Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings -- Neil Price - Hardcover
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 Eir k Bloodaxe, who fought his way to a kingdom, to Gudrid Thorbjarnard ttir, the most traveled woman in the world, Children of Ash and Elm is the definitive history of the Vikings and their time.
Author: Neil Price
Publisher: Basic Books
Binding Type: Hardcover
Size: 9.50h x 6.20w x 2.00d
Kirkus Reviews 03/15/2020 pg. 92
Publishers Weekly 04/13/2020
Library Journal 05/01/2020 pg. 128
Shelf Awareness 09/04/2020
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.