Chess? Check. Vikings? Check. What more could the history buff ask for?

The Book Nook is proud to welcome back VT author Nancy Marie Brown to the Okemo Valley area. Brown will talk about her new book IVORY VIKINGS at 7pm at the Fletcher Memorial Library at 88 Main Street in Ludlow, VT on Tuesday April 12th.

In the early 1800's, on a Hebridean beach in Scotland, the sea exposed an ancient treasure cache: 93 chessmen carved from walrus ivory. Norse netsuke, each face individual, each full of quirks, the Lewis Chessmen are probably the most famous chess pieces in the world. Harry played Wizard's Chess with them in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. Housed at the British Museum, they are among its most visited and beloved objects.

Questions abounded: Who carved them? Where? Nancy Marie Brown's Ivory Vikings explores these mysteries by connecting medieval Icelandic sagas... with modern archaeology, art history, forensics, and the history of board games. In the process, Ivory Vikings presents a vivid history of the 400 years when the Vikings ruled the North Atlantic, and the sea-road connected countries and islands we think of as far apart and culturally distinct: Norway and Scotland, Ireland and Iceland, and Greenland and North America. The story of the Lewis chessmen explains the economic lure behind the Viking voyages to the west in the 800s and 900s. And finally, it brings from the shadows an extraordinarily talented woman artist of the twelfth century: Margret the Adroit of Iceland.

Nancy Marie Brown is the author of six general interest books and one young adult novel: Ivory Vikings (September 2015), The Saga of Gudrid the Far-Traveler (the novel; June 2015), Song of the Vikings (2012), The Abacus and the Cross (2010), The Far Traveler (2007), Mendel in the Kitchen (2004), and A Good Horse Has No Color (2001). She writes about Iceland and Vikings, science and sagas. Her books combine extremes: medieval literature and modern archaeology, myths and facts. They ask, What have we overlooked? What have we forgotten? Whose history must not be lost?
Brown will talk at the Fletcher Memorial Library at 7pm on Tuesday April 12th. The event will take place in the Community Room downstairs, so please park and enter at the rear of the library.

Event date: Tuesday, April 12, 2016 - 7:00pm to 9:00pm

Event address: Fletcher Memorial Library 88 Main Street Ludlow, VT 05149