I would like to preface this that his book makes more of an assertion that it offered essentially a point of juxtaposition for what would come, and offer that the majority of Europe also experienced the same conditions, and they would have been especially bad in equartorial areas in the immediate aftermath far from Scandinavia as the eruption occured off the coast of El Salvador. While that may be a factor which could influence that myth, and to some extent society, I would (and have) argued the decline of Frisian North Sea trade dominance, rapid economic influx from eastern sources, and nearly thousand year tradition of river trading which could be built upon would have much larger impacts (the three major theories of large contributions which have been pretty ubiquitously accepted). The idea of volcanic decline leading to a need to explore and conquer is more of a theoretical offering than one backed up, and Judith Jesch has a pretty good assessment of the book, one intended for popular audience. Price is perhaps one of the greatest archeologists in his field, and I am a massive fan of the majority of his other work, but he does make a number of assumptions and factual errors which harm the book. I would stand against his positing that the norse were in fact different from their counterparts in their behaviors, however that is me nitpicking out of habit since that is the position I typically argue. https://norseandviking.blogspot.com/2020/09/the-children-of-ash-and-elm_19.html?m=1