The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

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It did make me wonder how much less violence and plunder might have happened if the ratios between men and women were more equal in Viking culture?

Modern physics knows that empty space is far from empty: virtual processes are going on everywhere at all times: particles and their antiparticles spontaneously popping into and out of existence, moving forward and backward in time. This is an engrossing doorstopper of a book that covers pretty much every aspect of Viking-Age Scandinavian culture that you can think of. Hun omgang met de natuur, de Goden en elkaar is zoveel meer sophisticated dan je zou denken, voor ons in contradictie met het onderlinge geweld en de slaven die als menselijke offer gebracht worden. It might be my favorite Viking nonfiction of all time (and that's saying something as this is one of my niche time periods).Wetenschappelijk verantwoord, zeer uitgebreid en op zich lekker geschreven onderzoek naar de Vikingen. No other history of the Vikings is as vibrant or expands the scope of the Viking world to encompass not just landscapes, but mindscapes. From here, one could go upriver through Lake Ilmen, up the Lovat River, then portage to the Dniepr, down to the Black Sea and Constantinople. The sagas are Icelandic family sagas, tracing family history back to their Scandinavian ancestors; and, legendary sagas, including real events back to the early 400s with Attila the Hun, along with the supernatural.

Everyone had their own identity – their self-image – and its outward projection; some of them were familiar to us, others frighteningly alien”. Contained in this book are some fascinating examinations not only on the Vikings themselves, but also human thought, history and philosophy. This is an incredible book, and I chose to listen to it in audiobook format, which was an outstanding choice. There were long paragraphs where I spaced out for a bit, reading the words but not really living them. This is a very comprehensive walk through the archeological evidence and giving sensible theories on what that means.From a military standpoint, the average Viking warrior was certainly male, although there are some examples of ambiguous graves where all the trappings of a warrior are found, but the body in the grave is female. Thor and Loki of the Aesir are well known, but a full further family of Gods, the Vanir, exist, as well as numerous planes of existence, and other mythological creatures. The narrative ranges across the whole of the Viking diaspora, from Vinland on the eastern American seaboard to Constantinople and Uzbekistan, with contacts as far away as China. Of course, there were many other contemporary societies, besides the Vikings, that also dealt in slaves.