Embers of the Hands by Eleanor Barraclough

‘Brilliantly written … evokes the wonder of an entire civilisation.’ Tom Holland, author of Pax and co-host of The Rest is History

It’s time to meet the real Vikings.

A comb, preserved in a bog, engraved with the earliest traces of a new writing system. A pagan shrine deep beneath a lava field. A note from an angry wife to a husband too long at the tavern. Doodles on birch-bark, made by an imaginative child.

From these tiny embers, Eleanor Barraclough blows back to life the vast, rich and complex world of the Vikings. These are not just the stories of kings, raiders and saga heroes. Here are the lives of ordinary people: the merchants, children, artisans, enslaved people, seers, travellers and storytellers who shaped the medieval Nordic world.

Immerse yourself in the day-to-day lives of an extraordinary culture that spanned centuries and spread from its Scandinavian heartlands to the remote fjords of Greenland, the Arctic wastelands, the waterways and steppes of Eurasia, all the way to the Byzantine Empire and Islamic Caliphate.

A new and original history of the Viking Age, told through the objects that defined the lives of the people who lived through it

About the Author: Eleanor Barraclough is a cultural historian, broadcaster and writer based at Durham University, where she is Associate Professor of Medieval History and Literature. A BBC New Generation Thinker, she has appeared regularly on radio and television, work which has lead to her variously being knighted with a walrus penis bone, bewitched in Sherwood Forest, chased by imaginary zombies through the basement of the BBC and dunked in a hole in the ice in a quest for immortality.

05 Jun 2025
 

Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age: Longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction by Eleanor Barraclough ISBN 9781788166751