Embers of the Hands (Hardback)
Hidden Histories of the Viking Age: Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction
Buy from
An original and intimate history of the Viking Age, told through the everyday objects that defined the lives of ordinary people
Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction
A Times best History Book of the Year 2024
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.
'Every page glittering with insight... [a] wonderful book' Dominic Sandbrook
'Brilliantly written... evokes the wonder of an entire civilisation.' Tom Holland
Embers of the Hands (Ebook)
Hidden Histories of the Viking Age: Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction
Buy from
A "brilliantly written, brilliantly conceived" (Tom Holland) history of the Viking Age, told through the everyday objects of ordinary people
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
'A fascinating tour ... Barraclough looks beyond the soap-opera sagas to those lost in the cracks of history' The New York Times
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.
Embers of the Hands (Audiobook)
Hidden Histories of the Viking Age: Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction
Buy from
An original and intimate history of the Viking Age, told through the everyday objects that defined the lives of ordinary people
Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction
A Times best History Book of the Year 2024
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.
'Every page glittering with insight… [a] wonderful book' Dominic Sandbrook
'Brilliantly written… evokes the wonder of an entire civilisation.' Tom Holland
Embers of the Hands (Paperback)
Hidden Histories of the Viking Age: Longlisted for the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction
Buy from
A "brilliantly written, brilliantly conceived" (Tom Holland) history of the Viking Age, told through the everyday objects of ordinary people
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
'A fascinating tour ... Barraclough looks beyond the soap-opera sagas to those lost in the cracks of history' The New York Times
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.
Reviews for Embers of the Hands
Financial Times
Times Literary Supplement
New Yorker
New York Times
Literary Review
Dominic Sandbrook Sunday Times
Tom Holland, author of Pax and co-host of The Rest is History
Dan Snow
World Archaeology
Rebecca Wragg Sykes author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art
Neil Price, author of The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
Elizabeth Wayland Barber Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years
Madeleine Pelling author of Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of the Eighteenth Century
Eleanor Barraclough
Eleanor Barraclough is a historian and broadcaster, and the author of Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas. Based at Bath Spa University, she previously held academic positions at Oxford and Durham, and studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at Cambridge. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and a BBC New Generation Thinker. She lives in London.
Related news
Embers of the Hands is Women’s Prize Longlisted
Eleanor Barraclough's original Viking history has been honoured by the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction longlist