A fascinating, wide-ranging history that looks beyond the conquests and goes inside the Norse mind, summoning up the voices of the past
Scholars, like Vikings, can be a belligerent crowd. As Neil Price notes in the opening pages of Children of Ash and Elm, the field of Viking studies is “occasionally convulsed by … squabbles”, particularly between those specialising in textual sources and their colleagues who focus on material evidence. While Price the archaeologist falls into the latter camp, the beauty of his book is his ability to move across the disciplines. An expert synthesiser, he brings together much of the latest historical and archaeological research in order to illuminate the Viking world in all its chronological and geographical expanse.
If the merits of the book ended here, it would still be well worth the read as the latest word in Viking age history. However, Price’s aim is more ambitious: to present the Vikings on their own terms, through their sense of self and their psychological relationship to the world. This is no easy task, but he is a past master of getting inside the Norse mind: a previous book, The Viking Way, was a groundbreaking study of Scandinavian paganism in the late iron age. As well as the what and when of the Viking phenomenon, Price seeks to understand the how and why.