Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Ratings23
Average rating4.2
This was such an eye opening book that helped me realize that a lot of the stereotypes that we have about the Vikings are false and that the Vikings really did have an impact in the early histories of Russia, Ukraine, Spain, and even North America. The Vikings weren't raiders, they were raiders that took advantage of poorly defended treasure trove monasteries and sought to achieve glory. The Viking mythology and religion is also very intriguing. An overall very informative and intriguing piece of historical scholarship.
VERY good book, highly informative. Dry in places, but has a few moments of levity. I appreciated how the author emphasized breaking myths about the Vikings, and was especially keen to emphasize that:
- The Vikings owned slaves, and participated actively in the slave trade of the time - not just buying slaves, but capturing people and selling them too. The book refused to sugarcoat any of this and has some utterly brutal passages about how the Vikings practiced slavery. There was also a lot about how the success of the Vikings could also be attributed to their practice of slavery, and how their economy depended heavily on it. Also refused to call the slaves anything but slaves; author seemed to say that the use of the word “thrall” was a bit of a smokescreen.
- Not all Vikings were blond-haired and blue-eyed, as the Victorians and the Nazis believed. The Vikings were far more cosmopolitan, with the idea of ???Viking??? being more an identity which one could take up under specific circumstances regardless of where one originally came from. ???Vikings??? could come from any region of the world which the Vikings visited. Also the Vikings (probably very likely) weren???t racist in the sense that they cast judgment on a person based on the color of their skin. In fact this book spends a lot of time breaking the racist notions surrounding how Vikings have been and are still interpreted and used.
- The idea of Viking women being ???independent women??? as we would perceive it in the 21st century is...well, more complicated than that (which is only as it should be). While there???s increasing evidence that women did participate in matters of politics and war, the women who did tended to be the exception rather than the rule; Viking society was actually very, VERY patriarchal and women had little power outside of the spheres of life that belonged to them. By that token though, they were actually quite powerful and deeply respected WITHIN the spheres that belonged to them, and their work was not looked down-upon by the men - something which only came later, with the introduction of Christianity. The author also states that the Vikings practiced exposure of girl children (thus indicating that girls were less valued than boys in Viking society), and that domestic abuse was VERY widespread - to the point that one of the law codes dictated what sorts of punishments could be meted out to an abuser BASED ON THE TYPE OF INJURIES SUSTAINED, OF WHICH THERE WAS APPARENTLY A LONG AND VERY DETAILED LIST.
I for some reason (perhaps the title?) was expecting this to be a novel. It is not. It went in more detail than I cared to read on various aspects of Viking life but overall it was informative and well-written.
