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(hence the global interest) touching 21st century sensibilities about gender typing. Like so many topics, the Birka grave—despite its sudden world-wide interest—gets —gets only the briefest reference in Price’s new book, which is a 600-page compendium of pretty well everything that is currently known about Scandinavia’s Viking age, the troubled conditions that preceded it, and the traditions it left behind. Recent ent decades have seen huge advances in archaeological knowledge, including excavation of sites of all types, exponential increase in artefact discoveries through metal detecting, and new or improved techniques of examination, analysis, dating and interpretation. Dating techniques have improved. New techniques of stable isotope analysis of human bones enable us to determine the birthplace of Scandinavians found abroad—and those from abroad who died in Scandinavia, whether as immigrants or slaves. Evidence has come not only from the Scandinavian countries themselves but from a huge tract of the Northern Hemisphere, from the Asian steppe to North America, that at one time or another came under the influence of or was invaded by or visited by Viking-age travellers. Price claims to have visited visit over 50 countries in his search for it. To all that are added the written sources. There are contemporary accounts by Scandinavians or by others who came into contact with them, often allowing the incidence of raiding or campaigns of conquest to be accurately followed and dated. In addition there are accounts from Icelandic sagas and histories, most
Review by Peter Addyman Neil Price, The Children of Ash and Elm —A History of the Vikings Published by Allen Lane Penguin Random House UK, 2020 ISBN-978-0-241-28398-1 Neil Price, Swedish Research Council Distinguished Professor and Professor of Archaeology at Uppsala University, recently generated global headlines with his re-assessment of a grave excavated in the 19th century at Birka, the Viking trading settlement on an island in Lake Mälaren, Sweden. The grave was evidently that of a warrior buried accompanied by a panoply of weapons. Re-examination of the skeleton using modern techniques had demonstrated that this formidable warrior had been a woman, sparking debate about Viking war women on the one hand but also 22
