05 March 2025
We are proud to announce that Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Barraclough has been longlisted for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. Judge Emma Gannon described Embers of the Hands as, ‘an accessible gateway’ into Viking history, going on to praise its ‘great storytelling’ and lauding Eleanor as ‘an exciting new talent’. This is such important prize for amplifying the voices of women and we want to congratulate all 16 authors on their longlisting. The shortlist will be announced on 26th March.
Read more about Embers of the Hands below:
A Times best History Book of the Year 2024
‘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.
