Neil S. Price Books
Neil S. Price is a British archaeologist and professor specializing in the Viking Age and Scandinavian prehistory.
Known for: Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Books by Neil S. Price
Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings is not just another retelling of raids, longships, and famous warrior kings. Neil S. Price uses archaeology, literature, material culture, and comparative history to reconstruct the Viking Age from the inside out. Rather than asking only what the Vikings did, he asks how they understood the world: what they feared, valued, worshipped, traded, built, and imagined. The result is a sweeping portrait of a society that was mobile, violent, creative, hierarchical, spiritually complex, and deeply connected to landscapes both real and mythic. What makes this book especially important is its refusal to reduce the Vikings to stereotypes. Price shows them as settlers, merchants, poets, craftspeople, slavers, ritual specialists, explorers, and political actors living in a world shaped by kinship, cosmology, ambition, and constant negotiation with outsiders. His authority comes from decades of leading scholarship in Viking archaeology and pre-Christian Scandinavian belief. For readers who want a richer and more accurate understanding of the Viking world, this book offers one of the most vivid and intellectually serious accounts available.
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Landscape Shaped Viking Possibility
A people’s environment does not simply surround them; it teaches them what is possible. Price begins by showing that Viking society cannot be understood without Scandinavia itself: a fractured geography of mountains, forests, islands, fjords, harsh winters, and long coastlines. These conditions enco...
From Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
The Norse Lived Inside Myth
Mythology was not entertainment added to Viking life; it was part of the structure of reality. Price emphasizes that Norse cosmology offered an interpretive map of existence, populated by gods, giants, land-spirits, ancestors, and unseen forces. Yggdrasil, Ragnarök, Odin’s quests, Thor’s violence, a...
From Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Status, Gender, and Social Complexity
Simple labels like 'free' and 'unfree' hide more than they reveal. Price presents Viking society as sharply stratified yet fluid in important ways. There were elites, farmers, craftspeople, traders, slaves, and people occupying ambiguous positions between categories. Honor and reputation mattered in...
From Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Kingship Was Built Through Networks
Early Viking politics was less like a modern state and more like a contest over loyalty, legitimacy, and performance. Price shows that kings were not all-powerful rulers presiding over fixed national territories. Their authority often depended on personal followings, gift exchange, military success,...
From Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Trade Linked the Viking World
The Vikings were feared raiders, but they were also master connectors. Price demonstrates that the Viking Age was built on movement through trade networks stretching from the North Atlantic to the Islamic world and from Arctic zones to the rivers leading toward Byzantium. Silver, furs, walrus ivory,...
From Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Raiding Was Organized Social Violence
Viking violence was real, but it was neither random nor the whole story. Price argues that raiding should be understood as a structured social practice tied to status, opportunity, political competition, and cultural ideals. Raids generated wealth, slaves, prestige, and stories. They trained groups ...
From Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
About Neil S. Price
Neil S. Price is a British archaeologist and professor specializing in the Viking Age and Scandinavian prehistory. He is known for his extensive fieldwork and scholarship on Norse religion, warfare, and social structures, and has published widely on the archaeology of the North.
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Neil S. Price is a British archaeologist and professor specializing in the Viking Age and Scandinavian prehistory.
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