Almost ready!
In order to save audiobooks to your Wish List you must be signed in to your account.
Log in Create accountShop small, give big!
With credit bundles, you choose the number of credits and your recipient picks their audiobooks—all in support of local bookstores.
Start giftingLimited-time offer
Get two free audiobooks!
Now’s a great time to shop indie. When you start a new one credit per month membership supporting local bookstores with promo code SWITCH, we’ll give you two bonus audiobook credits at sign-up.
Sign up todayChildren of Ash and Elm
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreBookseller recommendation
“The very word 'Viking' conjures up all kinds of thrilling images: horned warriors, bloodthirsty berserkers, many-oared longships, brutal battles, and pillaged monasteries all spring to mind. However, in CHILDREN OF ASH AND ELM, archaeologist Neil Price peels back centuries of myth and misconception and propaganda to paint a fascinating, detailed, and comprehensive portrait of these warriors from the North whose diaspora spread from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads and North Ameria (and sorry—none of their helmets had horns.) I loved falling into this engaging history of the Vikings, which focuses on their history, art, culture, politics, and cosmology in equally intriguing measure, in prose that is both informative and exciting, beautiful and sneakily funny. If you're looking for a nice chunky nonfiction book to immerse yourself in this winter, this one is perfect—AND, if you want to really live like a Viking and absorb your history through oral storytelling, the audiobook is beautifully read by Samuel Roukin”
— Rebecca • One More Page
Summary
The definitive history of the Vikings—from arts and culture to politics and cosmology—by a distinguished archaeologist with decades of expertiseThe Viking Age—from 750 to 1050—saw an unprecedented expansion of the Scandinavian peoples into the wider world. As traders and raiders, explorers and colonists, they ranged from eastern North America to the Asian steppe. But for centuries, the Vikings have been seen through the eyes of others, distorted to suit the tastes of medieval clerics and Elizabethan playwrights, Victorian imperialists, Nazis, and more. None of these appropriations capture the real Vikings, or the richness and sophistication of their culture.Based on the latest archaeological and textual evidence, Children of Ash and Elm tells the story of the Vikings on their own terms: their politics, their cosmology and religion, their material world. Known today for a stereotype of maritime violence, the Vikings exported new ideas, technologies, beliefs, and practices to the lands they discovered and the peoples they encountered, and in the process were themselves changed. From Eirík Bloodaxe, who fought his way to a kingdom, to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, the most traveled woman in the world, Children of Ash and Elm is the definitive history of the Vikings and their time.