about valkyries attempt to elevate the banality of war – to make the pain and suffering, the lost limbs and deformities, the piles of lifeless bodies of young men, glorious and worthwhile. Rather than their death being futile, it is their destiny and good fortune, determined by divine beings. The women in these stories take full part in the power struggles and upheavals in their communities, for better or worse. Drawing on the latest historical and archaeological evidence, Valkyrie introduces readers to the dramatic and fascinating texts recorded in medieval Iceland, a culture able to imagine women in all kinds of roles carrying power, not just in this world, but pulling the strings in the other-world, too. In the process, this fascinating book uncovers the reality behind the myths and legends to reveal the dynamic, diverse lives of Viking women.
Download or read book In Austrvegr The Role of the Eastern Baltic in Viking Age Communication across the Baltic Sea written by Marika Mägi and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-05-15 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2018 Book Prize Marika Mägi’s book considers the cultural, mercantile and political interaction of the Viking Age (9th-11th century), focusing on the eastern coasts of the Baltic Sea. The majority of research on Viking activity in the East has so far concentrated on the modern-day lands of Russia, while the archaeology and Viking Age history of today’s small nation states along the eastern coasts of the Baltic Sea is little known to a global audience. This study looks at the area from a trans-regional perspective, combining archaeological evidence with written sources, and offering reflections on the many different factors of climate, topography, logistics, technology, politics and trade that shaped travel in this period. The work offers a nuanced vision of Eastern Viking expansion, in which the Eastern Baltic frequently acted as buffer zone between eastern and western powers. Winner of the Early Slavic Studies Association 2018 Book Prize for most outstanding recent scholarly monograph on pre-modern Slavdom. The work was described by the prize committee in the following terms: "The scope of this book is far broader than the title might suggest. It amounts to a substantial rethinking of the history of the eastern Baltic from the tenth to the thirteenth century, based on both archaelogical and written evidence. The author is by training an archaeologist, and she mounts a powerful criticism of historians who prioritise the written sources and then pick and choose from the archaeological evidence to suit their theories. This book foregrounds the archaeology, which is used to question and consider the written evidence. The author is also highly and rightly critical of the archaeological scholarship, for projecting back into the past the narrow concerns of the numerous nation states that now exist across the eastern and northern Baltic, or the Great Russian nationalist-materialist-imperialist interpretations of the Soviet period. The result is a detailed and fascinating account of the interactions of the worlds of Scandinavia and Rusʹ with the various peoples of the Baltic region, both Finno-Ugric and Baltic. The resulting picture of commercial, political, and cultural interaction across several cultures, and based on reading in a wide range of languages, is a tour-de-force."
Download or read book Vampires on the Run written by C. M. Surrisi and published by Carolrhoda Books ®. This book was released on 2017-03-01 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the months after Quinnie Boyd cracked the mystery of her missing teacher, she expected life in her small Maine town to snap back to normal. But two writers from New York City have arrived in Maiden Rock, and there's something not quite right about them. Sure, Ceil and Edgar are pale. And they dress in all black. And they don't go near the sunlight. But could they really be vampires? To find out, Quinnie turns to Dominic—a new kid in town who's an expert on everything geeky. Together, they'll risk their necks to find an answer . . .
