30 September 2025
We are pleased to announce that Eleanor Barraclough’s eye-opening and engaging history of the Viking age Embers of the Hands has been shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2025, recognising the best history non-fiction titles from the past year.
The Prize judges said, ‘Beautifully and dynamically written, this book fuses history and archaeology to offer intimate and compelling insights into the everyday lives and beliefs of ordinary people in the Viking period.’
Many congratulations to Eleanor and the five other shortlisted authors. The Prize will be announced on 2nd December.
Discover more about Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age below and read an interview with Eleanor here.
‘Every page glittering with insight… [a] wonderful book’ Dominic Sandbrook
‘Brilliantly written… evokes the wonder of an entire civilisation.’ Tom Holland
‘Takes us beyond the familiar into a real, visceral, far more satisfying Viking world.’ Dan Snow
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.
