A new history of the Vikings - told from their own perspective rather than that of their victims.
Neil Price holds the Chair of Archaeology at Uppsala University, Sweden, where he has also been appointed Distinguished Professor by the Swedish Research Council. A leading expert on the Viking Age, his fieldwork, teaching and research have taken him to more than forty countries. Neil is a Fellow of learned academies in Britain and Scandinavia, including Sweden's oldest, the Royal Society of Sciences; in 2017 it awarded him the Thureus Prize for his lifetime achievements in Viking studies. His publications have appeared in sixteen languages, and he is a frequent consultant and contributor to television and film.
Everybody thinks they know the Vikings, but Neil Price's magical
book casts them in an entirely new light ... Scholarly,
colourful and often remarkably funny, this is history at its very
best, a richly decorated window on to a very strange world. --
Dominic Sandbrook and Gerard De Groot * The Times Books of the Year
*
as Neil Price shows in his colourful, revelatory new book, we are
almost always looking at the Vikings the wrong way around. Price is
one of the world's foremost experts on the Vikings and holds the
chair of archaeology at Uppsala University ... 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. -- Dan Jones * Sunday Times *
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 *
a book that offers delight after delight ... lyrical, unnerving,
specific, and passionately uncertain, all at once ...
Throughout this book are glorious collections of Viking facts that
are technically known yet still resist our best attempts at
interpretation ... Price has a talent for evoking the Vikings'
physical surroundings as they might have been - a gift for
recreation that's probably natural for an archaeologist
accustomed to eking significance from the smallest bit of disturbed
dirt ... To convey such a deep sense of scholarly indeterminacy,
all while dazzling the reader with cinematic detail-this is, truly,
a feat. -- Rebecca Onion * Slate Magazine *
a thrilling read ... His clear, engaging style introduces us
to the Scandinavian communities of the eighth and ninth centuries,
centered around the farmstead, before catapulting us overseas and
outward into an expanding world where raiding and trading quickly
boosted the wealth of individuals and the ambitions of the elites.
... 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. -- Karin Altenberg * Wall Street Journal *
This is a comprehensive, lyrically told and personal account of
the Viking Age, the product of more than thirty years of experience
as a leading archaeologist and researcher. Many books assess
the "Viking achievement". The Children of Ash and Elm
examines instead who the Vikings were, how they saw themselves and
why they did what they did ... no other history of the Vikings
is as vibrant or expands the scope of the Viking world to encompass
not just landscapes, but mindscapes. -- Jane Kershaw * Times
Literary Supplement *
a very human history of the period, one that is by turns
illuminating, surprising and even moving ... much of the beauty of
Price work is in its qualitative, sometimes subjective nature, even
while it remains a meticulously researched, rigorous piece of
scholarship. -- Eleanor Barraclough * Literary Review *
The question that this dark, brilliantly written and absorbing book
asks is: who were these people and where did this violence come
from?...The powerful and unsettling message of this book is that
they never went home. These strange, vicious people are our
forebears. They never went home. -- Jay Elwes * Spectator *
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 *
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. -- Terje Birkedal * The Norwegian American *
Neil Price's The Children of Ash and Elm is an
illuminating and insightful tour of the Viking era; his
narrative is composed from his obvious expertise, and his utter
passion. He loves this subject and he wants to invite the reader to
share his enthusiasm ... Compelling, engaging, insightful and
informative ... we couldn't hope for a more entertaining or
enlightening guide - Neil Price has given us an exceptional book,
and it is one to be treasured. -- Caroline Spalding * Yorkshire
Times *
Price 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 * The Paris Review *
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