Exploring the History of the Vikings: A Journey Through the Lives of Ash and Elm's Children

Val O'Toole: Very keen on history and looking forward to reading this.

United Kingdom on Nov 23, 2023

amelianne: This isn't just a very informative book, it's also beautifully written. Writing about Vikings from a Viking perspective is a bold claim, but I think the author has succeeded in doing just that. I found it fascinating and interesting.

United Kingdom on Nov 21, 2023

Laurenz: A fantastic read, this book’s approach allows you to dive into how Vikings thought, and what their society looked like.
The author is one of the worlds foremost experts on the Vikings, and it shows in how willing he is to write about controversial topics in a very clear way; Viking slavery for example is discussed as the horror it was.

I would recommend this book to anyone fascinated by the Vikings, you are sure to learn something new.

Germany on Nov 15, 2023

Ryan Ahlgrim: It is hard to imagine that one person could know so much about the Vikings. This book is amazingly comprehensive, covering the culture and artifacts of the Vikings like no other book I've read. It deserves much of the praise being heaped upon it. But I found the book curiously deficient in two areas. The chapter covering Viking religion and mythology fails to explain (at least to my satisfaction) the meaning of core concepts such as Yggdrasil (the world tree) and Ragnarök (the final cataclysm and death of the gods). The author seems to assume we are already familiar with Norse mythology and so he doesn't need to explain and explore the meaning of some of its better-known components. (Or perhaps Norse mythology is so diverse and inconsistent, no summary of meaning is possible.) Also missing are narratives about key Viking leaders. This is not a history of the Vikings as seen through the exploits of individual leaders; it's a history of the Vikings as seen through artifacts. One final complaint: despite the author's very readable prose, the detail gets dull and repetitive. The Wall Street Journal review calls the book "a thrilling read." No, it's a slog.

United States on Nov 05, 2023

katrina: Interesting read

Canada on Oct 29, 2023

Cliente 1927: buona introduzione al periodo

Italy on Oct 13, 2023

eric linn: This book was a great read. Filled with loads of information that I had never heard before.

United States on Oct 09, 2023

jan_maliniak: This is a brilliant book, just finished reading it a second time. It's greatest strength is that it does not dumb complicated issues down, does not treat its readership like idiots but it explains them instead in a clear and concise manner that does not strip the ideas from their subtlety. It does not gloss over the destruction the Vikings caused. It discusses in detail how Viking age Scandinavian societies were based on slavery, human trafficking, and sex trafficking in fundamental ways. But it also presents the unbelieveable diversity and scope of Viking age societies, trying to give the reader a peek into the lives of these people a thousand years ago. Neil Price is an archologist and it is the material evidence of the Viking world that informs his thinking and his writing about it. The descriptions and interpretations of burials, settlements, architecture, bits and pieces of everyday life are fascinating.

I don't remember when was the last time I was so thrilled by a book. Stellar work.

United States on Sep 09, 2021

MF: If you, like me, have read many older books on the Viking Age and come away dissatisfied with the proffered hypotheses on why the Vikings exploded out of Scandinavia, then this book is for you. Professor Price's background of the complex political, economic, and social processes that lead the Vikings to expand both East and West, and his description of the impacts of the resulting conflicts, conquests, and diaspora makes for a compelling explanation of what happened. Dr. Price's story is strengthened by his adept blending of differing sources of evidence (archaeological, written, etc.).

With that said, other reviewers' criticisms of Price's musings on the Vikings and LGBTQ lifestyles are valid. Price's seeming attempt to make the Vikings (and perhaps his own career focus?) acceptable to 'woke' academia is an embarrassing and lame waste of page... after page... after page... as he drones on in gushing terms about the possibility that some Vikings were sexual 'explorers'. It seems like he tries to make up for the lack of any supporting evidence by sacrificing more words to the theme.

Oh well. You can easily skip or skim read the queer-themed parts, and enjoy the rest...

United States on Mar 26, 2021

Erik Peterson: This is a good read for those of you who want to learn more about the Vikings and their times from a current archaeological point-of-view.

Scientific measurements are getting more precise and nuanced all the time. Genetic traces can identify ethnicities and genders of persons long dead (A few surprises here), and radiocarbon isotopes can tell you where a person was born and raised, where they lived as an adult, and of course we already know (habeas corpus) where they died.

We also have relatively new insights about the effects of certain natural catastrophies on matters such as climate change - it is now thought that a series of unusually large volcanic eruptions which occurred in the 6th century A.D. in southeastern Asia may have kicked up enough dust around the planet to cause the climate to cool precipitously for up to eighty years - an event which apparently caused a large scale die off of the Scandinavian population due to agricultural collapse, and which was the motivating driver behind the ‘Migration Period’, when northern peoples went south crashing into the Roman frontier in order to survive the cold-induced famine.

The author also has some...

United States on Oct 25, 2020