The Children of Ash and Elm

This history of the Viking Age, roughly the mid-eighth to the mid-eleventh century, treats Scandinavians as traders, raiders, settlers, and farmers rather than as a single pirate type. Price uses archaeology, graves, runes, and later texts to describe cosmology, ships, households, slavery, gender, and kingship at home, then the diaspora from the North Atlantic and Ireland to Rus and the Asian steppe. Named figures include Eirik Bloodaxe and Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir. The book is a social and material history of the Viking world, not a saga retelling and not a catalogue of raids alone.

Bound in black cloth printed and blocked in silver with a wrap-around design by the artist. Red slipcase with motif blocked in silver on front.