948, the 980s, and the 990s

Does anyone have recommendations for 948 (General history of Europe; Northern Europe; Scandinavia), and for the 980s and 990s? I own one for 994 (Australia) that I haven't read yet and have ideas for 980 and 985, but am otherwise without suggestions for these categories.

For 996, I read Greg Dening's Mr. Bligh's Bad Language, which is good enough if you're familiar with the Mutiny on the Bounty story and like postmodern historiography. It's a bit excessively postmodern for my tastes, but much of it was interesting despite that.

As for the others, I've read some, but you may need to be an archaeologist to get through them. For 986, I've read Traces Behind the Esmeraldas Shore by Warren DeBoer, which is pretty readable and might be OK, but it's fairly archaeological. For 948, I've read The Viking Age in Denmark by Klavs Randsborg, which is not so readable - it's interesting enough for an archaeologist, but I'm not sure I can really recommend it for normal people.

I haven't actually read The Tiwanaku: Portrait of a Civilization by Alan Kolata, but it's a 984 written for a more general audience.

I'd probably go my local public library and shelf-read those call numbers, if suggestions here were to remain sparse.

>2 E59F: Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not an archaeologist, but I did take an archaeology class in college, and I like that stuff, so I might be able to muddle through. I like your implication that archaeologists aren't "normal people." :)

>3 vpfluke: I'm thinking that may be the best option (not that I don't have a ton of books at home to read already). I just moved, though, and I need to get a new library card. I was hoping someone would have a great book for 948--surely there are some great Viking histories?? That's the last one I need for the 940s.

I do carlym.

I took a peak at books in the Nassau County system online listing for 948, and there was a spate of books that most libraries got in the 1974-80 period:
A History of Scandinavia by T K Derry
The Northmen by Thomas Froncek
Vikings! by Magnus Magnusson
What was life like when longships sailed: Vikings AD 800-1100 by Time-Life Books. (more recent -1998, but not truly a serious book, I suppose)

I left out:
The Viking World by James Graham-Campbell

The author of What was life like is Richard Ringler. this book has the highest rating of the bunch, 4.25, and is owned by 49.

Vikings! is owned by 53, and has a rating of 3.6 (3rd best)

The second best rating, 4.00, was given to "The Northmen", but only 20 own it.

>4 carlym:
I don't think any of the archaeologists I know can be described as "normal".... :)

Since you took an archaeology class, the Kolata book should present no problems, and you might find the DeBoer book approachable enough too.

vpfluke, thanks for doing the research for me!

Well, I won't be browsing the closest library branch anymore--I went there for the first time (I just moved) and they had almost nothing. They did have one book by Marcus Magnusson about Vikings, but I'm not sure it's the one mentioned here; it looked like a coffee-table book. I think there were about 10 books in all of the 980s and 990s. Got to find a better branch....

I'm looking for more suggestions in the 980s and 990s. If anyone would like to post what they've read in these recently, that would be greatly helpful, thanks!

It looks like the Incas fall in the 980s, that could be interesting reading.

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I recently ran across (but haven't read, or even looked at in detail) The Last Days of the Incas, which is 985. It looks pretty interesting from my cursory investigation.

I've heard good things about, but haven't read yet, Mapmaker's wife which is 981.