Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

“[This shows that] often the most effective way to approach the past (where possible) is to combine different sorts of source material and expertise […] It also allows us to hold two ideas simultaneously in our minds that may seem contradictory: the idea of a pre-conversion Viking Age defined primarily by raids, voyaging and settlement, and then a longer Norse period where the cultural and political mores of the Vikings still had a great deal of power and significance, but were slowly transformed as they faded away.”

Closing the first chapter, this paragraph outlines Barraclough’s methodology and her thesis. It sets the challenge for the reader: To be open to contradictory ideas and evidence, and to rethink existing impressions of the people who populated the Viking Age. The author’s use of the terms “Viking” and “Norse” is also significant, showing the two are not entirely interchangeable. While Vikings are the famous raiders, they were the seeds of the longer-lasting Norse culture that left its mark, developing the theme of ​The Economic and Societal Impacts of Cultural Diffusion.

“The song curls through the slender trees and grass towards the ships and their precious cargo, buried long ago with such care. The cheerful tang of salt on the breeze would have reached them all: the leader with his stiff neck, the four brothers and their uncle, the individuals seated on their rowing benches […] And then, just at that moment when it feels as though someone is calling out to us from the past, almost close enough to hear them whisper over the sound of rattling waves, they are gone once more, vanished back into the past.”

One of the first archaeological sites Barraclough describes is the ship burial at Salme. She outlines the ways artifacts provide clues about the people there. The person she identifies as the leader had the king piece from hnefatafl (See: Index of Terms) in his mouth and fused vertebrae that would have made him an ineffective fighter. DNA analysis of the bodies shows five of them were closely related. After providing the academic facts, the author here invites readers to see the scene as she imagines it. Sensory details like the leader’s stiff neck and the smell of the salt air humanize the people and suggest the scene is almost close enough to touch, conveying her view that history is within reach if we know how to look.

“Too often, the world feels wet from top to bottom […] Down at the quayside, sluggish fjord waters slosh against waterlogged wooden planks, and creaking ships strain at their ropes. Herring gulls cackle and wail as they fight for rotting scraps of fish guts on the jetty. The humans are no quieter or better behaved: shouting orders, exchanging news and gossip, bartering, arguing, laughing. It’s probably raining. It usually is.”

Chapter 3 begins with one of the book’s most elaborately described scenes, using present tense verbs to give it a sense of immediacy and intimacy. Barraclough’s authoritative statements subtly tell readers how to feel about the weather, the noise, the smells, as though they are there. Words like “often” and “usually” suggest the scene she describes would have happened every day. This chapter deals mostly with emotions, so the author uses the vivid scene to develop a sense of presence and empathy and to characterize people in the distant past with familiar concerns and feelings—not geopolitical trade and conflict, but the mundane aspects of weather, gossip, and work.

“We don’t know what happened to Onfim. Maybe he grew up to be a warrior on horseback. Maybe he grew up to be a scholar. Maybe he didn’t grow up at all. But through a handful of bark scraps […] a child reaches out to us across time and space to share his world.”

Onfim and his drawings are significant because they are some of the only archaeological evidence of childhood in the Norse world created by a child, adding a fresh perspective to The Nature of Social Structures and Daily Life in Viking Society. Barraclough includes sketched reproductions, where readers can see he used the same kinds of stylized human figures a child today might, which she explains appear next to lessons in religious scripture. The use of anaphora in her repetition of “maybe” emphasizes that we don’t know what happened to Onfim, acknowledging the limitations of artifacts but also their emotional power.

“As climate change bites and the world continues to warm up, they appear with the meltwater on the bare, black rock. These organic scraps of the past have been miraculously preserved through the centuries. But now time is unfrozen, and the decomposition process restarts. Glacial archaeology is a race against the clock: a bittersweet celebration of what has been found because of what is being lost.”

Barraclough describes artifacts unearthed at the Lendbreen ice patch, and her background in environmental history (See: Background) becomes clear in how she addresses the double-edged sword of climate change and contemporary concerns. The sudden wealth of artifacts presents a paradox: At the same time as these valuable artifacts are revealed to researchers, their value is being lost through their physical exposure to the modern world. Here, the author pauses in examining The Role of Artifacts in Reconstructing Historical Narratives to note the concerns of archaeologists in the present.

“When we think of Viking Age travellers, this was the reality for most people. Not cutting-edge ships sailing the high seas, but extended family groups travelling shorter distances between their farmsteads and pastures, as they had done for many generations, dealing with everything from misplaced mittens and lost farm produce to injured animals and treacherous mountain storms.”

The author reminds readers to replace the stereotypical Viking image with the reality of daily life, emphasizing the importance of familial connections and a social and economic structure that was shaped by farmsteads as much as trade. In doing so, she also juxtaposes the mundane with the dramatic, conveying another truth about The Nature of Social Structures and Daily Life in Viking Society: It may look familiar in the particulars of people’s daily concerns, but the larger picture of climate and survival was quite different from what most people experience today.

“Religious belief is never a truly static thing. It morphs, evolves, and adapts to a changing world.”

This is the crux of Barraclough’s exploration of how religious belief was influenced by ​The Economic and Societal Impacts of Cultural Diffusion. While the Norse gods and religious stories as recorded to history are static, she reminds the reader that these would have changed in response to geographic, cultural, and emotional concerns. Norse pagan belief was evolving across time and place, even before it faded away in the conversion to Christianity.

“It wasn’t about ‘religion’ as such, a word that didn’t really have an everyday equivalent in the Viking Age. It was about seiðr: a custom or habit, a way of being, a way of life. Not separated, not institutionalized, not universalized.”

The author reminds readers not to view Norse beliefs through a modern or monotheistic lens, since they didn’t have a word that conceptualized “religion” in this way. Her use of the Norse term seiðr helps contextualize belief as something woven into The Nature of Social Structures and Daily Life in Viking Society. As she examines the impossibility of knowing what any one individual believed, Barraclough affirms that these beliefs were highly individualized—even people who believed in the same values and the same gods might have different customs, so the practice of belief in everyday life would look different.

“Perhaps, for a modern world where environmental concerns grow ever more pressing, this is one of the less weird aspects of the Viking Age. Because belief in hidden forces and unseen beings is also belief in the more-than-human natural world; belief that its power, fragility and sanctity are all inextricably linked to our own.”

Barraclough suggests Norse “belief” in its simplest definition can be seen as a response to, and a connection with, the natural world. Having begun the chapter by explaining how Icelanders adapted their beliefs to meet the unseen volcanic forces around them, she returns to explain that pagan sanctuaries and folklore are still important in modern Iceland. Her conclusion here is that belief is a form of awareness of one’s environment, a lesson that grows increasingly “less weird” and more familiar as environmental concerns grow.

“But who can blame Edward for his love of a sharp cut? And whether or not Edward gave in to the sinful temptation of Scandi chic, it seems from Ælfric’s letter that male Norse settlers and visitors would have been distinguishable from Anglo-Saxons on account of their ‘bared neck and blinded eyes’ hairstyles.”

Barraclough reflects on a letter from Abbot Ælfric wherein he scolds a man named Edward for copying Norse styles. The letter describes the shaved-in-back, long-in-front hairstyle that Vikings were known for. Academically, the author concludes that Norse settlers were easily recognizable and marked as different; more casually, she uses modern slang to poke fun at Ælfric’s derision. This provides a lighter note in a section that examines how the differences between cultures created tensions that would later erupt into a violent massacre.

“Beyond the luxuriously hot springs of Iceland, over 4,000 kilometres east as the crow flies, bathing remained a crucial part of Norse culture even as that culture started to shift in different directions and absorb different influences. Evidence for this comes from a peace treaty made between the Byzantines and the Rus in 907.”

The peace treaty Barraclough cites includes a note that “baths shall be prepared for [the Rus] in any volume they require” (168), reflecting The Economic and Societal Impacts of Cultural Diffusion. Haircare and bathing were such deeply ingrained parts of Norse culture that they persisted across the diaspora. Her use of the idiom “as the crow flies” emphasizes that while the linear distance may have been a dramatic 4,000 kilometers, the distance in actual travel and in time would have been much greater, further emphasizing the significance of the fact that these habits persisted and united people in disparate parts of the world.

“These combs remind us that, at some point in the eleventh century, there lived two humans whose bodies needed upkeep and maintenance, as all bodies do, regardless of whatever is unfolding around them.”

Much of the contextual evidence in the chapter “Bodies” is concerned with what is known about Norse appearance and grooming from the historical record and larger geopolitical conflicts and treaties. Here, concluding with a single grave and returning to the motif of the comb, Barraclough recenters the focus on individual lives and their experiences. Whatever is “unfolding around them,” bodies have needs that cannot be ignored.

“A ship packed with humans of all ages, restless livestock, preserved food supplies and whatever else could be packed into chests or squeezed on board: furniture, cooking equipment, tools, textiles. Its woollen sail creaking at the seams, wooden planks caked in animal dung and saltwater, it ploughed through the choppy waters of the fjord, a Viking Age Noah’s Ark.”

The author employs her technique of blending known facts about the artifacts of daily life with colorful, sensory narrative to introduce a new chapter. The allusion to Noah’s Ark emphasizes the extent to which these people were embarking on a journey of faith toward points unknown, and that they would have nothing but what they carried when the waters gave way to land.

“[Norse Greenland] was never a large enterprise. Still, it was an enterprise that succeeded for almost half a millennium, a European-style farming and hunting community that survived and thrived in the most marginal of environments.”

Barraclough summarizes the scale of what Norse Greenlanders achieved. Her appreciation for Norse Greenlandic settlement is multi-faceted. Archaeologically, the settlements here provide the most complete and undiluted evidence of daily life in the Viking Age. From a historical perspective, she marvels at the ability to sustain European traditions for centuries in an environment that forced people to shift the way they worked and ate. At a human level, her note that they “survived and thrived” conveys the hardiness and determination of the people themselves.

“Take away the textiles and the women, and you have some naked men in a rowing boat. The poet Ottarr the Black knew this: in one poem dedicated to King Olaf Haraldsson of Norway he describes the king in his ship, cutting through the high waves, while ‘the sail, which women had spun, played against the mast top’. The king, Ottarr acknowledges with a nod, would be nothing without the women.”

Ottar the Black’s poem provides historical evidence that people in the Viking Age recognized that women were a vital part of Viking life. There would have been no Viking Age warriors without Viking Age women, a central idea in “Home” and a key aspect of the author’s development of ideas about ​The Nature of Social Structures and Daily Life in Viking Society.

“There is always tension between what stays constant and what has to change while still remaining recognisably ‘home.’ But if a marginal world becomes more marginal, then how far is it possible to adapt until the whole project becomes untenable?”

As the chapter concludes, the author returns to the question of what defines “home.” The tension between constants and changes connects this chapter to others, a reference that recalls the ways the Viking diaspora had to adapt in different ways to other tensions to make other parts of the world home. Her rhetorical question, however, is aimed firmly at the Greenlandic settlement: It segues to information about the settlement’s end and how a changing environment made it impossible for the Norse to adapt their concept of home any further.

“Ibrahim ibn Ya ‘qub came from a different cultural background with different musical traditions. We don’t know what he heard to provoke such a strong uncomplimentary reaction […] their singing style may have been closer to a Sami joik, a traditional singing-chanting practiced by the people whose cultural region stretches across the northern parts of Fenno-Scandinavia […] Or possibly Ibrahim ibn Ya ‘qub really did hear some truly awful singing by someone very much lacking in musical talent.”

The author relies on the written record because archaeological evidence of individual voices is impossible, but reminds readers that these sources include different values and tastes. Notably, while most of the book focuses on Norse cultural diffusion outward, here she considers the way the indigenous Scandinavian Sami may have influenced Norse culture. Her use of language like “may have been” and “possibly” acknowledges that there is no way to know for sure what Norse singing sounded like or where its traditions originated.

“The Golden Horns of Gallehus are—or rather ‘were,’ since they were stolen and melted down by an unscrupulous goldsmith in 1802—a pair of elaborately decorated golden horns from early fifth-century Denmark, which places them very firmly in elite territory.”

During an exploration of leisure at different social levels, Barraclough pauses to include this information about the Gallehus horns, of which only sketches remain. Her pointed note emphasizes the importance of respecting The Role of Artifacts in Reconstructing Historical Narratives and their fragility. Her examination of the sketches and the fact that the original images were on valuable gold supports the argument that leisure began with the elites.

“The board game was found in a building that seems to have had a living-room function, with a central hearth for a cosy fire and a bench on the side, the perfect location for a game of hnefatafl when the day’s work was over.”

This illustrates the importance of artifacts but also the value they can have when they’re examined in the context of their immediate setting. By considering the other objects in the room with the game board, Barraclough makes inferences about the broader strokes of daily life that may have been analogous to the modern world. The words “when the day’s work was over” revisit the idea that the game may have begun as an elite pastime, but that relaxation was a universal need at all levels of society.

“This is the great challenge of searching for enslaved people through material evidence: iron chains aside, legal status does not leave an archaeological trace. But if we cast our eyes back over what we have already seen through the preceding chapters, perhaps we can use written sources as a kind of light, shining it into the dark cracks, peering inside to see that enslaved people have been part of the story all along, hidden from view.”

In this chapter, the author examines the discrepancies between the historical and archaeological records, explaining that while mentions of enslaved people appear in written accounts, material evidence is scant. However, the metaphor of the light suggests that historians can find other kinds of evidence if they know where to look. It also introduces the chapter’s methodology: Barraclough returns to the stories, sources, and artifacts from previous chapters to look at them with a new purpose and perspective.

“Freedom was not a binary state, and it might take a very long time for the descendants of a former slave to truly escape the shackles of their past.”

Barraclough argues that people in Viking society who had once been “enslaved” were not transformed into a state of being “free” just by escaping the condition of enslavement. Even once a person was no longer enslaved, they were still “unfree,” without the legal protections or societal equity afforded to those who had always been free. The author’s metaphorical use of the word “shackles” further conveys the idea that simply having had enslaved ancestors could keep a person in a state of unfreedom.

“No matter who had won in 1066, then, someone of Norse descent would have sat on the throne.”

Barraclough notes this with irony when describing the Battle of Hastings as the official end of the Viking Age. By this time, Norse families and culture were so thoroughly interwoven with Anglo-Saxon that all three contenders for the throne had Norse parentage somewhere in their background. In truth, she implies, this was just another form of beginning, where Norse influence and culture became an inextricable part of English history, reflecting The Economic and Societal Impacts of Cultural Diffusion.

“So perhaps this was when the Viking Age was well and truly over for the Icelanders, when they lost their political independence and started writing down the stories of their ancestors in manuscripts rather than telling them to each other around the winter fires. Perhaps this is the point when the present becomes the past, when it is solidified in the written historical record.”

Rhetorically, the final chapter of the book poses the question of when a historical age can be declared over. Barraclough partially answers her own question by arguing it can have many ends in many different places. Her idea that this ended for Icelanders when they swore allegiance to Norway and began writing down their histories conveys that a characteristically “Viking” culture of independence and continual movement came to a close, only remembered—and likely idealized—in written histories. It suggests that the difference between the past and present is movement, the ability to respond and change. The moment stories stopped being retold and revised orally, they became frozen in time, no longer able to adapt to a society that kept moving forward.