Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Barraclough

Summary (from the publisher): 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.

Review: This history had some fascinating tidbits and stories gleaned about the Viking Age through artifacts. Rather than the Viking warrior, this focuses on the everyday people behind the remnants that history has left behind - wronged lovers, musicians, children, farmers, enslaved workers - the people who made these societies who they were. 

I did really like that this was organized. Each chapter focuses loosely on a different subject area. Some of the stories really grabbed my attention. I loved the descriptions of recovered love letters preserved on runes. It's so interesting to see that, even in the absence of paper, people were still communicating through the written word and also still being jilted and wronged by their love interest at times. The descriptions of remote farms that were eventually abandoned as climate change made them uninhabitable were eerie to read! It was haunting to imagine them having less and less productive harvests and struggling to survive increasingly cold winters, forced to eat their domestic animals. I also liked the descriptions of instruments that have been found. 

I did feel a bit dissatisfied with parts of this. It is very much just a description of a collection of artifacts and what they tell us and not at all a comprehensive history. As someone who has not read a lot of Viking history, it didn't give me a ton of context and felt almost too sweeping and rambling in its scope. Some of the artifact stories were absolutely fascinating but I don't know that I walked away with a very distinct picture of Viking history but instead a collection of neat stories based off of assorted archeological finds. 

This was read by the author herself, and she did an incredible job! 

Stars: 3.5 stars