Towards the end of the ninth century, Norwegians began settling in Iceland, and until the 13th-century, did not recognize the king of Norway as their ruler. Also in the 13th and 14th centuries, Icelanders wrote sagas portraying those centuries, and Boulhosa examines those sagas, along with annals, legal documents, and diplomatic letters to investigate how the different sources describe and interpret the relation between the Norwegian kings and Icelanders. She finds, especially in the legal texts but to a lesser extent in the sagas as well, evidence that 13th-century Icelanders were not so free from the influence of the Norwegian crown as scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries have supposed, and that the basis of the relations was a continuous process of negotiation both of the rights and obligations of Icelanders and of the status of their relationship to the king. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)