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Gunnar Karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years: the History of a Marginal Society (London: Hurst, 2000), which covers not only the medieval but also the modern era. Environmental Change in Iceland: Past and Present (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), edited by Judith Maizels and Chris Caseldine, is a more technical, multiauthored account of Iceland’s environmental history. Kirsten Hastrup, Island of Anthropology: Studies in Past and Present Iceland (Viborg: Odense University Press, 1990) collects the author’s anthropological papers on Iceland. The Sagas of Icelanders: a Selection (New York: Penguin, 1997) offers translations of 17 of the sagas (including the two Vinland sagas), drawn from a five-volume The Complete Sagas of Icelanders (Reykjavík: Leifur Eiriksson, 1997).

Two related papers on landscape change in Iceland are Andrew Dugmore et al., “Tephrochronology, environmental change and the Norse settlement of Iceland” (Environmental Archaeology 5:21-34 (2000)), and Ian Simpson et al., “Crossing the thresholds: human ecology and historical patterns of landscape degradation” (Catena 42:175-192 (2001)). Because each insect species has specific habitat and climate requirements, Paul Buckland and his colleagues have been able to use insects preserved at archaeological sites as environmental indicators. Their papers include Gudrún Sveinbjarnardóttir et al. “Landscape change in Eyjafjallasveit, Southern Iceland” (Norsk Geog. Tidsskr 36:75-88 (1982)); Paul Buckland et al., “Late Holocene palaeoecology at Ketilsstadir in Myrdalur, South Iceland” (Jökull 36:41-55 (1986)); Paul Buckland et al., “Holt in Eyjafjallasveit, Iceland: a paleoecological study of the impact of Landnám” (Acta Archaeologica 61:252-271 (1991)); Gudrún Sveinbjarnardóttir et al., “Shielings in Iceland: an archaeological and historical survey” (Acta Archaeologica 61:74-96 (1991)); Paul Buckland et al., “Palaeoecological investigations at Reykholt, Western Iceland,” pp. 149-168 in C. D. Morris and D. J. Rackhan, eds., Norse and Later Settlement and Subsistence in the North Atlantic (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1992); and Paul Buckland et al., “An insect’s eye-view of the Norse farm,” pp. 518-528 in Colleen Batey et al., eds., The Viking Age in Caithness, Orkney and the North Atlantic (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993). The same insect-based approach to understanding environmental change in the Faeroe Islands is used by Kevin Edwards et al., “Landscapes at landnám: palynological and palaeoentomological evidence from Toftanes, Faroe Islands” (Fródskaparrit 46:177-192 (1998)).

Two books assemble in detail the available information on Norse Greenland: Kirsten Seaver, The Frozen Echo: Greenland and Exploration of North America ca. A.D. 1000-1500 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), and Finn Gad, The History of Greenland, vol. I: Earliest Times to 1700 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1971). A subsequent book by Finn Gad, The History of Greenland, vol. II: 1700-1782 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973), continues the story through the period of Greenland’s “rediscovery” and Danish colonization. Niels Lynnerup reported on his analysis of the available Norse skeletons from Greenland in his monograph The Greenland Norse: a Biologic-Anthropological Study (Copenhagen: Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland, 1998). Two multiauthored monographs with many papers on the Inuit and their Native American predecessors in Greenland are Martin Appelt and Hans Christian Gullóv, eds., Late Dorset in High Arctic Greenland (Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center, 1999), and Martin Appelt et al., eds., Identities and Cultural Contacts in the Arctic (Copenhagen: Danish Polar Center, 2000). An intimately personal insight into the lives of Greenland Inuit was gained from the discovery of six women, a child, and an infant who died and were buried around 1475, and whose bodies and clothing remained well preserved because of the cold dry climate. Those mummies are described and illustrated in Jens Peder Hart Hansen et al., eds., The Greenland Mummies