Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

by Neil Price

Overview

The definitive history of the Vikings — from arts and culture to politics and cosmology — by a distinguished archaeologist with decades of expertise



The Viking Age — from 750 to 1050 — saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture.


Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology and religion, their material world. Known today for a stereotype of maritime violence, the Vikings exported new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and practices to the lands they discovered and the peoples they encountered, and in the process were themselves changed. From Eirík Bloodaxe, who fought his way to a kingdom, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most traveled woman in the world, Children of Ash and Elm is the definitive history of the Vikings and their time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465096985
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	08/25/2020
Pages:	624
Sales rank:	4,754
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.30(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

Neil Price is distinguished professor and chair of archaeology at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has been researching, teaching, and writing on the Vikings for nearly thirty-five years and is the author of several books on the history of the Viking Age. He lives in Sweden.

Editorial Reviews

04/13/2020

Archaeologist Price (The Viking Way) leaves no stone unturned in this exhaustive chronicle of the ancient Scandinavian peoples collectively known as the Vikings. Drawing on discoveries made at archaeological digs and burial sites across Europe, as well as medieval sources including the Icelandic sagas of Snorri Sturluson and the observations of Arab traders, Price pushes back against romanticized notions of Viking culture that originated during the Enlightenment. He focuses instead on more material concerns, delivering extended discussions on jewelry found in graves, shipbuilding, alcohol consumption, and gender roles, including an unexpected queer reading of Viking relationships. The infamous Viking funeral (not nearly as prevalent as popular culture imagines, according to Price) is described in horrifying detail, as are raids on the English and Irish coasts that left monasteries and villages devastated. Price also documents Viking exploration of Iceland, Greenland, and Canada, and notes that some warriors made it as far east as Constantinople, where they served as guards to the Byzantine emperor. Though the writing occasionally falters under the weight of accumulated archaeological minutiae, the breadth and thoroughness of Price’s research impresses. Readers interested in Viking culture should consider this monumental history a must-read. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"A thrilling read....The stereotype of the Viking that we know from history books and popular media is here dismantled and presented anew by Mr. Price in all its wonderful, terrifying complexity and ambiguity. By clarifying the long-reaching effects of Scandinavian influence, Children of Ash and Elm brings a dramatically altered understanding of the Viking Age to a wider international audience."—Wall Street Journal

"As Neil Price shows in his colorful, revelatory new book, we are almost always looking at the Vikings the wrong way around.... He may know more about medieval Scandinavia than anyone else alive, and he aims to show us these fascinating people as they saw themselves, not as they were perceived by those on the sharp end of their robbery.... Thousands of books have been published about the Vikings — this is one of the very best."—Sunday Times (UK)

“Scholarly, colourful and often remarkably funny, this is history at its very best, a richly decorated window on to a very strange world.”—The Times (UK), Best History Book of the Year

“Not only a leading authority on the period, Price is also a wonderful writer, by turns philosophical, witty, lyrical and poignant. He possesses both an archaeologist’s ability to interpret large quantities of scholarship and data, and the skill to translate it creatively. His vivid prose illuminates both the physical and the psychological dimensions of the early medieval north, while at the same time leaving space for uncertainty: the possibility of future discoveries and theories that will alter the picture yet again…. The writing hums with life as Price summons up the voices of the past.”—Guardian

"I fell in love with Neil Price's comprehensive new history of the Vikings.... [Price] hits major high points, while also introducing nonspecialists to the major questions that those who know a lot about Vikings still consider unresolved.... Dazzle[s] the reader with cinematic detail."—Slate

“A wide-ranging and engaging account of the Viking Age. Never shirking from the cruelties enacted by the Vikings, Price has a knack for picking up on prosaic details to tell a bold story of a society dramatically different from our own.”—Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, History Today

"As vivid as it is learned, as thrillingly cutting edge as it is deep-rooted in the distant past, this is as brilliant a history of the Vikings as one could possibly hope to read."—Tom Holland, author of Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World

"Neil Price offers a spirited account of the Vikings from unexpected angles, and brilliantly succeeds in seeing the world from their perspective rather than from that of the people whose lands suffered from Viking raids. He shows that this was a world in which gods, spirits and humans co-existed and one in which the savagery of warfare was counter-balanced by peaceful settlement as far away as Greenland and briefly North America."—David Abulafia, professor emeritus of Mediterranean history, University of Cambridge, and author of The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans

"Elegantly conceived, constantly surprising...With clarity and verve, Price examines various aspects of Viking society...An exemplary history that gives a nuanced view of a society long reduced to a few clichés."—Kirkus (starred review)

"The breadth and thoroughness of Price's research impresses. Readers interested in Viking culture should consider this monumental history a must-read."—Publishers Weekly

"An immense undertaking from an expert who has studied the Vikings for almost 35 years, this is a masterful piece of work that seeks to present the historical Vikings as distinct from the caricatures of pop culture.... An engaging and engrossing read. Exhaustively researched using cross-disciplinary resources, this breathtaking, epic history will appeal to all types of readers."—Library Journal

"Majestic.... Children of Ash and Elm illuminates the brutal realities of Viking raids, of course, but its revelatory power comes from its focus on the culture that built and launched those ships, an industrial feat more impressive than the pillaging.... Price's stripping away of Viking cliché still leaves warriors worthy of the songs — they're just people now, too."—Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

05/01/2020

Price (archaeology, Uppsala Univ., Sweden; The Viking Way) sets out to uncover Vikings myths and legends in order to create a nuanced view of the Viking Age (750–1050 CE). Using research taken from across various disciplines, such as archaeology, sociology, and economics, Price attempts to get at how the Vikings viewed themselves and how they reshaped the world. An immense undertaking from an expert who has studied the Vikings for almost 35 years, this is a masterful piece of work that seeks to present the historical Vikings as distinct from the caricatures of pop culture. Separated into three sections focusing on how the Vikings viewed themselves from gender identities to burial rites; to the Viking phenomenon itself of raids and expansion; and finally, to the transformations of both themselves and the world at the end of the era, this is an engaging and engrossing read. VERDICT Exhaustively researched using cross-disciplinary resources, this breathtaking, epic history will appeal to all types of readers.—Laura Hiatt, Fort Collins, CO

Library Journal

★ 2020-02-24
A fresh history of the Vikings and their world.

The Vikings, writes Uppsala University archaeologist Price, whose books include The Viking Way, were “as individually varied as every reader of this book.” Yet, he adds, it’s possible to advance some generalizations about them. They regarded the world as a hostile place to be met with violence that was supernaturally empowered by their gods. The Vikings thought of themselves as children of the great ash tree Yggdrasill, “the steed of the terrible one,” an epithet for Odin. Over the course of three centuries, they ranged over an impressively large territory in a number of guises, from traders and soldiers to raiders and legendarily ferocious fighters. One Norse woman lived in Greenland, meeting First Peoples, and later visited Rome and met the pope; moving to Iceland after becoming a nun, she was “probably the most traveled woman on the planet.” In this elegantly conceived, constantly surprising narrative, Price charts this evolution. When Viking merchants landed near wealthy British monasteries to attend trade fairs, one of their number, thinking hard about the possibilities, likely turned to his fellows and said something like, “Why don’t we just take it?” So effectively did they put the fear in their targets that the English were soon calling them “slaughter-wolves.” With clarity and verve, Price examines various aspects of Viking society, including the place of women and transgender people on the battlefield and other venues of warrior society; the structure of warrior cults such as the berserkers; what Viking mass burials tell us about the people thus interred; and, especially, the structure of the Viking economy, which was enriched by the widespread application of slavery. The author also considers the last generations of Vikings as pirates whose society, though founded on violence, was also definitively democratic.

An exemplary history that gives a nuanced view of a society long reduced to a few clichés. (16-page color insert; maps)

Kirkus Reviews

Read More