Neil Price is the top researcher in the field of Viking Age Scandinavia, having written The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia, wNeil Price is the top researcher in the field of Viking Age Scandinavia, having written The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia, which everyone else references. The Children of Ash and Elm, however, seems to be aimed at lay people. It does discuss archeological evidence at length, and provides many photos of artifacts, but it also includes some speculations that I hear other scholars are not happy about. Price offers general references for each chapter, but not footnotes with specific page numbers, and I was unable to locate the sources for some of his most interesting claims. But I'm not a scholar in the field, so can be easygoing about the interpretations Price makes from limited evidence, especially since they are quite imaginative and compelling.
While it might not be Price's most rigorous work, it is beautifully, viscerally written, turning what might have been a dry text into a novelistic pleasure. Magic workers “straddled the rivers between the realms, leaving footprints on both banks.” “Sól, the shining sun-woman, is swallowed whole, the lamp of the day extinguished forever.” The moon's “dying light spattering the world like blood as it dims to black.”...more
I recently moved to the country and have begun observing animals from my porch nearly every day. I've become quite attached to them and wanted to knowI recently moved to the country and have begun observing animals from my porch nearly every day. I've become quite attached to them and wanted to know what will happen to them this winter.
There is a groundhog, whom I’ve named Greg, living under the house, and I noticed that he had doubled in size within the space of six weeks. I assumed he was packing on the pounds in order to hibernate, but couldn't believe how quickly he was doing it (at one point, he expanded to such a size that he got stuck under a railing which he could have easily cleared back when I first moved in). Here is why: "To minimize its duration of obesity, the groundhog must maximize the speed and extent of becoming obese. To be successful in this endeavor, it delays fattening until near the end of the summer. So, it must not only know what to eat, it must also consult a calendar as to when to start eating as if life depended on it." Greg has already begun hibernating, and so has the chipmunk (unnamed).
There are also snapping turtles in a nearby pond, who will be hibernating for about six months, spending half of their lives unconscious. Heinrich puts it nicely: "What is death to a turtle? what is being alive? For six months it stays under ice water, buried in mud, where all breathing, movement, and presumably almost all heart activity stops. In spring it comes up, warms up, takes a few breaths, and resumes life where it had left off. It has done so for the perhaps 200 million years or so that its kind have prospered with little change."
Most of the birds will either hibernate or migrate, but I do get to keep the crows, who are my favorite. As far as I read, no word on the deer or wild turkeys who visit occasionally. I am sad to lose most of my animal friends for the winter, but everyone needs a break, and I look forward to reuniting with them in the spring.
I didn’t read the whole book, following only the animals who are presently around me, so it wouldn't be fair to rate it. I may come back to it for the other animals at another time....more
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