Includes Index and Bibliography

Immigrant society -- Resources and subsistence; life on an northern island -- Curdled milk and calamities; an inward-looking farming society -- Devolving and evolving social order -- Founding of a new society and the historical sources -- Limitations on a chieftain's ambitions, and strategies of feud and law; Eyrbyggja saga -- Chieftain-Thingmen relationships and advocacy -- Family and Sturlunga sagas; medieval narratives and modern nationalism -- Legislative and judicial system -- Systems of power; advocates, friendship, and family networks -- Aspects of blood feud -- Feud and vendetta in a 'great village' community -- Friendship, blood feud, and power; the saga of the people of weapon's fjord -- Obvious sources of wealth -- Lucrative sources of wealth for chieftains -- Peaceful conversion; the Viking age church -- Gragas; the 'grey goose' law -- Bishops and secular authority; the later church -- Big chieftains, big farmers and their sagas at the end of the free state.

The popular image of the Viking Age is a time of warlords and marauding bands pillaging their way along the shores of Northern Europe. This was a unique time in history, which has long perplexed historians and archaeologists, and which provides us today with fundamental insights into sometimes forgotten aspects of western society. By interweaving his own original and innovative research with masterly interpretations of the Old Icelandic sagas, Jesse Byock brilliantly brings it to life.

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