by Neil Price
First published 2026
Neil Price, author of Children of Ash and Elm, spent years studying the latest archaeological evidence to challenge the most stubborn cliche in medieval history: that Vikings were little more than violent raiders. The Sea-King and the Sorceress presents a different picture entirely. Price moves across three centuries and from Greenland to Greece, reconstructing individual Norse lives in granular detail. The cast is wide. An arctic hunter. A woman of Persian ancestry. A Sami nomad. A bear recognized as a person under Norse custom. River traders pushing deep into Rus territory. Sorceresses, shape-shifters, diplomats, farmers, immigrants, and converts to monotheism. Price draws on modern archaeological methods to give each of these figures texture and specificity. The argument is cumulative: the Viking world was heterogeneous, internally diverse, and far more connected to the broader medieval world than popular culture admits. Readers come away with something concrete, a population of real individuals who were, in Price's framing, both recognizably human and genuinely strange.
Genres: biography, history, archaeology, anthropology, non-fiction, medieval-history
Vibes: humanizing, immersive, meticulously-researched, scholarly, thought-provoking
Tropes: challenging-stereotypes, historical-reconstruction, multiple-perspectives
Setting: Greenland, Greece, Rus territory, Scandinavia
Period: Viking Age, Medieval period, Three centuries of Norse history
Hardcover · Basic Books