The Northern Tapestry is a history blog, covering roughly a period of 400 years starting at the end of the 7th Century and set in the area which is now the northern British Isles, mainland Scandinavia and the north Atlantic lands and islands. The aim is to look at some of the well-known (and not so well-known) characters of the time, using resources such as the Icelandic Sagas, Irish annals and various chronicles from medieval Britain. It will try and weave together the various (and often contradictory) accounts of the people from the time.

Although the boundaries of time and place in this project have some flexibility, an excerpt from the fourth chapter of Egil’s Saga gives a fair idea of territory the blog will try to cover:

En af þessi áþján flýðu margir menn af landi á brott, ok byggðust þá margar auðnir víða bæði austr í Jamtaland ok Helsingjaland ok Vestrlönd, Suðreyjar, Dyflinnarskíði, Írland, Norðmandí á Vallandi, Katanes á Skotlandi, Orkneyjar ok Hjaltland, Færeyjar. Ok í þann tíma fannst Ísland.

(Many people fled abroad from this tyranny (of Harald Fairhair), and a lot of land – previously uninhabited – was then colonized far and wide, both eastwards in Jamtaland and Helsingjaland, and also the Westlands, the Southern Isles, Dublin in Ireland, Normandy in Gaul, Caithness in Scotland, the Orkney and Shetland Islands and the Faroes. And in that time Iceland was discovered.)