Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them

by Nancy Marie Brown

More medieval literature exists in Icelandic than in any other European language except Latin.

When he finally reached Greenland, his mother was his best convert. She built a church and refused to sleep with Eirik the Red so long as he remained pagan, “and that put him in a foul temper,” the saga says.

Like Iceland, the Orkneys had no real towns in the twelfth century, but the islands abounded in safe harbors. They also had a consistent surplus of grain, something Icelanders and Greenlanders craved—not for baking bread, but for brewing ale.