Embers of the Hands: hidden histories of the Viking Age

This article is from World Archaeology issue 129

Subscribe now for full access and no adverts

REVIEW BY CARLY HILTS

Popular imaginings of the Viking Age are often dominated by larger-than life figures – kings, warlords, explorers, poets – with the experiences of ordinary men, women, and children fading anonymously into the background. This vibrant book turns the spotlight in the other direction, focusing instead on everyday life in early medieval Scandinavia and its diaspora.

Faced with a span of several centuries and an even broader sweep of geography, Eleanor Barraclough begins by deftly summarising the historical background, before launching into themed chapters exploring such topics as travel, the home, love, leisure, and religious beliefs. These sections weave together archaeological evidence and diverse written sources (from law codes to literature), as well as clues gleaned from the physical remains of excavated individuals. In one chapter, Barraclough guides us through a mass ship burial at Salme in Estonia, examining each skeleton with forensic attention – though her scrutiny always feels sensitive rather than sensationalised. She points out evidence of conditions that would have affected these people in life, and the wounds that caused their deaths, as well as examining their grave goods, from fine swords and jewellery to hundreds of gaming pieces – one of which had been placed in a man’s mouth. Isotope and DNA analyses are then brought to bear, revealing the men’s origins and relationships with each other. Poignantly, Barraclough highlights a group of four brothers who had been killed and buried together, with another close relative (possibly an uncle) lying close by, noting that: ‘Like a village war memorial where the same surname appears multiple times, at least one family was hit hard by the disaster.’

Such vivid flashes of real people recur throughout the book, to powerful effect. Later, we encounter a pair of graves at Skämsta in Sweden, containing the remains of a man and a woman: siblings, both with a rare form of dwarfism. While the Viking Age is sometimes stereotyped as a time of violent machismo, with an emphasis on physical prowess and infanticide a not uncommon fate for babies unlikely to thrive, this pair had survived until at least the age of 40-50, and appear to have been treated as ordinary members of the community, with utterly unremarkable burial practices and grave goods. Meanwhile, during an exploration of how children tend to leave only fleeting traces in the archaeological record, Barraclough offers a charmingly characterful exception: Onfim, a boy from medieval Novgorod, who left behind scraps of birch bark that preserve not only his dogged attempts to learn the alphabet, but drawings of warriors and a self-portrait depicting himself as a curly tailed, fire-breathing beast – ephemeral echoes of a child’s imagination.

Throughout the text, Barraclough skilfully navigates complexities and contradictions, never reaching for generalisations (whether exploring how religious beliefs may have varied across the Viking world, or considering the diverse life experiences of enslaved individuals) and never losing sight of the human stories behind each artefact that she lays before us. Beautifully written, with immersively evocative prose and a wry turn of phrase, this is a hugely enjoyable overview.

Embers of the Hands: hidden histories of the Viking Age
Eleanor Barraclough 
Profile Books, £25 
ISBN 978-1788166744