This is the story of exploration and colonization, the founding of kingdoms in Britain, Ireland and Russia, the abortive attempt to settle in North America. It is also the record of warriors, traders, farmers, poets and storytellers, intent not only on physical survival but on commemoration of their way of life. Theirs was a life dominated by adventure, of both the body and the mind.

To their children and children’s children, they retold their encounters with Christianity. Impressed with the power of the Church they adopted Christ for perils on the sea but continued to worship Thor, the God of Thunder, on land. Their descendants, true Christians, spoke with awe and trepidation of forebears who descended from gods and trolls. They recounted how, in worshipping the god of war, their ancestors transformed themselves into berserks and werewolves, esteemed by princes for ferocity in combat. They recognized that, absent a royal court and its retinue of warriors, werewolves, overcome by unrestrained rage, would be dangerous to their rural society, even if they were otherwise respected and valued for their leadership. The saga writers revered their pagan past, marveling at the treasures still unearthed from graves dug deep into the mountains. Believing in an ethical system that fused pagan and Christian virtues, they relived in the sagas the exploits of ancestors, enriching thereby their own lives and culture.

To them, writing the sagas was recording history. This was history they enlivened and quickened by drama. They structured events with a powerful, disciplined imagination nurtured by pagan and Christian thought. Bequeathing the sagas to us, they fulfilled the desire of their ancestors for lasting fame. By their commemoration they conferred immortality to what is now known as the Viking Age.