Few people recall the name of Eirik Thorvaldsson, who began life in Jaederen, Norway, around 950. When he was nine years old, his father killed a manor maybe twoand was forced to flee with his family to Iceland. Young Eirik grew up in the harsh environs of that wind-swept isle in the North Atlantic. Harsh lands breed harsh men, and Eirik fit the mold. Like his father before him, he battled with neighbors and killed several men in blood feuds. Banished from Iceland for three years, he sailed west to seek refuge in an unexplored land. After three years in exile, Eirik returned to Iceland with tales of his discoveries in that new land to the west. He called it Greenland to entice others to join him there. Around 985, he sailed west again from Iceland with twenty-five ships of colonists. History records him as the founder of the first European settlement in Greenland and the father of Leif Eriksson. People remember him best as Erik the Red.
Erik the Red was born to become legend! Love and destruction, toil and triumph blend in a gripping historical fiction account of the life of Erik the Red, taking him from the Iceland into the great unknown as he searches for his place in the world. Exiled from his homeland of Norway as a boy, Erik Thorvladsson wants nothing more than to honor his father’s legacy and to figure out where he belongs in the world. But to claim and cultivate his own homestead is no easy task. Navigating natural disasters, violent clashes, and banishment, he seeks his fortunes in an Iceland on the brink of change. But when a conflict over property erupts into violence, Erik is outlawed from the country for three years and sets off on his greatest challenge of all. Assembling a group of settlers, he and his family sail west into uncertainty, hoping to finally find a green and prosperous land to call their own. "A mysterious death and a fantastical curse add light intrigue while mature sexual situations make this a great crossover novel for adult readers." - Kirkus Reviews
Hold on to your Viking helmets as you learn about the first known European to set foot on North America in this exciting addition to the Who Was? series! Leif Erikson was born to be an explorer. His father, Erik the Red, had established the first European settlement in present-day Greenland, and although he didn't yet know it, Leif was destined to embark on an adventure of his own. The wise and striking Viking landed in the area known as Vinland almost five centuries before Christopher Columbus even set sail! "Leif the Lucky" and the other fierce, sea-fearing pirates were accomplished navigators who raided foreign lands for resources, hunted for their food, and passed down Old Norse myths from one generation to the next. This book gives readers a detailed account of what life was like during the time of the Vikings.
In the year 982 Erik Torvaldsson, also called Erik the Red, left Iceland after a bloody neighbour feud. He went out to find a mysterious island to the north. He found it and called it Greenland, so that many people would follow him. Thanks to gifts and bribes, he ruled his colony unchallenged by Christian priests and kings, all the way to the beginning of the year 1000 A.D.
As Erik and the crew of The Golden Dragon set off in search of adventure, little do they know that their courage, skill, strength and stamina will all be tested to the extremes... Includes an exclusive foreword from Monty Python's Terry Jones and newly coloured illustrations from Michael Foreman. Age range: 8+
From world-renowned mental trainer Erik Bertrand Larssen, whose clients include Olympic athletes and Fortune 500 CEOs, Hell Week is a military-inspired yet accessible guide to making the critical changes necessary for long-term professional and personal success and overall lifestyle improvements. Norway native Erik Bertrand Larssen is many things: a veteran paratrooper who served in Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Afghanistan; a successful entrepreneur; and a critically acclaimed performance consultant. He has helped catapult the success of countless high-achievers, including Microsoft, Boston Consulting Group, and Statoil ASA executives and Olympic medalist Martin Johnsrud Sundby and top golfer Suzann Pettersen. His life-altering and revered method improves performance by getting people to push themselves past the brink of self-imposed limitations. Central to his technique is the commitment to live and experience just one week as your best self. It’s this week, Larssen says, that will be the catalyst to making the most of the rest of your life. Offering accessible tools and pragmatic, inspirational advice including how to incorporate exercise into your daily routine, Larssen’s game-changing Hell Week shows you how to apply his principles to everyday life, leading to lasting improvement, personal and professional success, and most importantly, a new way of living to a higher standard. Hell Week will resonate with and inspire you to be the best you can be and make everlasting positive changes in all aspects of your life.
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of The Devil in the White City and Dead Wake delivers an intimate chronicle of Winston Churchill and London during the Blitz—an inspiring portrait of courage and leadership in a time of unprecedented crisis “One of [Erik Larson’s] best books yet . . . perfectly timed for the moment.”—Time • “A bravura performance by one of America’s greatest storytellers.”—NPR NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Time • Vogue • NPR • The Washington Post • Chicago Tribune • The Globe & Mail • Fortune • Bloomberg • New York Post • The New York Public Library • Kirkus Reviews • LibraryReads • PopMatters On Winston Churchill’s first day as prime minister, Adolf Hitler invaded Holland and Belgium. Poland and Czechoslovakia had already fallen, and the Dunkirk evacuation was just two weeks away. For the next twelve months, Hitler would wage a relentless bombing campaign, killing 45,000 Britons. It was up to Churchill to hold his country together and persuade President Franklin Roosevelt that Britain was a worthy ally—and willing to fight to the end. In The Splendid and the Vile, Erik Larson shows, in cinematic detail, how Churchill taught the British people “the art of being fearless.” It is a story of political brinkmanship, but it’s also an intimate domestic drama, set against the backdrop of Churchill’s prime-ministerial country home, Chequers; his wartime retreat, Ditchley, where he and his entourage go when the moon is brightest and the bombing threat is highest; and of course 10 Downing Street in London. Drawing on diaries, original archival documents, and once-secret intelligence reports—some released only recently—Larson provides a new lens on London’s darkest year through the day-to-day experience of Churchill and his family: his wife, Clementine; their youngest daughter, Mary, who chafes against her parents’ wartime protectiveness; their son, Randolph, and his beautiful, unhappy wife, Pamela; Pamela’s illicit lover, a dashing American emissary; and the advisers in Churchill’s “Secret Circle,” to whom he turns in the hardest moments. The Splendid and the Vile takes readers out of today’s political dysfunction and back to a time of true leadership, when, in the face of unrelenting horror, Churchill’s eloquence, courage, and perseverance bound a country, and a family, together.
Introduces children to the life of Viking adventurer Leif Eriksson chronicling his famed voyage in which he sailed to Newfoundland where he established the first European colony in North America
Selected by Gwyn Jones--the eminent Celtic scholar--for their excellence and variety, these nine Icelandic sagas include "Hen-Thorir," "The Vapnfjord Men," "Thorstein Staff-Struck," "Hrafnkel the Priest of Frey," "Thidrandi whom the Goddesses Slew," "Authun and the Bear," "Gunnlaug Wormtongue," "King Hrolf and his Champions," and the title piece.
