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

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

1 " The Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland were all found by accident when ships were driven off course in bad weather; nobody just set out for a far horizon. It is also important to remember that many of these Viking voyagers were simply never seen again. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

2 " There is a sense in which this viewpoint is looking through the wrong end of the historical telescope, defining (and often judging) a people solely by the consequences of their actions rather than the motivations behind them. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

3 " Equally, the legal codes do seem to genuinely recognise a woman's claim to the integrity of her body and person---for herself rather than merely as an extension of her kin. There were laws against unwanted touching without violence , with penalties that varied according to the part of the body on which a man laid hand or lips. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

4 " By the time the Franks could respond by sending troops, the Danes had already left (to add to the disappointment, the emperor's pet elephant suddenly died at the same time----one of those useless bits of historical information that tell us that the past was real.) "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

5 " There most respected values were not only those forged in war but also---stated outright in poetry--- a depth of wisdom, generosity, and reflection. Above all, a subtlety, a certain play of mind, combined with a resilient refusal to give up.
There are worse ways to be remembered. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

6 " Free will existed, but exercising it inevitably led to becoming the person you always, really, had been. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

7 " Strangely, Asgard also contained temples, cult buildings where the gods themselves made offerings—but to what or whom? The mythology of the Vikings is one of only a tiny handful in all world cultures in which the divinities also practised religion. It suggests something behind and beyond them, older and opaque, and not necessarily ‘Indo-European’ at all. There is no indication that the people of the Viking Age knew what it was any more than we do. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

8 " disappointment at the discovery that it was itself and not something that the scholar would have liked better”. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

9 " All these travellers carried with them, and left behind, a great many things: not only objects---the 'material culture' beloved of archaeologists---but also ideas, attitudes and information. At the most intimate levels of interaction, they also left their genes, and their families acquired new ones. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

10 " The distinction between belief and knowledge is significant... However, both these attitudes to the 'other' are also somewhat abstract---they are located in the mind, not in the tangible realm of action and practice. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

11 " The act of acquiring silver was as important as the silver itself. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

12 " History is nothing if not a suppositional discipline, sometimes akin to a sort of speculative fiction of the past. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

13 " It was not enough Svein threw his whole army against London (the famous nursery rhyme, 'London Bridge is falling down,' is supposedly a memory of the Viking attack on the strategic link across the Thames). The city surrendered. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

14 " Crucially, some people with different, equally disquieting gifts could see these aspects of others. In the poetic fragment known as the Ljóðatal, the ‘List of Spells’, Odin boasts of his magical ability with a series of individual charms, and in one of them we see the true viciousness of his power: I know a tenth [spell]: if I see sorceresses playing up in the air, I can so contrive it that they go astray from the home of their shapes [heimhama] from the home of their minds [heimhuga]. The spell is directed against the independent spirits of witches, sent out from their bodies on their mistresses’ errands. Odin’s charm is terrible in its severance of their very souls, cut away to dissipate forever. "

― Neil Price , The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings