Children of Ash and Elm

by Neil Price;

  Their 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.

  EPILOGUE: GAMES

  THIS IS A VISION OF the future, because the Ragnarök is still to come.

  First the heavenly bodies will go dark. Sól, the shining sun-woman, is swallowed whole, the lamp of the day extinguished forever. The moon is caught at last by the howling wolf Mánagarm, ‘Moon-Dog’, that has been on its trail for aeons. Máni is chewed up, his dying light spattering the world like blood as it dims to black. Cold grips Midgard; frost chills the ground in a winter that does not end. The mountains tremble, the dwarves moaning and keening in their halls. Trees shake loose from the earth, and Yggdrasill itself shudders and groans.

  The roosters begin to crow—in Asgard, in Hel, in the distant forest at the edge of things. Heimdall’s horn is heard across the worlds, warning of the coming horror.

  Every bond, every fetter, every chain, loosens and breaks. All the forces of the dark begin to stir, and move into the gloom towards Asgard and the final battle.

  On the sea floor, the Nail-Ship slips free and rises to the surface in a choking wreath of weed and decay, water streaming from the deck. The drowned sit at its oars, the ranks of the dead stand packed in its hull, and Loki is at the helm.

  Bifröst, the rainbow bridge that has stood since the creation, will fail at last as it breaks beneath the sons of Muspell when they ride to the Ragnarök. Shards of colour fall and fade behind them, while the frost giants ford the mighty rivers of the other world to reach the plain of combat. The fire giants’ battle array is very bright, and it stretches for a hundred leagues in every direction.

  Odin rides to meet them from the doors of Valhöll, his helmet made of gold, his spear levelled for the charge. Sleipnir’s eight legs eat up the distance, the ground speeding beneath him. Behind the lord of the gods, the einherjar pour from every gate, their long-awaited war come at last.

  The plain darkens with the countless millions of beings fighting across it—gods, giants, monsters, spirits of all kinds, and humans both living and dead. The rising noise, a vast scream echoing through the worlds, drowns all sound.

  The ocean boils and churns as the Midgard Serpent twists itself onto the land. Its venom sprays over Thor even as he kills it, his hammer falling as he takes nine great paces into Hel. Loki and Heimdall—the trickster and the guardian of the bridge—each slay the other. Týr fights the hellhound, Garm, and they are both torn to pieces. Freyr is forced to battle without his sword and is killed by Surt, whose own blade shines brighter than the sun. The jaws of the great wolf, Fenrir, open wide to scrape the earth and sky, and Odin is eaten alive. But the beast does not live long, its head ripped apart by All-Father’s son. The worlds are awash with blood, but all has happened as it should—as it was foretold.

  When the Ragnarök is done, everything is dead. The gods and their foes lie paired, slain together in mutual fury. Around the plains of Vígríthr, the field is strewn to the horizon with all the bodies of the human race and the invisible population with whom they shared their world. There is no light because the sky is black and empty, the celestial bodies dissolved. A cold, dark fog covers the worlds, and the very fabric of creation is streaming away into the void. The end of all things, death after the afterlife, an eternal absence.

  But it is not, in fact, the End.

  A new earth, verdant and green with flowing waterfalls, rises from the ocean. A new sun, daughter of the old, brings light to the heavens. Somehow, the sons of Odin and the sons of Thor have survived, the latter inheriting his hammer. Baldr returns from Hel, as does Höd, the brother who slew him by mistake. They gather in the ruins of what was Asgard, on the field of Ithavölr. The first thing they see? A set of golden chess pieces “that in the old days they had owned”, shining in the meadow. A wonderful new hall appears on a hill, with fields of self-sown corn springing up below it, for “the worthy warrior bands” who will live there (in the words of the Seeress’s Prophecy). It seems that humans will populate this place again.

  And now we see them: a man and a woman who have hidden from the Ragnarök in the depths of the forests. The woman is Líf, ‘Life’; the man is Lífthrasir, ‘Lover of Life’. They emerge from the trees, into the sunlight.

  It is all ready to start over, with a new first couple; they are the parents of new people—new children—to come.

  It would be hard to conceive of a greater cataclysm—apocalypse with a capital A—which is probably why the story of the Ragnarök continues to resonate in the popular imagination today. This is a Viking funeral for the entire cosmos.

  The rebirth of the world after the final battle may possibly be a Christian addition, a vision of ‘Viking heaven’ on a biblical model to replace the multiple realms of death in the traditional beliefs, the one coming after the other just as the new faith supplanted what went before. A later source’s ambiguous reference to the arrival of a “Powerful One” may refer to the risen Christ, adding to the sense of a (somewhat clumsy) medieval reworking of the original story. On the other hand, as we have seen, if the Fimbulwinter really was a memory of the sixth-century dust veil, then this too eventually passed and life began again.

  An alternative interpretation sees the Ragnarök as reflective of Icelandic concerns with the ever-present harshness of their environment. In this ecocritical view, the whole of Norse mythology—most of which comes to us through Icelandic texts—is not unreasonably seen to exhibit “an intense preoccupation with the idea of an onrushing and unstoppable apocalypse”, embodying the anxieties of a life that, at times, was close to the margins of viable subsistence.

  Ultimately, the exact nature of the Ragnarök is one more of the ambiguities that surround the thought-world of the Norse. Whether or not the Scandinavians of the Viking Age originally believed that Ragnarök really was the end of all things, by the Middle Ages, when the stories were frozen into the form that has reached us, there is no doubt of their continuation in the medieval mind. And so the worlds will begin again, with a game of chess in the grass.

  This book began with a metaphor, an attempt at a new reading of the Vikings on their own terms, trying to see them as they saw themselves—hence my choice of title. Here at the end, which also concerns the final chapter of that cosmology, we can take the same phrase but apply a more literal meaning. We should not forget that all the Children of Ash and Elm were also, once, simply children: ten generations of small people who grew up in what we call the Viking Age—another shift of perspective away from the wild marauders of stereotype. They are gone, of course, but we can still just about make them out in the things they used; in their graves, buried too soon with their little treasures; in the places they lived; and in the later texts, the poems and sagas.

  25. Playing Viking. A wooden toy sword from ninth-century levels at Staraja Ladoga, Russia. Photo: Vladimir Terebenin, © State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.

  We can see them at their games, playing. Galloping a wooden horse on an earthen floor in Dublin. Bouncing a ball made of rags along Novgorod’s timber streets. Watching over a smaller sibling, wriggling about in a barred chair like the one from Lund. Battling with carefully crafted miniature wooden swords, made to match the bigger versions with the blades they weren’t supposed to touch. We can see them in the rain and mist of the Faroes, sailing their toy boats on the spring melt and waiting for the tide.

  26. A child of Ash and Elm. A facial reconstruction by Oscar Nilsson, based on the excavated skeletal remains of a six-year-old girl, buried at Birka, Sweden. Photo: Swedish History Museum, Creative Commons.

  The Viking image. A digitally reconstructed warship of the late Viking Age, based on excavated examples, embodying the stereotype but reflecting reality. Reconstruction by and © Arkikon.

  Dressed to impress. A
modern reconstruction of armour and regalia from boat graves at Valsgärde and Vendel, Uppland, Sweden, showing the appearance of the new warlords who rose to power after the Migration Period crisis. Photo: Lindsey Kerr, Wulfheodenas Living History group, used by kind permission.

  The place of power. A drone photo of the Vendel and Viking-Age royal power centre at Gamla Uppsala in Sweden, seat of the Ynglinga dynasty. The monumental burial mounds can be clearly seen along the ridge, while the great halls were on terraces where the medieval church is now located. Photo: Daniel Löwenborg, used by kind permission.

  House and home. A Viking-Age farm of middling status in a rainy autumn, based on excavated examples. Image by and © Arkikon.

  A lady of means. The reconstructed dress of a wealthy Viking-Age woman buried in a boat at Gamla Uppsala, Sweden. Reconstruction by Þórhallur Þráinsson, used by kind permission of Gamla Uppsala Museum.

  A set of jewellery of the kind sometimes found in women’s burials; two oval brooches with a necklace between, and two other clothing-fasteners. Photo: Lennart Larsen, © National Museum of Denmark, used by kind permission.

  Silver armrings, neckrings, and brooches, from various Viking-Age hoards on Gotland. Photo: Katarina Nimmervoll, Swedish History Museum, Creative Commons.

  Stories in stone. A Viking-Age picture-stone from Lärbro on Gotland, with images organised in sequential strips; are these scenes from mythology, heroic tales, or tributes to the dead?

  Photo: Neil Price.

  Funerary theatre. The Oseberg ship burial, c. 834, as it may have looked during the rituals, the vessel only half-buried to leave an open arena for interaction with the dead. Reconstruction by and © Anders Kvåle Rue, used by kind permission.

  Deadwood on the Volkhov. An aerial view of Staraja Ladoga, the gateway to the Russian rivers. The Viking-Age settlement was based at the confluence of the main channel and a smaller tributary, now spanned by the medieval fortress and the modern village. Photo Lev Karavanov, Creative Commons.

  Mikligard. The city of Constantinople, capital of the Byzantine Empire and the greatest metropolis in the world, seen here as it might have looked at the very end of the Viking Age. The ‘Great Place’ was the primary goal of the Scandinavian travellers in the east. Image: © Byzantium 1200 Project and Tayfun Odner, used by kind permission.

  An Iberian adventure. The interior of the Mezquita, the Great Mosque of Córdoba in Spain, and one of the best-preserved Viking-Age buildings in the world; this was the power centre attacked by Björn and his raiders in the 860s. Photo: Ronny Siegel, Creative Commons.

  The town on the heath. Hedeby, Jylland, from the air. The great arc of its rampart can still be seen overgrown with trees, enclosing the urban settlement; cattle and buildings provide scale. Now open fields, in the tenth century this was the main market centre of the North, with mercantile links across Europe and beyond.

  Photo: © State Archaeological Department, Schleswig-Holstein, used by kind permission.

  Pirate fisherfolk. The Brough of Deerness, Orkney, under excavation in 2008. A Norse settlement was established on the sea stack, controlling the ocean and the land. Photo: Vicki Herring, © McDonald Institute, Cambridge University, used by kind permission of James Barrett.

  Rise of the Rus’. The Golden Gate in Kiev, a Soviet reconstruction in situ of the eleventh-century fortified gateway, preserving a cross-section through the city wall, now with timber features to restore its original appearance. Photo: George Chernilevsky, Creative Commons.

  A military monarch. The ring-fortress at Trelleborg in Denmark, one of at least five such installations built by King Harald Bluetooth in the late tenth century. Photo: Thue C. Leibrandt, Creative Commons.

  A king’s capital. Reconstruction of the royal centre at Jelling in Jylland, with the great mounds built by King Harald and the complex of monumental halls. Image by and © Franziska Lorenz and Jochen Stuhrmann.

  Parliament Plains. Þingvellir in Iceland, site of the national assembly that met in a natural volcanic fissure. The lawspeaker stood by the white flagpole, his voice echoing off; the great lava wall, while delegates were housed in booths along the flatlands by the river.

  Photo: Bob T, Creative Commons.

  Christ comes to Greenland. The chapel built for Thjodhild, wife of Eirík the Red, at their home at Brattahlid. This replica stands next to the original, on the site of the farm with Eiriksfjord (now called Tunulliarfik) behind. Photo by Claire Rowland, Creative Commons.

  Leifsbuðir? The lonely site of L’Anse aux Meadows at the tip of Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, so far the only known Norse settlement in North America. Around the curve of the bay, houses, boat repair facilities, and workshops were set up. Photo: Michel Rathwell, Creative Commons.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  THIS BOOK WAS PREPARED WITHIN my research project The Viking Phenomenon, running from 2016 to 2025 at Uppsala University. My grateful thanks to the Swedish Research Council for their generous funding, and to my colleagues on the core team: Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, John Ljungkvist, and Ben Raffield. I would also like to particularly thank Ben for his assistance with background research on the closing chapters when deadlines loomed. From the broader project group, I would like to acknowledge Andreas Hennius, Karin Ojala, Sofia Prata, Gareth Williams, and Anders Ögren.

  I’ve had the title of this volume in mind for many years, partly as an antidote to the endless stream of books called The Vikings or something similar (some of them written by me, so nobody should take this personally) and partly stimulated by another work. The Children of Aataentsic, written by Bruce Trigger in 1976, is still the seminal history of the Huron people of the Eastern Woodlands, and I’ve always been impressed not only by its ambition and scope but also by its wonderfully reader-hostile title that is so committed to an emic view of its subjects.

  Children of Ash and Elm is very much my own synthesis of the Viking Age, but it is also the product of more than three decades of interaction with the wider world of Viking scholarship. By editorial policy, the main text is free of direct references, but I hope the bibliographic notes reflect the enormous debt I owe to the work of others and give appropriate credit to its appearance here in summarised form. For decades of inspiration, information, conversation, and company I would like to express my thanks to the wide community of Viking research: the delegates of the Viking Congress; the Viking Worlds initiative; the members of the Centre for Viking-Age Studies (ViS) at Oslo, a place that feels like a second home; the extended archaeological and folklore communities of Iceland (the other place that feels like a second home); the national museums, or their equivalents, of the Nordic countries; and all the nodes of Viking scholarly excellence across the universities of the world. I would also like to acknowledge the Kyngervi group focussing on the ‘others’ of the Viking Age, and the Norse Queer and Gender Studies Network from which it emerged. Special honour should be paid to all the postgraduate scholars and doktorands with whom the future of Viking studies rests; may they find the jobs and careers they richly deserve, and may we all help them to do so.

  To my teachers, colleagues, and students, past and present, at the universities of UCL, York, Wits, Oslo, Stockholm, Aberdeen, and Uppsala—nothing in my career would have been the same without you. Thanks for all of it.

  Some acknowledgements, however, must be made by name. In various ways large and small, over many years, the following individuals have made an especially positive difference in my professional life: Hanne Lovise Aanestad, Lesley Abrams, Adolf Friðriksson, Aiden Allen, Magnus Alkarp, Anders Andrén, Fedir Androshchuk, Martin Appelt, Jette Arneborg, Steve Ashby, Graeme Barker, James Barrett, Colleen Batey, Anna Bergman, Maths Bertell, Jan Bill, Geoff Blundell, Stefan Brink, Jesse and Gayle Byock, Sophie Bønding, Claus von Carnap-Bornheim, Martin Carver, Tom Christensen, Mark Collard, Kevin Crossley-Holland, Keith Dobney, Clare Downham, Kevin Edwards, Gunnel Ekroth, Phil Emery, Ericka Engelstad†, Marianne Hem Eriksen, Charlotte Fabech, Bill Fitzhugh, Peter Foote†,
Terje Gansum, Leszek Gardeła, Helen Geake, Gísli Sigurðsson, James Graham-Campbell, David Griffiths, Jacek Gruszczyński, Anne-Sofie and Bo Gräslund, Terry Gunnell, Guðmundur Ólafsson, Guðrún Sveinbjarnardóttir, Dawn Hadley, Richard Hall†, Helena Hamerow, Joe Harris, Stephen Harrison, Michèle Hayeur-Smith, Lotte Hedeager, Heimir Páulsson, Knut Helskog, Pernille Hermann, Frands Herschend, Hildur Gestsdóttir, John Hines, Tom Horne, Anders Hultgård, Eva Hyenstrand, Lisbeth Imer, Ingunn Ásdísardóttir, Frode Iversen, Marek Jankowiak, Cat Jarman, Jenny Jochens, Jóhanna Katrín Fríðriksdóttir, Wayne Johnson, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Lars Jørgensen†, Anders Kaliff, Hirofumi Kato, Jane Kershaw, Simon Keynes, Anna Kjellström, Alison Klevnäs, Rick Knecht, Rune Knude, Kristian Kristiansen, Anna Westman Kuhmunen, Magnus Källström, Carolyne Larrington, Shannon Lewis-Simpson, David Lewis-Williams, John Lindow, Irene García Losquiño, Julie Lund, Niels Lynnerup, John McKinnell, Lene Melheim, Karen Milek, Steve Mitchell, Mjöll Snæsdóttir, Marianne Moen, James Montgomery, Paul Mortimer (and all at Wulfheodenas), Leos Müller, Michael Müller-Wille, Agneta Ney, Gordon Noble, Svante Norr, Evgeny Nosov†, Michel Notelid, Ulf Näsman, Heather O’Donoghue, Adrian Olivier, Bjørnar Olsen, Orri Vésteinsson, Maria Panum Baastrup, Anne Pedersen, Unn Pedersen, Peter Pentz, Aleks Pluskowski, Russell Poole, Catharina Raudvere, Andrew Reynolds, Julian Richards, Mike Richards, Howell Roberts, Else Roesdahl, Steve Roskams, Håkan Rydving, Alexandra Sanmark, Birgit and Peter Sawyer††, Duncan Sayer, Jens Peter Schjødt, Sarah Semple, John Sheehan, Jonathan Shepard, Rudy Simek, Paul Sinclair, Søren Sindbæk, Dagfinn Skre, Ben Smith, Kevin Smith, Brit Solli, Matthew Spriggs, Gro Steinsland, Steinunn Kristjánsdóttir, Frans-Arne Stylegar, Olof Sundqvist, Pat Sutherland, Žarko Tancosić, Þóra Pétursdóttir, Þórir Jónsson Hraundal, Kalle Thorsberg, Iain Torrance, Luke Treadwell, Torfi Tulinius, Helle Vandkilde, Andrew Wawn, Pat Wallace, Jenny Wallensten, Anna Wessman, Susan Whitfield, Dave Whitley, Nancy Wicker, Per Widerström, Jonas Wikborg, Willem Willems†, Henrik Williams, Michael Wood, Inger Zachrisson, and Torun Zachrisson. My heartfelt thanks to you all and apologies to anyone who should have been on this list but is not (thirty years is a long time!).