Description:
A New York Times Editors' Choice
One of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2025
A "brilliantly written, brilliantly conceived" (Tom Holland) history of the Viking Age, from mighty leaders to rebellious teenagers, told through their runes and ruins, games and combs, trash and treasure.
Brief description: Eleanor Barraclough is a historian and BBC broadcaster based at Bath Spa University. She previously held positions at the universities of Oxford and Durham and studied at the University of Cambridge.
Review Quotes: Perhaps the greatest virtue of this wonderful book... is that it captures the sheer strangeness, the ultimate unknowability, of the distant past. It's tempting to imagine that if you stand on the shore of that island in Estonia, staring out across the waves and tasting the salt in the sea air, you'll somehow catch the spirit of those first seafarers--Dominic Sandbrook "Sunday Times"