Non-Fiction_HISTORY

An ambitious and magnificent new travelogue by bestselling and prize-winning author Erika Fatland (The Border and Sovietistan), on a journey along the Himalaya.
We have read about mountain climbers on their way up Mount Everest and about travellers on the spiritual quest for Buddhist monasteries. But how much do we know about the people living in the Himalaya? Fatland invites us into close encounters with the many peoples of the region, and at the same time takes us on a dizzying journey at altitude through incredible landscapes and dramatic, unknown world histories – all the way to the most volatile human conflicts of our times.

The Story of a River, Country, and People

No Russian river comes close to having the same status in the life and history of the Russian people as the Volga. It has been a major transportation artery and a cultural meeting place, but also a battlefield, between north and south, east and west. The Volga was sailed by Scandinavian Vikings and Central European traders; it was where settled Slavs and Asiatic nomads competed for space, and Christians and Muslims for the souls of men. For better or worse, the story of the river is the story of the land. Along the Volga is where Russia grew into the country that the West has always tried, but never fully succeeded, to understand.

The Border places Erika Fatland at the forefront of international non-fiction prose. On a captivating journey, a tour-de-force of knowledge, human encounters, historical insights and sweeping distances, Fatland travels along the seemingly endless Russian border. From North Korea in the Far East through bordering states in Asia and the Caucasus, crossing the Caspian Ocean and the Black Sea. The journey takes her to war-torn Ukraine, where Putin’s modern Russia is again pushing violently for expansion. Then north through Eastern Europe, finishing after 14 countries and 20 000 kilometres at the Russian-Norwegian border, verging on the Arctic.

Shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year

In January 1921 the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen took over responsibility for a four-year-old girl from the Siberian Chukchi people. He named her Nita. Three months later he took charge of another girl from Chukotka—11-year-old Camilla Carpendale, daughter of a local trader. At this time Amundsen’s fame as the conqueror of the South Pole spanned the globe. Nita and Camilla were the closest Roald Amundsen ever came to establishing his own family.
Cape Heartstone tells the full story of these three intertwined lives, and the forces that shaped, them for the first time. Through an attentive and original use of historical sources—written, filmed and photographed—Ytreberg reveals a unique story and places it in a broader context.

In the year 1000, Ethelred is king of the Anglo-Saxons. He has great domestic problems – every region of his recently united kingdom is simmering – but even greater problems threaten him from beyond: the Danes, Vikings from Denmark and Norway, are plundering his land.

In The Battle of the North, Tore Skeie paints the whole picture and takes the reader along on a tremendous journey through history. It is the rock-solid historical tale of the real Game of Thrones.

What was Nazism – and why did the Nazis act as they did? How can we understand Nazism’s idea universe? What are Nazism’s ideological roots? What significance did Nazi’s conceptual world have for the Nazi state and the individual Nazis?

The book investigates these questions – Nazism’s origin, idea structure and effects – by exploring philosophical ideas from the German Romantic period to the end of the Third Reich in 1945.

This is a different kind of world history – told through stamps from countries that have been erased from the map. The book present fifty of these countries that collapsed. The range of countries reflect different aspects of world history during the 19th and 20th centuries, with their ideologies, imperialism, struggle for resources, immigration waves and major and trivial wars. Besides stamps, the book is based on eyewitness accounts, as well as later historical analyses. Each vanished country is presented with detailed maps and stamps.

This book about the writing of history is written for a general audience, but of interest to students and professional historians alike. Time for History is concerned not with the varieties of contemporary historiography, its methods and results, but with the questions that unite the discipline: What can we know about the past? Who is history about? How do we perceive time as distance? What are the implications of the idea that the past is different from the present? The book deals with the big questions of the writing of history, but it does so by means of example, by wonderful, exotic, and unexpected quotes and stories.

This story begins in Rogaland year 846 AD. One day a very special royal son is born – Geirmund Heljarskinn. Little is know about him other than that his mother was from Siberia, therefore, he was born with Asian features. Heljarskinn becomes the “Black Viking” – the most powerful settler on Iceland through times. Dark-skinned and with Mongolian facial features he was a pioneer in international hunting economy. Heljarskinn had hundreds of slaves; Christians from Scotland and Ireland.
Birgisson addresses the question of Heljarskinn´s life, and why he is forgotten. Old fragments, modern genetics and information collected on trips to faraway places is put together, creating a fascinating and shocking portrayal of a raw and poetic past. Rarely, if ever, has the Viking Age been introduced to us in this way.