Norse of a different colour

<i>Vikings: the North Atlantic saga</i> William W Fitzhugh &amp; Elisabeth I Ward (eds) (Smithsonian, &pound;21.95, 432pp) | <i>The Sagas of Icelanders</i> intro. Robert Kellogg (Allen Lane, &pound;20, 782pp) | <i>Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age</i> by John Haywood (Thames &amp; Hudson, &pound;19.95, 222pp)

For centuries, the Vikings have been billed as furious northmen, predatory pirates intent on rapine and plunder. Their graceful, 100-foot long drakkars or warships were, notoriously, the terror of the seas in the last quarter of the first millennium. But now, in a drastic revamp of their image, emphasis is being put on more positive aspects of their exploits: well-run agricultural settlements, innovative political and legal institutions, clever queens with ships and swords of their own, artistic and cultural sophistication, and trading networks that stretched from Siberia to Morocco.

For centuries, the Vikings have been billed as furious northmen, predatory pirates intent on rapine and plunder. Their graceful, 100-foot long drakkars or warships were, notoriously, the terror of the seas in the last quarter of the first millennium. But now, in a drastic revamp of their image, emphasis is being put on more positive aspects of their exploits: well-run agricultural settlements, innovative political and legal institutions, clever queens with ships and swords of their own, artistic and cultural sophistication, and trading networks that stretched from Siberia to Morocco.

Cities such as York, Dublin, Reykjavik and the romantically remote Russian settlement of Staraga Ladoga were predominantly Norse. Viking inland water routes across Eastern Europe regularly reached Byzantium.

Most celebrated of all is their discovery of America, five hundred years before Christopher Columbus thought he arrived on the east coast of India. According to medieval Icelandic sagas, Bjarni Herjolfsson, an Icelandic trader, glimpsed the coast of Labrador and Baffin land around AD 985, when blown off his course to Greenland. He didn't think it worth landing there.

A few years later, Eric the Red's son Leif the Lucky decided to seek out Bjarni's newfound land for himself. He landed, set up camp and named several parts of the coast. He called the inhospitable north Helluland, the wooded coast of Labrador Markland and a still uncertain part of the coast further south Vinland - because grapes were growing there.

Although the sagas were convincingly detailed as to the exploits of Leif the Lucky (and his much less lucky brother, Thorvald), there was no hard evidence that the Vikings had actually settled in Labrador until an unmistakeably Norse settlement, dated by dendrachronology to around 1000 AD, was discovered on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland in the 1960s.

Suddenly, the sagas became historical documents. Legions of scholars began painstaking comparisons of their descriptions of places and events with the North American coast, and what was known of the indigenous peoples. The roots of America's history were officially declared altered. It is now thought Columbus might well have got the idea of a land to the west from the sagas.

And there was a brand new millennial anniversary opportunity: a major exhibition on the Vikings and their discovery of America 1000 years ago was mounted at the National Musuem of Natural History in Washington. Vikings: the North Atlantic saga accompanies the exhibition. A portmanteau of occasionally repetitious essays by dozens of experts, its scope is much broader than the title suggests. Norse institutions in Scandinavia and Europe as well as Iceland and Greenland are explored, and the modern legacy of the Vikings considered. The book is superbly and profusely illustrated with dramatic colour photographs, diagrams and maps. There are aerial views of hauntingly remote trading posts, stunningly crafted artefacts, illuminated manuscripts, carved sleds, runic stones and ship's lines.

Equally comprehensive and useful, and again a joint effort, is The Sagas of Icelanders: 700 pages of direct, no-nonsense prose dating as written text from the 13th and 14th centuries. Before that, they had been passed down in folk memory through many generations. Though wittily abbreviated, they never lost the extraordinary "funny thing happened on the way to the Althing" immediacy - their hallmark.

Unlike the books of the Bible, which one can only imagine being listened to while standing to attention or bowed in prayer, the stories of the sagas conjure up long dark evenings round blazing fires, with hearers chewing on reindeer ribs, quaffing horns full of mead, and frequently interrupting. The translations here are a little variable - some more haltingly formal than others - but the standard is high, and the full text of the Vinland sagas is included. There's an informative introduction, plenty of maps to show the settings of such stories as the Tale of Sarcastic Halli or the Saga of Gunnlaug Serpent-tongue, and a useful reference section.

John Haywood's Encyclopaedia of the Viking Age is superficially unglamorous, but it is in fact a astute, useful summary of what modern scholars can now tell us about the Vikings; the photographs are pinsharp. Finally, Erik Wahlgren's The Vikings and America (Thames & Hudson, £9.95) provides in brief what the Smithsonian book does at length: a sketch of the Vikings' European world and the story of their historic, short-lived, occupation of Newfoundland.

There is however, a pall of high academic seriousness about these new books, though Erik Wahlgren tries to leaven the lump of fact with jocund humour. If you want a rip-roaring yarn, I recommend a 12-year old book by Tom Cunliffe, Topsail and Battleaxe, a voyage made "in the wake of the Vikings" by Hirta, a 75-year-old pilot cutter. It sailed from Norway via the Shetlands, Iceland and Greenland to Newfoundland. The book is richly informative and well illustrated. The hardback (David and Charles, 1988) is out of print, but Amazon.co.uk say the Merlin Press paperback is reprinting. Or you can pick up a second-hand hardback from such sites as Advanced Book Exchange (www.abebooks.com).