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

by Neil Price

The week ended with a day that in English is named after a Roman god, Saturnus, but in the Scandinavian languages is still lördag, derived from the Old Norse word for a hot thermal spring—in other words, bath night, a lovely insight into Viking habits of hygiene.

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

(Beyond the faintly ludicrous checklists of ‘urban characteristics’ once beloved of archaeologists trying to define towns, my own criterion is very simple: lacking even the most basic sense of direction, I just ask myself if a Viking-Age settlement was so large and complex a place that I could get lost in it—if the answer is yes, it’s probably a town.)