Why did I love this book?
Neil Price was recommended to me by Marissa Lingen, a fellow science fiction author of Nordic descent with a passionate interest in Scandinavian history, and she was absolutely right. I have another of his books, The Viking Way, on my queue right now.
Price manages to unify archaeology, climate history, written history, and present a sweeping synthesis of the cultures and migrations of the Nordic countries in the late Iron Age and early Medieval period that brings alive individuals and motivations without descending into glorification. He makes the historical Viking culture real and present, makes plain the driving forces behind Viking expansion and their network of trade and reaving--but he doesn't excuse its atrocities. He manages to discuss the archaeological evidence without falling into the trap of presenting Viking navigators as nearly supernatural beings, and he doesn't shy away from 20th-century cultural appropriation of this history by fascists.
This is an excellent overall book that makes plain cultural drives for renown and the intimacy and personal integration with which the Viking world viewed its gods and spirits. It gives a good sense of Nordic fatalism and the idea that fate--wyrd--is not negotiable, but that we are in charge of how we meet that destiny, and that is what we ought to be remembered for.
9 authors picked Children of Ash and Elm as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020
'As brilliant a history of the Vikings as one could possibly hope to read' Tom Holland
The 'Viking Age' is traditionally held to begin in June 793 when Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, and to end in September 1066, when King Harald Hardrada of Norway died leading the charge against the English line at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. This book, the most wide-ranging and comprehensive assessment of the current state of our knowledge, takes a refreshingly different view. It shows that the Viking expansion began generations before the…