Here are 100 books that Westward Vikings fans have personally recommended if you like
Westward Vikings.
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I live in England but grew up in Canada, where my Grade 5 Social Studies teacher filled my head with stories of people and places, including the Vikings. In the early 1960s, I learned about the excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland featured in Canadian newspapers. My first job was in Denmark, and I subsequently travelled in the Nordic homelands and settlement areas, including the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland, visiting museums and archaeological sites at every opportunity. Norse America is my 26th book, but it is both the one with the deepest roots in my own past and the one most engaged with contemporary concerns about race.
The discovery of artefacts from a Viking grave in northern Ontario in 1936 was a sensation, and their subsequent display in the Royal Ontario Museum added a new dimension to the colonial history of Canada. The exposure of the discovery as a hoax in 1956 damaged the reputation of the Museum and its director. Hunter’s account, which is securely anchored in archival evidence, is skillfully assembled as an unfolding drama. In this book, the Beardmore hoax has received its definitive treatment by a scholar who writes brilliantly for a general audience.
In 1936, long before the discovery of the Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows, the Royal Ontario Museum made a sensational acquisition: the contents of a Viking grave that prospector Eddy Dodd said he had found on his mining claim east of Lake Nipigon. The relics remained on display for two decades, challenging understandings of when and where Europeans first reached the Americas. In 1956 the discovery was exposed as an unquestionable hoax, tarnishing the reputation of the museum director, Charles Trick Currelly, who had acquired the relics and insisted on their authenticity. Drawing on an array of archival sources,…
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
I live in England but grew up in Canada, where my Grade 5 Social Studies teacher filled my head with stories of people and places, including the Vikings. In the early 1960s, I learned about the excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland featured in Canadian newspapers. My first job was in Denmark, and I subsequently travelled in the Nordic homelands and settlement areas, including the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland, visiting museums and archaeological sites at every opportunity. Norse America is my 26th book, but it is both the one with the deepest roots in my own past and the one most engaged with contemporary concerns about race.
This book by a distinguished Canadian archaeologist is the finest overview of the human history of the circumpolar region. Its twin concerns are the indigenous peoples of the Arctic and the impact of intruders from the south. It is unusual in its coverage of the Russian and Scandinavian Arctic. The excellent account of the Norse colonies in Greenland feeds into a compelling analysis (through the prism of trade goods) of Norse penetration into the territories of the Dorset and Thule peoples.
The Arctic of towering icebergs and midnight sun, of flaming auroras and endless winter nights, has long provoked flights of the imagination. Now, in "The Last Imaginary Place", renowned archaeologist, Robert McGhee lifts the veil to reveal the true Arctic world. Based on thirty years of work with native peoples of the Arctic and travel in the region, McGhee's account dispels notions of the frozen land as an exotic, remote world that exists apart from civilization. Between the frigid reality and lurid fantasy lies McGhee's true interest, the people who throughout human history have called the Arctic home. He paints…
I live in England but grew up in Canada, where my Grade 5 Social Studies teacher filled my head with stories of people and places, including the Vikings. In the early 1960s, I learned about the excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland featured in Canadian newspapers. My first job was in Denmark, and I subsequently travelled in the Nordic homelands and settlement areas, including the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland, visiting museums and archaeological sites at every opportunity. Norse America is my 26th book, but it is both the one with the deepest roots in my own past and the one most engaged with contemporary concerns about race.
This book is an eye-opening account of how the history of Nova Scotia became distorted in the interest of attracting tourists. This manufactured history exalts whiteness and masculinity, and quietly excludes ethnic minorities and women. The Yarmouth runestone, which is adduced as evidence that the Norse landed in Yarmouth, is an important artefact in this ideological history, and the authors give an excellent account of its history and its place in tourist history.
Using archival sources, novels, government reports, and works on tourism and heritage, Ian McKay and Robin Bates look at how state planners, key politicians, and cultural figures such as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, long-time premier Angus L. Macdonald, and novelist Thomas Raddall were all instrumental in forming "tourism/history." The authors argue that Longfellow's 1847 poem Evangeline - on the brutal British expulsion of Acadians from Nova Scotia - became a template a new kind of profit-making history that exalted whiteness and excluded ethnic minorities, women, and working class movements. A remarkable look at the intersection of politics, leisure, and the presentation…
Delve into this internationally best-selling series, now complete! A fast paced laugh-out-loud mix of Urban Fantasy and Mystery.
I can tell when you’re lying. Every. Single. Time. I’m Jinx, a PI hired to find a missing university student, I hope to find her propped up at a bar–yet my gut…
I live in England but grew up in Canada, where my Grade 5 Social Studies teacher filled my head with stories of people and places, including the Vikings. In the early 1960s, I learned about the excavations at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland featured in Canadian newspapers. My first job was in Denmark, and I subsequently travelled in the Nordic homelands and settlement areas, including the Faeroes, Iceland, and Greenland, visiting museums and archaeological sites at every opportunity. Norse America is my 26th book, but it is both the one with the deepest roots in my own past and the one most engaged with contemporary concerns about race.
The Norse site at L’Anse aux Meadows was discovered by the Norwegian explorer Helge Ingstad in 1960. The following year he returned to the site with his wife Anne Stina, a trained archaeologist who led the annual summer excavations until 1968. This book is her memoir of the digs, which was published in Norwegian in 1975 and translated for the predecessor to this edition in 2006. The book ranges beyond the archaeology to encompass an evocative and sometimes lyrical account of the Ingstads’ spartan life on the site, its moments of great excitement when Norse artefacts were found, and their experience of the local community.
Anne Stine Ingstad tells us about her challenging journey to Newfoundland and Labrador where Helge makes a fascinating discovery of Norse settlement in 1960.
In 2005, the Bookseller declared the Viking romance to be officially dead and never, ever coming back. However, they hadn’t consulted Harlequin Historical editors who researched the actual sales and desires of their readers. When my senior editor asked me if could I write one, I duly obliged with Taken by the Viking. The book beat lofty expectations, and the revival began such that the Viking period now ranks up there with Regency in terms of popular time periods for the line. The following list is some of the Viking set romances that I have escaped into on mainly rainy afternoons.
An old school bodice ripper by the absolute mistress of them.
Fires of Winter features a feisty heroine in the Irish princess Breena and a strong hero bent on revenge in Garrick Haardrad. ‘Everyone loves a Lindsey’ was the slogan in the early 1980s and this book showcases her at her page-turning best.
Lovely and dauntless, abducted by invaders from across an icy sea, Lady Breena vowed vengeance swearing no Viking brute would be her master no barbarian would enslave her noble Celtic heart, but then came Garrick Haardrad, the proud and powerful son of a ruthless Viking chieftain.
I am a writer of historical fiction. When I was in my teens, my family embarked on a project to trace our ancestry and identify our living relatives. Through church records in Sweden and Norway, we found that Harald Fairhair (Harfagr), the first king of Norway is one of our ancestors. Those explorations gave me the seeds of my first novel of Viking-Age Norway, The Half-Drowned King, and the subsequent books in the trilogy.
One of the best ways to envision a historical period is to see its artifacts. Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga is a companion to a Smithsonian exhibit of the same name and contains a rich trove of images and descriptions of viking physical culture, along with essays about the archeology of their discovery, and how they were used in the exploration of the North Atlantic, and the eventual journey to the New World.
Replete with color photographs, drawings, and maps of Viking sites, artifacts, and landscapes, this book celebrates and explores the Viking saga from the combined perspectives of history, archaeology, oral tradition, literature, and natural science. The book's contributors chart the spread of marauders and traders in Europe as well as the expansion of farmers and explorers throughout the North Atlantic and into the New World. They show that Norse contacts with Native American groups were more extensive than has previously been believed, but that the outnumbered Europeans never established more than temporary settlements in North America.
On the morning of December 26, 2004, an undersea earthquake struck off the coast of Sumatra in the Indian Ocean. The resulting tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across fourteen countries, from Indonesia to Sri Lanka to Thailand to the Maldives to India and all the way to East Africa.…
Drew Hayden Taylor is an award-winning playwright, novelist, journalist, and filmmaker. Born and raised on the Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario (Anishnawbe), Drew has had over a hundred productions of his plays and enjoys spreading the gospel of Indigenous literature across the world.
An amazing play about an amazing man, artist Norval Morrisseau. Surreal and yet very real, the play deals with three very important periods in this groundbreaking artist's life as he created a whole genre of Canadian art. The audience is given a window into the man's highs and lows, and how in the end, he became rose above it all and became a legend.
Copper Thunderbird is a play on canvases based on the life of Norval Morrisseau. Inside the power-lines which Morrisseau boldly defined in his art were the colours he experienced between his Ojibwa cosmology, his life on the street, and his spiritual and philosophical transformations to become the Father of Contemporary Native Art and a Grand Shaman. Appearing simultaneously in this multi-layered drama as a small boy, a young warrior and an old man, Morrisseau confronts his many selves over the Faustian destiny he encountered during his vision quest—a momentary terror that led to a life wracked by both triumph and…
I first became interested in the history of the British Empire as an undergraduate. Understanding this history helped me relate my parents’ experiences growing up in a postcolonial nation with the history of the United States, where I grew up. As an academic historian, my research and teaching emphasize connections—between disparate places, between the past and present, and between our personal experiences and those of people born in distant times and places. My first children’s book allowed me to translate my scholarly work for a young audience. I hope this list of books that inspire my approach to history encourages your own investigations of imperialism and its pasts!
George Manuel was once asked by a white coworker, “Does Indians have feelings?” Refusing dehumanization, Manuel reveals the ongoing colonial relations between First Nations and the Canadian settler state. He charts his political journey from Secwepemcúl̓ecw to the National Indian Brotherhood to the World Council of Indigenous Peoples.
Manuel argues that the victories of the anti-colonial independence movements of the twentieth century did not end colonial domination of Indigenous Peoples—what he calls the Fourth World. The Fourth World is not a destination but the right to travel on your own road in your own way.
With a new insightful introduction, foreword, and afterword, the book's latest edition shows how Manuel’s analysis of colonialism and vision for solidarity continue to be relevant to contemporary struggles for decolonization.
A foundational work of radical anticolonialism, back in print
Originally published in 1974, The Fourth World is a critical work of Indigenous political activism that has long been out of print. George Manuel, a leader in the North American Indian movement at that time, with coauthor journalist Michael Posluns, presents a rich historical document that traces the struggle for Indigenous survival as a nation, a culture, and a reality. The authors shed light on alternatives for coexistence that would take place in the Fourth World-an alternative to the new world, the old world, and the Third World. Manuel was the…
I’m the author of 26 twisty psychological thrillers, many of which are Amazon bestsellers. I’ve sold over three-quarters of a million books and particularly enjoy writing about dysfunctional families and unpleasant neighbours! Several of my novels touch upon this theme: The Visitors, The New Neighbour, and Violets Are Blue, to name just three. And yes, I have drawn upon some difficult experiences I’ve had with neighbours... I’m a full-time author and I’m also an avid reader of thrillers and enjoy nothing more than reading a book with an ending that makes me gasp!
I love a book where the idyllic life people see from the outside is NOT accurate.
This story followed one family as their life spiraled out of control and I was enthralled with the shifting perspectives and the way the story peeled back the layers of this seemingly perfect family. It’s dramatic, messy, and full of tension.
While not all of the twists surprised me, I still found it a gripping, entertaining read. I certainly wouldn’t want to be living next to these neighbours!
The wife: Eve is desperate for her life to be perfect. Living in a beautiful house, with gorgeous views of the countryside, is all she's ever wanted. And she'll do whatever it takes to hold onto her dream life.
The son: Joe is a model student; he never puts a foot wrong. He knows his mother wouldn't tolerate it. Until the night of his sixteenth birthday party, when things go horribly wrong and someone in the house is left fighting for their life. As the blue flashing lights of the police…
Nelson West, a former Chicago homicide detective, is hired by wealthy heir Lionel Bing to discreetly help “fix” scandals and legal problems for his father’s wealthy friends.
Bing, a brilliant but troubled investigator, suffers from PTSD symptoms as a result of being kidnapped and witnessing the murder of his mother…
Between the two of us, we have written over a dozen books and won numerous prizes. Wilson, when not writing critically-acclaimed music or explaining how to catch a haggis, has received the Ontario Historical Association’s Joseph Brant Award for King Alpha’s Song in a Strange Land.Reid, who wisely passed up the chance of a law career in order to play an extra year of soccer, received the C. P. Stacey Award for African Canadians in Union Blue. Both writers believe that sports offer a valuable lens by which to examine a society’s core values.
Ken Dryden is a lawyer, a politician, and a gifted writer. He also happens to be one of the most important goaltenders in Canadian hockey history.
Armed with such lived experience and trained in a variety of disciplines as he has been, Dryden provided hockey with its central and perhaps most enduring literary work. Unlike some of our other choices, The Game is less about larger socio-cultural trends (though there is some of this, especially when he recounts his crucial role in the famous Summit Series against the Soviets in 1972), but rather more about the inner dynamics of a team and what it means to win or lose together in professional sport.
Dryden’s work is, yes, historical, but also highly philosophical; his unique position in goal gave him an ice-level perspective that few enjoy (his iconic stance, gloves atop stick, ever-observing play at the opposite end has already…
Widely acknowledged as the best hockey book ever written and lauded by Sports Illustrated as one of the Top 10 Sports Books of All Time, The Game is a reflective and thought-provoking look at a life in hockey. Ken Dryden, the former Montreal Canadiens goalie and former president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, captures the essence of the sport and what it means to all hockey fans. He gives vivid and affectionate portraits of the characters—Guy Lafleur, Larry Robinson, Guy Lapointe, Serge Savard, and coach Scotty Bowman among them—who made the Canadiens of the 1970s one of the greatest hockey…
