The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

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A comprehensive, lyrically told and personal account of the Viking Age….No other history of the Vikings is as vibrant or expands the scope of the Viking world to encompass not just landscapes, but mindscapes.”— Times Literary Supplement This book has kept me company as I travel to work and while working at home on my little craft business. I have been a norse pagan for nearly 30 years and all perspectives are always sort after. This is a rather comprehensive work, looking into the amazing wide world of the differing viking societies, the religion, the transition to Christianity, how far their global reach truly was. It is great for the curious-about-viking away from the romantic notions and myths about a people who were well organised, inventive and intelligent, building up trading networks, social and political structures, some that would be found abhorrent by todays standards, but, no culture was perfect all those centuries ago. They have truly left their mark on the world with beautiful art and crafts, language, morality, politics etc but, retain that element of mystery as archeology is still to uncover more and interpretation found. Another thing of major value here is that Neil Price does not do what so many scholars before him have done; he doesn't separate things into different arenas. This book makes it clear that the same people conquering Iceland and sailing to North America were also present in Russia at the same. This is of great importance to a beginner in this time period, in my opinion. And there's that tall one again, good-looking despite the scar, with the gold-hilted blade (which he didn't have last year). This is the third ship he's sailed with, and he's got another stripe on his teeth. Ignore that frightened girl he brought home with him--that's just to be expected, and anyway she can't even speak the language; and he does keep looking at you. But you'll be the judge of where that might lead." Pirate "sea-kings" with their armies arise in southwest Norway in the 8th century. pp. 299–. Some of the agricultural-elite Norwegians settled Iceland, beginning around 870 CE, to escape pirate rule. Harald Finehair (circa 850–932) ruled Norway circa 872–930. pp. 303, 378.

It is full of meticulous accounts of the specifics of early medieval Scandinavian daily life ... beautifully evocative, engaging and thought-provoking ... It is impossible not to admire the breadth and range of this book's discussion of Viking material culture. Eleanor Parker, History Today

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There is a remarkable glimpse of how this worked in practice through a document known as *Heliand*, "The Saviour". Written in Old Saxon during the first half of the ninth century, it is a paraphrase of the gospel for a Germanic audience, tweaked for their sensibilities and pitched almost as a Norse saga though with Biblical heroes. Thus we read of Jesus's birth in Galileeland, his later travels to Jerusalemburg, and how the Lord lives in a great hall in the sky (clearly Valholl). The Lord's Prayer is in 'secret runes', Peter is given command over the gates of Hel (with one L, and so on. Satan's temptation of Christ takes place in a northern wilderness filled with vague forces, 'powerful beings' that seem to live among the trees, and one wonders what this implies of the traditional Northern beliefs that were known to the Christian clerics. By the same token, Jesus's disciples are 'warrior-companions', framed in the language of a warlord's retinue, and the Last Supper is teh 'final mead-hall feast.' Even God is called by Odinnic epithets such as 'Victory-Chieftain' and 'All-Ruler'.

Price brings an enthusiastic, encyclopaedic knowledge to the Viking Age.... ChildrenofAshand Elmwill reward the casual reader as well as serve the serious student looking for a better understandingofwho the Vikings were, what drove them,andthe effects they had on the world around them.” This history takes us deep into the lives - and deaths - of the Vikings ... What surprised me about The Children of Ash and Elm is the extent to which recent archaeological discovery is transforming our picture of the Vikings from the inside. Price, who has spent several decades in ancient cesspits and the remains of Norse workshops, is superbly qualified to understand the significance of what is being unearthed, analysed and dated, and conveys a sense of excitement about just how much is being learnt David Aaronovitch, The Times Door deze ervaring en kennis kan hij een levendig beeld schetsen van de Vikingwereld, ondanks dat dit toch als een wetenschappelijk boek kan gezien worden. De schrijver doet duidelijk veel moeite om zijn werk zo toegankelijk mogelijk te maken, zonder in te boeten op kwaliteit: er zijn verschillende foto’s toegevoegd, alsook een aantal pagina’s in kleurendruk, en daarnaast zijn er verschillende Vikingroddels en allerhande verhalen in opgenomen (legendes, vertalingen van Runen uit het dagelijkse leven, …), wat de geschiedenis concreter en dichterbij brengt. Ook zijn vertelstijl is vlot, en met hier en daar een vleugje humor. I do not recommend the audiobook read by Samuel Roukin. I’ve lived in Sweden for much of my life. Roukin’s pronunciation of Scandinavian words is completely off. I had to continually ask myself what he might be referring to. Most of the time I could guess, but not always! Simple words are mispronounced. This was extremely annoying. He even got French words wrong. One star for the narration. A narrator with some knowledge of Scandinavian words and places should have been chosen to read this book. However, since Price is an archaeologist, he’s on less sure ground when it comes to the interpretation of textual evidence. There were more than a few times when I doodled question marks in the margins because I wasn’t quite convinced by his use of the literary or documentary evidence. The claim that the Norse gods made sacrifices to some other, mysterious, higher deities appears to be based on a misreading of the Hávamál, for instance; Price’s reading of Ibn Fadlan on the Rus’ seems overly positivistic/simplistic. ( Judith Jesch takes a deeper dive into some of the source issues over at her blog.) You can sometimes see Price leaning ever so slightly towards what makes the better story than the likelier truth. I also found the organisation of the last third of the book to be somewhat jumbled, with chapters whose titles didn’t quite match their topics and whose overarching goals perhaps weren’t as clearly defined as they could be.

In the unlikely event you only read one history book in 2020, the new book by Neil Price on The History of the Vikings should be it.

Given the spotlight Price throws on all that was seen and unseen in the Viking world, it is appropriate that he dedicates the book to the “ fylgjur, all of them”. These were the ancestral guardians of a family, inherited down the generations, guiding their descendants’ every move. On whatever level this dedication is interpreted, one suspects that Price has made the fylgjur very proud. 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 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.