Embers of the Hands - Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

''Brilliantly written ... evokes the wonder of an entire civilisation.'' Tom Holland, author of Pax and co-host of The Rest is History 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.

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A rich trove ... This book brings us as close to an intimacy with a strange past as we are likely to get Financial Times

Product details

• Authors: Eleanor Barraclough, ELEANOR BARRACLOUGH
• Publisher: Profile Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback
• Released: 01.03.2025
• EAN: 9781788166751
• ISBN: 978-1-78816-675-1
• No. of pages: 384
• Dimensions: 128 mm x 198 mm x 26 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book; History, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Anthropology / Cultural & Social, Material Culture, HISTORY / Europe / Medieval, European history: the Vikings