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‘A scholarly delight, every page glittering with insight … [a] wonderful book’ Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

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

‘A wondrous, gorgeously-written book’ Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred

‘Takes us beyond the familiar into a real, visceral, far more satisfying Viking world.’ Dan Snow

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.

Publisher Review

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 *