Eleanor Barraclough is a cultural historian, broadcaster and writer based at Bath Spa University, where she lectures in Environmental History. A BBC New Generation Thinker, she is the author of Beyond the Northlands: Vikings and the Old Norse Sagas, and has appeared regularly on radio, work which has lead to her variously being knighted with a walrus penis bone, bewitched in Sherwood Forest, chased by imaginary zombies through the basement of the BBC and dunked in a hole in the ice in a quest for immortality.
Brilliantly written, brilliantly conceived, a history of the Vikings that deploys their material legacy - from combs to slave collars, from skulls to sundials - to evoke the wonder of an entire civilisation. -- Tom Holland, author of Pax and co-host of The Rest is History Eleanor Barraclough's splendid new book offers an introduction to the ordinary people of a time best known for its kings and warlords, getting up close and personal with the things that mattered to them. In lively prose she ranges from Greenland to Baghdad, showing us bar-rooms and bedrooms, daydreaming children at their lessons, gossiping neighbours, the scars of war, and much more besides. An intimate portrait of the Viking Age that is thoughtful, vivid and warm, while ignoring none of its hardships - highly recommended. -- Neil Price, author of * The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings * Barraclough has a gift for taking us beyond the familiar into a real, visceral, far more satisfying Viking world. -- Dan Snow Praise for Beyond the Northlands: -- TLS BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2017 Adventurous scholarship. * Times Literary Supplement * A vibrant account that evokes the spirit of the Viking age in a thoroughly entertaining, yet historically sound, fashion -- Philip Parker * BBC World Histories * A book that is entertaining as well as erudite... There is no doubting Barraclough's meticulous and insightful scholarship. -- Hana Videen * Times Literary Supplement *