The Vikings
By Elizabeth Janeway
146 pp. New York.
Random House. $5.99.
(Ages 9 to 12)
From the settlement of Greenland to the discovery of North America, Elizabeth Janeway surveys the marvelous adventures of the westward pushing Vikings through the young eyes of Leif the Lucky. We follow Leif and his friend, an Irish slave named Brendan, from a mischievous boyhood in Iceland to a maturity in which they encounter the mysteries of political intrigue and the hardship of new lands. This is an excellent semi-fictional account that fully engages the young reader in the environment, geography, history, law, and social life of the Vikings.
The story begins in ancient Iceland, where Leif’s famous father, Erik the Red, finds himself outlawed by the courts for the killing of a free man. Forced to flee from their homestead for fear of retribution, Leif’s family pushes to Iceland’s southern parts and finally on to a new but ill-fated territory: Greenland. As Leif grows older, the spirit of adventure grows with him, sending him off to meet with Norway’s first Christian king, Olav Tryggvesson, and eventually to explore new lands in North America’s Vinland.
Janeway presents a responsible, well-developed picture of Viking culture from beginning to end, making no secret of the fact that she has taken certain liberties with the plot. As she explains in her foreword,
I have tried to write a true book about their discoveries, but I want to tell you at once that not everything you will read in this book is a fact…I did not do this just to amuse you – or myself – or to make the book more exciting. I did it because the fictional parts tell true things about the way people lived and acted and felt in Norway and Iceland and Greenland a thousand years ago (p, vii).
Throughout The Vikings, Janeway remains true to her word by fleshing out eventful incidents with culturally authentic detail. She doesn’t beat you over the head with these lessons, but she does endow the course of history with a richness of description rarely encountered in books for young readers.
For children who are interested in the oral history of their Scandinavian ancestors, the legal processes of ancient Iceland, or even the extraordinary engineering of the early ships that crossed the Atlantic, The Vikings is an excellent starting point for investigation. Parents who wish to follow along with their child’s interests should read The Chronicles of the Vikings, a more thorough exploration of the traces of social life left by these ancient Scandinavians. For maps and timelines of Viking activities from this period, try The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings.
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