Embers of the Hands

Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

By: Eleanor Barraclough

Narrated by: Eleanor Barraclough

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 Nordic 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, writers—who inhabited the medieval Nordic world. Encompassing not just Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, but also Iceland, Greenland, the British Isles, Continental Europe, and Russia, this is a history of a Viking Age filled with real people of different ages, genders, and ethnicities, as told through the traces that they left behind.

©2024 Eleanor Barraclough (P)2025 Profile Books Limited

well written. well spoken with great pronunciation of the Norse names

a very lucid and detailed summary of the Viking age as found in embers a fitting metaphor

Author is an excellent reader!

This is an excellent recording of a book that I really liked but didn’t love, mostly because the author was so incredibly honest and incisive about how little we can discern or conclude from the scant historical and archaeological records about the lives of ordinary people. (And about how what we can discern we must behold in all its complexity.) No knock to the book - it’s astute, insightful, and truthful given what we have to go off of! But worth knowing before you, reader, commit.

Narrator is excellent

I love this book. It casts the Viking era and the dark poetry of the imagination. The worldview and the hardship are all here in a pretty short book, which is great. I loved it.

Nuggets and glimpses

I really enjoied the breath of information and the incorporation of historical finds across ages to expand the story. Being able to discuss how these items played into the larger picture of history, as well as understanding the biases that may be at play within historical sources was very well handled.

A gorgeously written history

This book is a stop-you-in-your-tracks listen. It is captivating, beautifully written—literary, poetic and playful—and brings the era and people to life with a sense of wonder. And Barraclough’s narration is filled with joy for her subject. Simply stunning.