tailieunhanh - The A to Z of the Vikings 31

The A to Z of the Vikings 31. This book provides a comprehensive work of reference for people interested in the Vikings, including entries on the main historical figures involved in this dramatic period, important battles and treaties, significant archaeological finds, and key works and sources of information on the period. It also summarizes the impact the Vikings had on the areas where they traveled and settled. There is a chronological table, detailed and annotated bibliographies for different themes and geographical locations, and an introduction discussing the major events and developments of the Viking age | 278 VINLAND with the sense of town or market and that therefore the Vikings might have been distinguished by the fact that they frequented these trading places for both raiding and trading. Although the people who stayed at home in Scandinavia technically were not Vikings in the true sense of the word it is often hard to distinguish the two groups of population clearly as in the summer people who had lived peacefully at home all winter may have turned to Viking activities. The term Viking was in actual fact hardly used by the contemporaries of the Vikings. They used instead a wide range of other terms in the Christian West they were often called heathen and in the Muslim regions such as Spain they were called majus. Most common however were the geographical terms Northmen and Danes that were usually used irrespective of which part of Scandinavia from which they came. VINLAND ON Vinland . Region also known as Vinland the Good explored by Norse Greenlanders that is mentioned in a number of written sources the most important of which are the Icelandic sagas the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red. In these sagas Vinland is described as having a plentiful supply of salmon a mild climate so that livestock could graze all year round days and nights of a more even length than in Iceland or Greenland and a good supply of timber and wild grapes. The geographical descriptions contained in these sagas make it clear that Vinland was located somewhere in North America but there has been considerable scholarly debate about the exact location of the region. One of the earliest suggestions was made by C. C. Rafn in 1837 when he equated Vinland with Cape Cod but New England Nova Scotia New Brunswick and the St. Lawrence River valley have since also been put forward as possible locations for Vinland. However following the archaeological discoveries at L Anse aux Meadows in the 1960s most scholars believed that Newfoundland was the Vinland of the sagas although the