Neil Price is distinguished professor and chair of archaeology at Uppsala University, Sweden. He has been researching, teaching, and writing on the Vikings for nearly thirty-five years and is the author of several books on the history of the Viking Age. He lives in Sweden.
"A profound meditation on culture, ritual and what it means to be
human."--Allegra Goodman, The Week
"A thrilling read....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. By clarifying the long-reaching effects of Scandinavian
influence, Children of Ash and Elm brings a dramatically altered
understanding of the Viking Age to a wider international
audience."--Wall Street Journal
"An immense undertaking from an expert who has studied the Vikings
for almost 35 years, this is a masterful piece of work that seeks
to present the historical Vikings as distinct from the caricatures
of pop culture.... An engaging and engrossing read. Exhaustively
researched using cross-disciplinary resources, this breathtaking,
epic history will appeal to all types of readers."--Library
Journal
"As vivid as it is learned, as thrillingly cutting edge as it is
deep-rooted in the distant past, this is as brilliant a history of
the Vikings as one could possibly hope to read."--Tom Holland,
author of Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the
World
"As Neil Price shows in his colorful, revelatory new book, we are
almost always looking at the Vikings the wrong way around.... 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."--Sunday Times (UK)
"Elegantly conceived, constantly surprising...With clarity and
verve, Price examines various aspects of Viking society...An
exemplary history that gives a nuanced view of a society long
reduced to a few clichés."--Kirkus (starred review)
"I fell in love with Neil Price's comprehensive new history of the
Vikings.... [Price] hits major high points, while also introducing
nonspecialists to the major questions that those who know a lot
about Vikings still consider unresolved.... Dazzle[s] the reader
with cinematic detail."--Slate
"Majestic.... Children of Ash and Elm illuminates the brutal
realities of Viking raids, of course, but its revelatory power
comes from its focus on the culture that built and launched those
ships, an industrial feat more impressive than the pillaging....
Price's stripping away of Viking cliché still leaves warriors
worthy of the songs -- they're just people now, too."--Shelf
Awareness
"Neil Price offers a spirited account of the Vikings from
unexpected angles, and brilliantly succeeds in seeing the world
from their perspective rather than from that of the people whose
lands suffered from Viking raids. He shows that this was a world in
which gods, spirits and humans co-existed and one in which the
savagery of warfare was counter-balanced by peaceful settlement as
far away as Greenland and briefly North America."--David Abulafia,
professor emeritus of Mediterranean history, University of
Cambridge, and author of The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the
Oceans
"The breadth and thoroughness of Price's research impresses.
Readers interested in Viking culture should consider this
monumental history a must-read."--Publishers Weekly
"Not the least of Price's achievement is to rescue Viking history
from the grasp of white supremacists who claim a specious lineage
with it. He does so not by asserting any sort of moral superiority
for the Vikings--theirs was a brutal society that practiced human
sacrifice and slavery, as Price makes abundantly clear--but by
restoring their rich and strange particularity....I'll long
remember Price's evocation of the wafer-thin squares of gold,
stamped with images of otherworldly beings, that adorned the great
halls where visitors drank and fought and recited poetry. Firelight
would have animated those static images. Price has done something
similar here."--Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, The Best Books We
Read in 2020
"A wonderful read, with prose that flows like poetry in places and
modern analogs that inspire creative thinking....This volume would
make an excellent textbook and a splendid introduction to the world
of the Vikings for any reader."
--Science
"Children of Ash and Elm is the culmination of decades of academic
writing and field research by Price. It is a broadly accessible,
archaeologically informed account of one of the most deeply
mythologized groups in human history."--Russell Kirk Center
"A comprehensive and highly readable history of the Vikings."
--Swedish Press
"Capturing the full and rich nuances of the Viking Age, Neil
Price's Children of Ash and Elm offers a sweeping account of the
famous Scandinavian culture that stretched from North America to
the Asian Steppes....Price relies on archeological and textual
evidence to move past stereotypes and reveal the Vikings as never
before."--Explore the Archive, 12 Best History Books of 2020
"Copious documentation and the latest archaeological findings gird
a new history of the Vikings, which broadens the narrative beyond
the violent warrior image. Neil Price explores what is known about
Viking society and culture, and its impact on the peoples and lands
that were conquered."--Christian Science Monitor
"One of the most comprehensive treatises on the Norse to
date....This book brings together a wide body of scholarship that
makes the world of the Vikings all the more comprehensible."
--The Explorers Journal
"Outstanding....This is as much a history of mindsets as of
significant names and dates....Price constructs a very human
history of the period....Yield[s] new insights into the complex
nature of Viking culture."
--Literary Review (UK)
"Price brings an enthusiastic, encyclopaedic knowledge to the
Viking Age....Children of Ash and Elm will reward the casual reader
as well as serve the serious student looking for a better
understanding of who the Vikings were, what drove them, and the
effects they had on the world around them."
--Winnipeg Free Press
"Price fleshes out Viking culture, often by focusing on the
material realities of their day-to-day lives....What Price attempts
to do with Children of Ash and Elm is to strip away the cultural
sediment that has built up around the idea of the Vikings and
return us to the archaeological record itself....What we're left
with are fewer illusions and a much more interesting
mystery."--Washington Examiner
"Price, a Sweden-based archaeologist and academic, 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, Paris Review (Staff Pick)
"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."
--Norwegian American
"This spectacular book is more than traditional history, as many of
its surprising-often strange-revelations about Viking life come not
from texts, but archaeology. Price guides us through their vast
world, studding his grand narrative with extraordinary details:
isotopic identification of Scandinavian skeletons in Russia, silk
caps from York and Lincoln probably from the same Byzantine bale,
and a candle burning until the air inside a burial chamber ran
out."
--BBC Science Focus (UK), Best Books We Read in 2020
"Thorough, readable....Serves as a model for how modern science can
add to historical scholarship and storytelling. The research is
thoroughly documented and the book well-illustrated."
--New York Journal of Books
"A comprehensive, lyrically told and personal account of the Viking
Age....No other history of the Vikings is as vibrant or expands the
scope of the Viking world to encompass not just landscapes, but
mindscapes."--Times Literary Supplement
"Neil Price has spent his career excavating Viking-era artifacts
and remains. Now the chair of archeology at the Swedish university
at Uppsala, this English-born academic reveals a knack too few in
his field share. Over 500 pages of narrative, he skillfully blends
extended discussions of the recent finds at settlement and burial
sites with his own anecdotes, reflections and
investigations."--Spectrum Culture
"A wide-ranging and engaging account of the Viking Age. Never
shirking from the cruelties enacted by the Vikings, Price has a
knack for picking up on prosaic details to tell a bold story of a
society dramatically different from our own."--Jóhanna Katrín
Friðriksdóttir, History Today
"Not only a leading authority on the period, Price is also a
wonderful writer, by turns philosophical, witty, lyrical and
poignant. He possesses both an archaeologist's ability to interpret
large quantities of scholarship and data, and the skill to
translate it creatively. His vivid prose illuminates both the
physical and the psychological dimensions of the early medieval
north, while at the same time leaving space for uncertainty: the
possibility of future discoveries and theories that will alter the
picture yet again.... The writing hums with life as Price summons
up the voices of the past."--Guardian
"Scholarly, colourful and often remarkably funny, this is history
at its very best, a richly decorated window on to a very strange
world."--The Times (UK), Best History Book of the Year
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