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.
As might be expected, this is an approach that demands subtle thinking. He observes the Vikings “as if through a prism, each turn of the glass producing new people, new reflections. Everyone had their own identity – their self-image – and its outward projection; some of them were familiar to us, others frighteningly alien”. Such an approach has strong modern-day resonances: a multi-gendered, multi-ethnic account of the era that embraces diversity in the mental landscapes of human nature, telling a story of cultural transformations and influences criss-crossing in many directions. Yet equally Price is no apologist, and never shies away from the “horrendous” conditions that many experienced, including horrifying levels of violence, entrenched patriarchal oppression and human enslavement as the driving force that powered much of society.
Price begins by examining the Vikings’ sense of their place in the world (“Viking”, in this context, refers to the general populace rather than the seaborne raiders with whom the term originates). He explores how they might have understood the qualities of personhood, the intricacies of gender and the cosmos as a whole, including religious beliefs and practices. From here, he begins to trace the sociopolitical developments that came together to spark the Viking phenomenon. The causes and origins of the Viking age are still relatively obscure and poorly understood; perhaps more than any scholar before him, Price skilfully navigates the “intersecting streams in Scandinavian society” that began to converge in the later decades of the 8th century, tracing them all the way back to their source. In seeking the deeper origins of the Viking age, he deftly connects different times and places all the way back to the fall of the western Roman empire.
What follows in subsequent chapters is the progression from raiding to invasions, conquests and settlements, in the context of the piratical sea-kings and large-scale trading networks that were opening up across the world. By the end of the book, we have reached Iceland, Greenland and the North American seaboard, not to mention Constantinople, Russia and the Middle East. The dangers of such a big-picture synthesis cannot always be completely avoided; no wonder that Price himself calls the task a “daunting prospect” and speaks of “snapshots and brief visits in different times and places”. On occasion, specific source difficulties – particularly in the textual record – can get glossed over, and regional differences elided. In the final few chapters, there is perhaps less of the vigour and sparkle that characterises the book as a whole, although what remains is still a strong account of the latest historical research.
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. Nor is he afraid to face up to the absences and random gaps in the source material (such as what their music sounded like), and the confusions and inconsistencies that come from dealing with human nature.
The writing hums with life as Price summons up the voices of the past. (On the Gotland picture stones: “That’s my father, and there’s his father, and the weathered stone by the brook is my great-grandfather. We’ve always been here, and when my time comes, I know what my story will show.”) He includes evocative, often humorous explorations of the pagan myths. (On the god Odin: “He will probably sleep with your wife or, just possibly, your husband.”) There are also comical asides to the scholarly debates. (Price imagines monks leaning over a monastery wall watching the raiders approach, pondering: “What do you think, are they warriors, or more like militia?”) Enjoyably loose definitions also appear alongside the scholarly rigour. (He bases his own personal definition of what constitutes a “town” on his appalling sense of direction: if he could get lost in it, it’s probably a town.)
The book contains many wonderful little details, some so tiny and precise that, as if witnessing a magic trick, the reader is left wondering just how the archaeologists managed to conjure them from the earth: a grave from 10th-century Denmark where the body was laid out in a coffin with an enormous wax candle placed on top, which carried on burning in the dark until the oxygen was gone. Others feel more like staged clues to a murder mystery: a boatload of dead Swedish warriors, their bodies strewn with gaming pieces, and the “king” gaming piece inserted into the mouth of one of the men. Yet others are testament to the remarkable coincidences and connections that make up history: two fragments of silk from two women’s hair caps, one discovered in York, the other in Lincoln, which thanks to a fault in the weave can be traced to the same bale of Persian (or perhaps Chinese) silk.
Given the spotlight Price throws on all that was seen and unseen in the Viking world, it is appropriate that he dedicates the book to the “fylgjur, all of them”. These were the ancestral guardians of a family, inherited down the generations, guiding their descendants’ every move. On whatever level this dedication is interpreted, one suspects that Price has made the fylgjur very proud.