Embers of the Hands Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

Eleanor Barraclough

eAudio - 2025

In imagining a Viking, a certain image springs to mind: a barbaric warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorize the hapless local population of a northern European town. Yet while such characters define our imagination of the Viking Age today, they were in the minority.Instead, in the time-stopping soils, water, and ice of the North, Eleanor Barraclough excavates a preserved lost world, one that reimagines a misunderstood society. By examining artifacts of the past—remnants of wooden gaming boards, elegant antler combs, doodles by imaginative children and bored teenagers, and runes that reveal hidden loves, furious curses, and drunken spouses summoned home from the pub—Barraclough illuminates life in the medieval Nord...ic world as not just a world of rampaging warriors, but as full of globally networked people with recognizable concerns.This is the history of all the people—children, enslaved people, seers, artisans, travelers,... more