Publishers Weekly
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.)
From the Publisher
"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
“Not the least of Price’s achievement is to rescue Viking history from the grasp of white supremacists who claim a specious lineage with it. He does so not by asserting any sort of moral superiority for the Vikings—theirs was a brutal society that practiced human sacrifice and slavery, as Price makes abundantly clear—but by restoring their rich and strange particularity….I’ll long remember Price’s evocation of the wafer-thin squares of gold, stamped with images of otherworldly beings, that adorned the great halls where visitors drank and fought and recited poetry. Firelight would have animated those static images. Price has done something similar here.”—Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, The Best Books We Read in 2020
“Price, a Sweden-based archaeologist and academic, is adept at bringing this cosmopolitan and brutal world to life, interweaving many complicated strands of history with his own experience in the field along with poetic meditations on a people and time long since passed.” —Rhian Sasseen, Paris Review (Staff Pick)
"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
“A wonderful read, with prose that flows like poetry in places and modern analogs that inspire creative thinking....This volume would make an excellent textbook and a splendid introduction to the world of the Vikings for any reader.” —Science
"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
“Outstanding….This is as much a history of mindsets as of significant names and dates….Price constructs a very human history of the period….Yield[s] new insights into the complex nature of Viking culture.” —Literary Review (UK)
“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
“Copious documentation and the latest archaeological findings gird a new history of the Vikings, which broadens the narrative beyond the violent warrior image. Neil Price explores what is known about Viking society and culture, and its impact on the peoples and lands that were conquered.”—Christian Science Monitor
“Price fleshes out Viking culture, often by focusing on the material realities of their day-to-day lives....What Price attempts to do with Children of Ash and Elm is to strip away the cultural sediment that has built up around the idea of the Vikings and return us to the archaeological record itself....What we’re left with are fewer illusions and a much more interesting mystery.”—Washington Examiner
“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
“Neil Price has spent his career excavating Viking-era artifacts and remains. Now the chair of archeology at the Swedish university at Uppsala, this English-born academic reveals a knack too few in his field share. Over 500 pages of narrative, he skillfully blends extended discussions of the recent finds at settlement and burial sites with his own anecdotes, reflections and investigations.”—Spectrum Culture
“Thorough, readable....Serves as a model for how modern science can add to historical scholarship and storytelling. The research is thoroughly documented and the book well-illustrated.” —New York Journal of Books
“This spectacular book is more than traditional history, as many of its surprising–often strange–revelations about Viking life come not from texts, but archaeology. Price guides us through their vast world, studding his grand narrative with extraordinary details: isotopic identification of Scandinavian skeletons in Russia, silk caps from York and Lincoln probably from the same Byzantine bale, and a candle burning until the air inside a burial chamber ran out.” —BBC Science Focus (UK), Best Books We Read in 2020
“Children of Ash and Elm is the culmination of decades of academic writing and field research by Price. It is a broadly accessible, archaeologically informed account of one of the most deeply mythologized groups in human history.”—Russell Kirk Center
“Capturing the full and rich nuances of the Viking Age, Neil Price's Children of Ash and Elm offers a sweeping account of the famous Scandinavian culture that stretched from North America to the Asian Steppes....Price relies on archeological and textual evidence to move past stereotypes and reveal the Vikings as never before.”—Explore the Archive, 12 Best History Books of 2020
“One of the most comprehensive treatises on the Norse to date….This book brings together a wide body of scholarship that makes the world of the Vikings all the more comprehensible.” —The Explorers Journal
“Price brings an enthusiastic, encyclopaedic knowledge to the Viking Age....Children of Ash and Elm will reward the casual reader as well as serve the serious student looking for a better understanding of who the Vikings were, what drove them, and the effects they had on the world around them.” —Winnipeg Free Press
“A comprehensive and highly readable history of the Vikings.” —Swedish Press
“This book is the closest thing I have found to a time machine. It brilliantly clears the fog of the past from the Viking era. Extremely well written…if you are seeking an accessible, yet definitive and up-to-date book on the Vikings, this is the one you want.” —Norwegian American
"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
"The breadth and thoroughness of Price's research impresses. Readers interested in Viking culture should consider this monumental history a must-read."—Publishers Weekly
"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)
"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
"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
Library Journal
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
Kirkus Reviews
★ 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)
