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

'Brilliantly written ... evokes the wonder of an entire civilisation.' Tom Holland, author of Pax and co-host of The Rest is History 'A wondrous, gorgeously-written book' Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred 'Splendid - an intimate portrait of the Viking Age. Highly recommended.' Neil Price, author of The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings 'Takes us beyond the familiar into a real, visceral, far more satisfying Viking world.' Dan Snow 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.

"A wondrous, gorgeously-written book, breathing the Vikings into intimate, incandescent life: from glittering treasure to lost ephemera, racy runes to hidden tombs, Barraclough reveals people both endearingly familiar, yet sometimes also bafflingly, even unnervingly, strange" - Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

"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." - The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

"Adventurous scholarship." - Times Literary Supplement

"A vibrant account that evokes the spirit of the Viking age in a thoroughly entertaining, yet historically sound, fashion" - BBC World Histories

"A book that is entertaining as well as erudite... There is no doubting Barraclough's meticulous and insightful scholarship." - Times Literary Supplement