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Embers of the Hands

Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

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Embers of the Hands

By: Eleanor Barraclough
Narrated by: Eleanor Barraclough
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About this listen

Imagine a Viking, and a certain image springs to mind: a nameless, faceless warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorise the hapless local population of a northern European country.

Yet while such characters define the Viking Age today, they were in the minority. This is the history of all the other people - children, enslaved people, seers, artisans, travellers, writers - who inhabited the medieval Nordic world. Encompassing not just Norway, Denmark and Sweden, but also Iceland, Greenland, parts of 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, from hairstyles to place names, love-notes to gravestones.

For the first time, you can immerse yourself in the day-to-day lives of extraordinary culture which spanned centuries and spread from the edge of the North American continent to the Russian steppes, from the Arctic wastelands to the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic Caliphate.

©2024 Eleanor Barraclough (P)2024 Profile Books Ltd Europe Medieval Middle Ages Scandinavia Viking Polar Region Russia Norse
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This is not your "normal" historic explanation. Each and every aspect of viking life is told, with exemples, archaeological finds, writings, etc.

An utmost pleasure to listen to!

Very much up to date and brilliantly told

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This fascinating book tells the stories of everyday people through the artefacts, texts and graves they left behind. Well worth a read!

Brilliant and insightful

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Enjoyed the breadth of this book. As a casual listener of history genre, I found it both interesting and entertaining

Great narrative, great narrator

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So engaging and skilfully researched. I enjoyed it wasn’t a chronology, it skipped through the centuries, drawing parallels across the Norse diaspora

Brilliant book!

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Wonderfully informative and richly detailed account throwing an unaccustomed light on the 'everyday folk' that history so often neglects - very moving at times.

Lively and engaging!

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