The Man Who Came Early

"The Man Who Came Early" is a 1956 science fiction short story by American author Poul Anderson. It follows a 20th-century United States Army soldier who is transported to 10th-century Iceland. Similar in some respects to Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall, Anderson's story sharply differs from Twain and de Camp's in his treatment of the "primitive" society in which the time traveler finds himself and his assessment of a modern person's chances of survival in such a society.