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

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

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

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Price: £9.9
£9.9 FREE Shipping

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When properly recited in appropriate surroundings, Viking-Age poetry can taste like cold iron on the tongue, its complex rhyme schemes building upon one another like layers of frost-treacherous and beautiful.

He is getting into the head under the helmet and looking out through the eyes of a Viking at the Viking universe. I highly recommend this book but appreciate that not everyone will like it, those who somehow think that the Vikings were some sort of pure ethnic group for example (they never were), or those who are only focussed on their macho image; they were much, much more than either of those portrayals.This is an incredible book, and I chose to listen to it in audiobook format, which was an outstanding choice. 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. My favourite chapter was the one on "dealing with the dead;" they did some super strange and fascinating things with the deceased (that I won't go into detail about here). This equates to approximately 14 percent of the entire monetary output of the Frankish empire—for a century—evaporated in the payment of extortion demands that produced no tangible positive gain, and, in many cases, failed to appease the Vikings anyway. That said , this is a fascinating book, with a series of colour images that are worth of close attention along with the text.

This was a fascinating and wholly engaging book, and an easy recommendation for those looking for a modern history book on the Vikings focusing on how they lived, and why they engaged with the world as they did.

Such an approach has strong modern-day resonances: a multi-gendered, multi-ethnic account of the era that embraces diversity in the mental landscapes of human nature, telling a story of cultural transformations and influences criss-crossing in many directions.

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. Viking attacks increased, penetrating deep into France, thanks to civil war among Charlemagne's grandsons. This effected the Vikings perceptions of self and place, putting them firmly in a world populated by gnomes and dwarves, elves and Valkyrie. In the 800s, Vikings extorted 30,000 pounds of silver from France: one-seventh of the entire coinage of the century.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. Certainly I can't share everything, but I would encourage anyone who is interested in an equitable history of the Vikings to read Children of Ash and Elm. A wonderful read, with prose that flows like poetry in places and modern analogs that inspire creative thinking. He cuts through centuries of received wisdom to try to see the Vikings as they saw themselves - descendants of the first human couple, the Children of Ash and Elm.

In de eeuwen sinds de grote plundertochten is het beeld van de Vikingen vele malen bijgesteld - en aangepast.Verwacht dus geen verhalen van bloeddorstige plundertochten maar eerder een mooi overzicht in de denkwereld en tijdperk van de Vikingen.



  • Fruugo ID: 258392218-563234582
  • EAN: 764486781913
  • Sold by: Fruugo

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