Embers of the Hands

Barraclough's book is a scholarly delight, every page glittering with insight as she surveys the great sweep of life in the northlands between the 8th and 11th centuries ... Perhaps the greatest virtue of this wonderful book, though, is that it captures the sheer strangeness, the ultimate unknowability, of the distant past -- Dominic Sandbrook * Sunday Times *
Endlessly fascinating, authoritatively informative and, above all, great fun * Times Literary Supplement *
Brilliantly written, brilliantly conceived, a history of the Vikings that deploys their material legacy - from combs to slave collars, from skulls to sundials - to evoke the wonder of an entire civilisation. -- Tom Holland, author of Pax and co-host of The Rest is History
A wondrous, gorgeously-written book, breathing the Vikings into intimate, incandescent life: from glittering treasure to lost ephemera, racy runes to hidden tombs, Barraclough reveals people both endearingly familiar, yet sometimes also bafflingly, even unnervingly, strange -- Rebecca Wragg Sykes * author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art *
Barraclough has a gift for taking us beyond the familiar into a real, visceral, far more satisfying Viking world. -- Dan Snow
Eleanor Barraclough's splendid new book offers an introduction to the ordinary people of a time best known for its kings and warlords, getting up close and personal with the things that mattered to them. In lively prose she ranges from Greenland to Baghdad, showing us bar-rooms and bedrooms, daydreaming children at their lessons, gossiping neighbours, the scars of war, and much more besides. An intimate portrait of the Viking Age that is thoughtful, vivid and warm, while ignoring none of its hardships - highly recommended. -- Neil Price, author of The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings
A fascinating journey through all facets of the Viking world - especially what ordinary people experienced - beautifully collated from tiny bits of real evidence from archaeology (well illustrated) and linguistics (using texts in Old Norse, Old English, and runes; and even word-histories). We feel first-hand the hardships of sailing and farming so far north, of the captives, and of women cooking and endlessly making cloth, clothing, and huge woollen sails for the boats - evidence that used to be ignored. -- Elizabeth Wayland Barber * Women's Work: The First 20,000 Years *
Barraclough's Viking world is extraordinarily intimate - a rich tapestry of lives and things interwoven in lively prose. From board games to buried ships, and from the graffiti of bored teenagers to runic stones, this is history made material -- Madeleine Pelling * author of Writing on the Wall: Graffiti, Rebellion and the Making of the Eighteenth Century *