Evergreen ash: ecology and catastrophe in Old Norse legend and myth

Abstract

scapes, seascapes and skyscapes of the region. Non–humans, including natural features, animals, material culture and supernatural beings, play as important a role in this book (and thus this region) as humans, and we can only understand their full significance through the multidisciplinary approach the authors employ here. Herva and Lahelma actively and carefully think about the significances of their varied evidence: they do not, for example, simply use later folklore to ‘project back’ on to the past, but take the plethora of folkloric materials to indicate the interpretive possibilities of the archaeological evidence, or how people might have viewed and articulated their world and their relationships to it. This book is packed full of detail presented in a readable way, whilst simultaneously highlighting the various areas of research that require further study. It is not only crucial reading for those interested in Fennoscandia, but also important for archaeologists, ethnographers and folklorists of Europe and the Arctic, across all chronological periods. Happily, this book is also available Open Access from Routledge’s website (https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429433948), making it highly accessible – though my print copy is satisfactorily filled with lots of little markers to follow-up on.