Children of Ash and Elm

This new book is the best one-volume history of the Vikings and the Viking Age available. It sometimes reads like a thrilling novel, taking the reader deep into this mysterious and often misunderstood world.

Price explodes many misconceptions about the Viking Age and the people who lived in it while presenting fantastic new information in the fields of archeology, history, and literature to give us a clearer picture of the time.

It’s an absolute must-read for anyone interested in Norse history, spirituality, and culture and was invaluable background reading for my book.  

Children of Ash and Elm is a very engaging overview of the culture of the Scandinavians in the Viking Age.

It’s written by a leading archaeologist in the field and is conveyed in an engaging and informative manner—this is not a dry textbook.

Featuring information based on the latest discoveries, this is the book to read if you want to get inside the Viking mentality in the most factually accurate way we have possible today.

This very readable non-fiction is an account of how the people we call the Vikings lived and why they went a’viking.

Historian Neil Price describes in an easy-to-comprehend manner the Scandinavian world of long ago – when gods, spirits, and humans co-existed in a brutal axe-age. The author explains strange superstitions and how the belief in supernatural beings affected daily life.

Readers also learn about the terrible climate catastrophe that made northern lands virtually uninhabitable, and where Viking explorers sailed to in search of fertile land and treasure. My own family background gives me a strong connection to this… show more.

It’s impossible to separate Orkney’s history from the Vikings and the mark they left on the culture and settlement of the land. While Price’s book doesn’t focus specifically on Orkney, it does offer a detailed look into the impact Vikings had on numerous regions, especially during the greatest period of Scandinavian expansion and their maritime power. I appreciated Price's focus on the context of the world the Vikings existed in, which grounded the research in something other than romanticized hero worship. A true heavy haul of a book, but worth every second spent reading and cross-referencing.

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. 

The newest book on the list, Price doesn’t just deal with the what and when of the Viking phenomenon, he seeks to understand the how and why. The result is a fascination exploration of the Norse mind, that rivals any journey on a longship.

Neil Price holds the Chair of Archaeology at Uppsala University in Sweden. He is currently running a major 10-year project, The Viking Phenomenon, which explores the nature and causes of the Viking Age, with a focus on themes that have featured in Price’s earlier research, including Viking belief systems, the role of slavery, and how far Viking armies were pirate communities. In this major new work, he draws upon the latest archaeological evidence to provide a tremendous overview and new insights into how the Vikings may have seen themselves, descendents of the first human couple, the children of Ash and… show more.

This is another door-stopper of a book from Professor Price. It begins before the Viking Age, with the development of a “gangster culture”, probably exacerbated by the volcanic eruptions of the mid-sixth century, which may have killed off 50% of the population of Scandinavia: the “Fimbulwinter” of Norse myth. Most such histories are based on the accounts of the Vikings’ victims. This one sees the Vikings as they saw themselves. 

In the last 20 years, archaeology has overturned our understanding of the Viking world. We know now that it wasn’t dominated by white men. Instead, it was “strongly multi-cultural and multi-ethnic,” writes Neil Price in Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings (Basic Books, 2020).

The Viking world was violent to the extreme, but also strangely tolerant. Most of all, its economy was based on slavery. Vikings weren’t raiders or traders, as previous histories argue: They were slavers.

Price has been involved in many of the archaeological studies on which this book is based. He speaks from… show more.