by Neil Price
First published 2020
Between 750 and 1050, Scandinavian peoples pushed outward in every direction, reaching eastern North America to the west and the Asian steppe to the east. For a thousand years, most accounts of that expansion came from the people they attacked, taxed, or unsettled. Neil Price works from current archaeological finds and textual sources to reconstruct Viking life from the inside. He covers their political structures, their cosmology, and their artistic traditions. The figures he brings forward are specific: Björn Ironside, who led an expedition aimed at sacking Rome, and Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir, who traveled farther than any other woman of her era. Price argues that the familiar image of the Viking, reinforced by centuries of popular culture and simplified history, has crowded out the actual people. This book gives readers the politics, the belief systems, and the material culture those people left behind, reconstructed on their own terms rather than through the eyes of those who feared or condemned them.
Genres: biography, history, archaeology, non-fiction, ancient-history
Vibes: immersive, revisionist, scholarly, thought-provoking
Tropes: historical-reexamination, primary-source-analysis
Setting: Scandinavia, North America, Asian Steppe, Rome
Period: 750-1050 CE, Viking Age
599 pages · Paperback · Basic Books