VIKING VOYAGERS: Ships, Trade, Exploration and the Norse Discovery of New Worlds (THE WORLD Book 5)

The Viking world began where the shoreline ended. Norse ships crossed the North Atlantic, followed rivers deep into eastern Europe, linked Scandinavia with Byzantium and the Islamic world, and brought sailors to North America five centuries before Columbus. Yet every celebrated voyage depended on shipwrights, sail makers, merchants, farmers, pilots, and families whose labour made departure possible. In this final volume of The Viking World, Jonathan R. Alderwick follows the sea roads from Baltic markets and imperial courts to Iceland, Greenland, Vinland, and the confirmed Norse site at L'Anse aux Meadows. Discover how Viking ships were built, how sailors navigated open water, what merchants traded, and why distant colonies survived or disappeared. Drawing on archaeology, ship remains, coins, runestones, foreign testimony, and later sagas, Viking Voyagers separates documented history from enduring legend while recognizing the Indigenous homelands Norse crews encountered. For readers who want rigorous history told with clarity and narrative drive, this is the complete story of the ships that made the Viking world.