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I'm Hello and welcome to the history of Vikings.

Today I'm joined by Dr. Matthias Nordwig, who teaches at the University

of Colorado Boulder in the Nordic Studies program. He teaches pre-Christian Nordic mythologies,

Scandinavian folklore, North Atlantic and Greenlandic literature, reception history of the Viking Age,

and much more. He has conducted fascinating research on volcanoes in

Norse myth, and he also runs a great YouTube channel called the Nordic Mythology channel,

which I highly recommend and will put a link to in the description below. And you can also

follow him on academia.edu via the link in the description below. Dr. Nordwig, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you for having me here.

It's my pleasure.

Well, our topic of discussion today is one that I get very excited about, and I know a

lot of people listening have requested that we cover it more, and that is Viking Age Iceland.

Now, the last time that you were on the podcast,

we talked a little bit about the sagas of Icelanders and how we can use the sagas as a historical

source for the Viking Age. But talking more about the historical processes, starting off the interview of the discovery and settlement. What are we looking at for sort of how the Vikings discovered Iceland and then came to settle it? Yeah, so for a very long time, our source material has been the medieval historical writings from Iceland,

such as the Book of Settlements and the Book of Icelanders.

And then, of course, the sagas of Icelanders as well as what you could call more of literary complementary body of texts that could inform us a little more on what went on in the process of the settlement of Iceland and also its discovery.

Because what we have in the book of settlements and the Book of Icelanders are not very developed stories about the early settlement.

For instance, the Book of Settlement recounts about 400 and close to 20.

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