Inga The Viking Girl — Jacqueline Grant

Inga the Viking Girl is a chapter book written for early readers. It includes two stories about Inga Svensdotter; an eleven-year-old Viking girl who lives with her family in Einersfjord, Greenland. The first story is called Inga Goes A-Viking and it begins with the community at Einersfjord facing a huge problem. They have no food or supplies to repair their homes! The merchant ships that used to visit each year bringing important goods for trade, have stopped coming. The men of the settlement must take drastic action so they resort to the ancient Viking way of getting the goods they need to live⎯going A-Viking or going on a raid. For Inga this is her big chance to get away from her mother's attempts to make her into a lady and escape with the men for an adventure. No more sewing or learning how to cook! Even when her father tells her she cannot go, Inga is not defeated. She knows there must be a way for her to go A-Viking too.



In the second story called Inga Plans a Wedding, Inga tries to help her sister, Anna, who is being forced to marry the worst boy in Einersfjord. Unlike Inga, Anna is the perfect Viking girl. She is good at cooking and her embroidery work is the envy of all the girls in the fjord. Inga, on the other hand, wishes she were a boy. She spends her days wrestling with the boys, practicing her hunting skills, and trying to avoid her mother who is determined to make a lady out of her. Even though they are so different, Inga and her sister are best friends so when the girls find out that their father has made plans for Anna to marry Gorvid, Inga decides she must help her sister. Now Inga needs a plan to stop the wedding before it is too late. But everything she tries fails. Will Gorvid really marry Anna and become Inga's brother-in-law?