Reading the Vikings. Eleanor Barraclough and Tore Skeie

The history of the Vikings is usually told from the top down, through powerful characters such as chiefs, commanders and royalty, with raids, looting and war at the centre of the narrative. But what about all the others? What was it like to live a normal life as farmer, a merchant, wife or child?

This is the central question in a recent book by British Eleanor Barraclough, Embers of the Hands. Taking her starting point from archaeological finds in order to tell the story of ordinary people’s lives in the Viking Age, she reveals how, beneath the surface, we find stories equally dramatic to the great heroic tales of those on the top.

On stage, she will be joined by her Norwegian colleague Tore Skeie. With books such as his award winning The Wolf Age: The Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, and the battle for the North Sea Empire, Skeie depicts a both vivid and brutal Viking Age rife with decisive events. Skeie’s approach to history is mainly through the upper class, such as through Saint Olaf or the nobleman Alv Erlingsson.

Skeie and Barraclough write the history of the Viking Age from two different perspectives; from the bottom up and from the top down. What can these two ways of reading history learn from each other?

The conversation was moderated by Carline Tromp, writer, critic and old norse philologist.

The event was part of the Festival of Non-Fiction 2025.

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