BRLSI invited Dr Eleanor Barraclough, historian and broadcaster based at Bath Spa University, and author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024), to deliver a talk on Monday 31 March at 7.30 p.m. Dr Barraclough’s talk focuses on the textiles of the Viking Age, to open up the stories of women not usually written into the grand narratives of history. Ahead of her talk, we asked her five questions:

1. The popular image of Vikings is of bloodthirsty warriors in longboats — do we need to modify this picture today?

There was a lot of bloodshed and violence in the Viking Age, and certainly plenty of longboats, but that’s not the whole picture by any means. The word ‘Viking’ originally meant ‘raider’ or ‘pirate’, but even by that narrow definition not everyone was raiding all the time. In my recent book Embers of the Hands, I was looking for the ordinary people of the Viking Age who slipped between the cracks of history, and the everyday bits and pieces of their lives that survive down to the present day.

2. How far did their society spread?

The Norse diaspora was extraordinarily broad. It started in the Scandinavian homelands of Norway, Denmark and Sweden. But it spread west across the North Atlantic to Britain and Ireland, Iceland, and Greenland, and included expeditions to the edge of the North American continent. Then in the east it extended to the Eurasian steppes and river systems that ran all the way to the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic caliphate.

3. Could you describe an everyday artefact from this period that tells us about Viking women’s lives?

I love the spindle weights from Norse Greenland where women have carved their names onto them in runes. Without women, there would have been no Viking Age at all, and textile production was a huge part of that. There would be no clothes, no waterproofs for sea voyages, no sails. Take the women and their textiles out of the Viking Age and you just have some cold, naked men sitting in a rowing boat.

4. Was there an exchange of cultural practice between the Vikings and other peoples?

Absolutely, depending on what part of the Norse world we’re talking about. For example, in Britain, there was a lot of cultural exchange and assimilation over time. There are hundreds of words in modern English that were brought over by Scandinavian settlers in the 9th and 10th centuries, including ‘cake’, ‘egg’ and, my very favourite, ‘glitter’.

5. Do you think the Vikings left a legacy that lives on today?

The Vikings left a potent legacy. A dramatically colourful storytelling culture through their sagas and myths – tales of gods such as Odin, Freja and Thor, the Midgard serpent encircling the world, the monstrous wolf Fenrir). But they were also responsible for huge cultural transformations, and social undercurrents that still run powerfully through modern global politics.

To book – please go to the event page here.