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. 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.

A 30-meter (98-foot)-long warship for an 80-man crew, with a draft of just 1 meter, from the 11th century, was found in Denmark. 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. Ignore that frightened girl he brought home with him--that's just to be expected, and anyway she can't even speak the language; and he does keep looking at you. That leads to my main problem the book - it is written in a very academic style -esp the first half which explores how society worked. And while history may encompass those things, they are subsets of history and not the subsets that people will think of when you label a book a history book.As a truly modern skald he has given his work a soul, which is rare for nonfiction, and this ability is what separates him from the rest who had endeavoured such an adventure into the Viking world. Nieuw” in die zin dat hij zich vooral baseert op de meest recente onderzoeken, waarbij hij ook openlijk niet akkoord gaat met bepaalde eerdere opinies of ideeën, en deze duidelijk van tafel gooit. I wish he had spent more time discussing the four elements that supposedly determined how Vikings viewed themselves. And ending the book is a kind of summation of the influence this phenomenally active and successful force in the world.

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Het stereotiepe beeld van een woest bebaarde, met een bijl zwaaiende krijger met een helm met hoorns blijft niet overeind. These were the ancestral guardians of a family, inherited down the generations, guiding their descendants’ every move. I found the first half less than scintillating :) The second half picks up when the author starts writing about the Viking Dispora and the raiding.

The second part goes back to the early 700s, but follows a different path to seek the major sociopolitical developments and demographic factors that slowly combined to trigger the Viking phenomenon itself. The information was fascinating and intriguing, and I found myself always wanting to go back to it and learn more, although I couldn't read this too late at night or I'd get sleepy and distracted and miss out on a lot.The 'Viking Age' is traditionally held to begin in June 793 when Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, and to end in September 1066, when King Harald Hardrada of Norway died leading the charge against the English line at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. 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. What is one thing the author is very good at, is asking questions, or creating new interpretations, of archaeological situations and material culture, for example I was really captivated by his idea of funerals as drama, the sacrificed animals, humans, the notable dead and all his/her belongings - all characters or set pieces.

Throughout the book’s pages the worldview of the Vikings and their beliefs is always there in the background.This is a great example of a well rounded history book, being both not too technical, and not too journalistic - instead making a book that really nails the best of both worlds form these two forms of historiography. I'm done with the constant speculations about finds, followed immediately by cautious caveats about how we can't really know. The author never lost his professionalism and not once condemned or praised the actions of a historic peoples, something which is bafflingly rare and it shouldn't be. 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. Far from a dogmatic approach to considering history, this book looks at a particular topic with ambiguity, examining multiple points of view, and how they interact with the written and archaeological record.