![Review – Embers of the Hands [Emma Barraclough]](https://breathesbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/48qb3utslfsi2717zug93mleo9zr.jpg "Review – Embers of the Hands [Emma Barraclough]")
Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
by Eleanor Barraclough
Genres: History, Non-fictionPages: 384
Rating:
Synopsis:A new and original history of the Viking Age, told through the objects that defined the lives of its people - from powerful leaders to naughty teenagers
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.
I’m not quite sure why it took me ages to read Emma Barraclough’s Embers of the Hands, because once I got into it, I really enjoyed it. The premise is to get close to real people of the Viking era through mostly material remains, like the outline of a teenager’s foot scratched into the timbers of a boat, or the slightly asymmetrical and well-worn heavy woollen dress preserved in icy conditions.
This mostly works pretty well: Barraclough does have to spend time just giving straight-up context, of course, so it isn’t all artifacts all the time — but there are enough fascinating finds and inferences drawn that it felt relatively fresh. Many of them I knew little about, which was also nice: she does discuss the Lewis chessmen, which I’ve read quite a bit about, but otherwise most of the finds were new to me.
Her style is pretty easy to read without becoming so breezy it felt like she was leaving out information or getting too flippant (though flippant can still be fun and informational when it’s well done!). I think it’d have benefitted from the recent trend toward in-line colour images alongside the finds she’s talking about, but there is a section of colour plates which is well worth perusing (it’s right at the end in the ebook version).
There are plenty of notes, as well, and in comparison with the fact that I do actually know something about this period from a mostly-literary perspective, I feel pretty confident in recommending it.
Rating: 4/5 (“really liked it”)
![Review – Let Him Lie [Ianthe Jerrold]](https://breathesbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/ge9bqdv6bic3n67q5kicds4q2qjv.jpg "Review – Let Him Lie [Ianthe Jerrold]")
![Review – The Green Man’s Heir [Juliet E. McKenna]](https://breathesbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/38453307.jpg "Review – The Green Man’s Heir [Juliet E. McKenna]")
![Review – There Is No Antimemetics Division [qntm]](https://breathesbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/q6v1mvbri69v1mq3a58t7i1gyuah.jpg "Review – There Is No Antimemetics Division [qntm]")
