Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

Fascinating book about Viking history

A very interesting book that helps dismantle the stereotypical Viking image.

Traditionally, the Viking Age is considered to be from the year 793, when Vikings attacked the monastery in Lindisfarne, to the death of Harald Hardråde at the Battle of Stamford Bridge in the year 1066.

In this book, the renowned archaeologist Neil Price takes a new look at this view. Price shows that the Vikings’ expansion started several generations before the Lindisfarne attack, and goes back a century to find the roots of the ‘viking’ phenomenon.

The story takes the reader across the whole of the Vikings’ uplands – from Vinland in today’s Canada to Constantinople – yes, all the way to contact points in China. In particular, Price takes us inside Norse thought and the spiritual world. In this large, new standard work, he cuts through centuries of established knowledge in search of the Vikings’ self-image as the descendants of the first people on earth: Ash and Embla.