71 pages • 2-hour read
Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
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Chapters 5-6Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Belief”
Content Warning: This section of the guides describes religious discrimination and violent deaths of people and animals.
Iceland, c. 900
The earliest settlers to Iceland recognized its elemental forces, calling it “Snow Land” before “Ice Land” and naming Reykjavik for the steam from its hot springs. Barraclough argues these settlers, who began arriving around 870, needed to create invisible, sentient forces to explain the powers at work in their new environment, but hard evidence is elusive.
Light From Light
Around 900, Icelanders experienced their first major volcanic eruption; lava flowed for months and swallowed up farmsteads. Inside caves carved by the lava, there is evidence of ritual offerings.
The lava cave Surtshellir is named for the fire giant and destroyer Surt, known in Icelandic myths as the murderer of Frey at Ragnarok, who brings flames to swallow the world. Surtshellir is at the end of several kilometers of volcanic tunnels. Seven large piles of unburned animal bones stretch through the cave; the largest appears to copy the outline of a ship. Inside is a layer of crushed basalt and burned animal bones, along with glass, jasper, and chalcedony. The shared trait among these offerings is that they are formed through fire, what Barraclough deems “fitting gifts to placate a fire giant” (125).
Fire giants feature often in stories. In one poem, two women seek shelter in a cave on their way to mass, scratching a Christian cross for protection near the entrance. A giant lurks in the cave, and the volcanic imagery in the poem suggests the end of the world. Barraclough highlights the juxtaposition of Christian and pagan forces, suggesting possible interpretations: That as Christian beliefs became centered, the fire giant represents old beliefs lurking at the edges of the culture; or that the end of the pagan belief system was viewed as a kind of apocalypse.
In the Beginning Was the Void
In Norse mythology, Yggdrasil is a giant ash tree holding the nine realms of the universe. Two worlds existed, one of flames and one of ice. Where they met, the primordial giant Ymir was born, and from his body, a new world was created: The earth from his flesh, the sea from his blood, the sky from his skull. Asgard is home of the gods, Midgard is home of the humans, and Hel is the underworld. Other realms contain supernatural creatures.
This story and most others about Norse belief come from the Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson and the Poetic Edda, written anonymously 50 years later. As both come from 13th-century Iceland, deep into the Christian era, it’s difficult to tell how accurately they represent beliefs that stretched over centuries and continents.
Though the god Tyr has a minor role in Icelandic sources, he may have begun as the most important deity. His name could stem from “Tiwaz” in Proto-Germanic, linking Tyr etymologically to “father gods” like Zeus and Jupiter. Place names provide clues about the gods venerated in different locations. Though Tyr has no surviving place names in Sweden, there are many in Denmark and some in Norway. Place names connected to Thor and Odin are widespread.
Stone artifacts are thought to represent stories from the Prose Edda, suggesting there are very old origins behind Sturluson’s text. A runestone on Gotland dating from 700-900 illustrates a scene where a figure rides a horse with eight legs, and is greeted by a woman holding horns. One interpretation is that this is Odin riding Sleipnir to the halls of Valhalla, where he is greeted by a Valkyrie offering mead; the author briefly acknowledges others.
Other stones throughout the Norse world may depict Thor fighting the Midgard Serpent. There is a hearthstone with Loki’s face. Some theories suggest that later in time, Loki took the form of a domestic spirit who lived under the fireplace; as recently as the 20th century, folklore said Loki could make a fire crackle or hiss. The author concludes Norse gods did not all have a single identity, and shifted over time.
Of All That Is Seen and Unseen
Barraclough focuses on traces of individual beliefs and practices, comparing their variations to the differing traditions associated with Father Christmas in Western culture. Chronicles describing large-scale ceremonies are supported to varying degrees by the archaeological record. As Adam of Bremen described ritual sacrifice at Uppsala, Thietmar of Merseberg described similar events at Lejre 60 years earlier. Archaeological evidence confirms both locations were large gathering places with halls and buildings, but does not confirm human or animal sacrifice.
Most evidence of worship is on a smaller scale, such as the island Frösö; archaeologists excavating a church uncovered evidence that between 980 and 1030 a tree there was scattered with animal bones for sacrifice. A site in Iceland includes evidence of a long hall and the skulls of sacrificed cattle; a short distance away, a church was built around the same time pagan activities were declining. Building Christian churches on or near existing sites of worship was a common practice, which Barraclough says served the dual purpose of allowing people to worship in the place they were used to while stamping out pagan practices.
Political and religious offices were often blurred. Icelandic chieftains were called godi, from the same root word as “god,” and the Glavendrup runestone honors a man who was both priest and military leader. Seeresses were high-status women said to have links to the spirits beyond the human world. Identified by their robes, staffs, and amulets, they likely visited villages to perform songs of protection. The two women from the Oseberg ship might have been seeresses: Their grave contained staffs, amulets, and mind-altering plants.
People commonly called on Thor for protection using runes and amulets. A small bronze version of Thor’s hammer worn as a pendant became popular from the 9th century onward in Denmark. Barraclough argues that since a pendant is as much about identity as belief, this might have become a way for pagans to signify themselves as borders with the Christian world blurred. She points to a grave near Hedeby as evidence of this blurring, where a woman was buried wearing a silver crucifix, in a wagon hung with several Thor’s hammers. The woman may have held both pagan and Christian beliefs, or those who buried her may have placed the hammers, hoping to help her to their afterlife. There is other evidence of religious syncretism: A coin has Thor’s hammer on one side and a Christian cross on the other; stones are inscribed with pagan gods and Christian crosses.
One Holy Church
Stories differ on the conversion from paganism to Christianity. While official narratives convey a straight line and definitive transition, individual beliefs moved gradually and sometimes violently. During Iceland’s conversion, Christian missionaries smashed pagan sanctuaries and caused societal uproar. A compromise officially divided public practice and private belief: Everyone should follow Christian traditions in public, but people could still follow the old customs in secret. Today, traces of pagan belief exist in the construction of a new hof (sanctuary) in Iceland, and a protest that preserved a 70-ton rock said to be an elf church.
Chapter 6 Summary: “Bodies”
A Good Comb
Barraclough describes a comb case found in the Danelaw inscribed with the runes “Thorfast made a good comb” (156) to introduce Viking Age grooming rituals. From his name and the fact that he was writing in Younger Futhark, Barraclough infers that Thorfast was Scandinavian, connecting the Danelaw and Norse homelands.
By the 850s, lightning raids were being replaced by settlement in coastal Britain and Ireland, and conflict with Anglo-Saxon kings eventually led to the creation of the Danelaw to divide territory between Anglo-Saxon and Norse leaders. Political power shifts and violence continued in the ensuing decades, with notable Viking rulers including Erik Bloodaxe in 947 and Cnut in 1016. As power shifted, Norse and Anglo-Saxons lived alongside each other, and one aspect of daily life that divided them was their grooming rituals.
Good Hair, Do Care
Combs are one of the most common artifacts from archaeological investigations of the Viking Age. Sagas and legends include stories about hair: The first king of Norway, Harald Fairhair, refused to comb his hair until he united all of Norway under his rule, during which period he was called “Tanglehair.” Stories of the gods convey the importance of beautiful hair as well. Loki cuts the hair of Thor’s wife in a prank, after which he replaces it with gold to avoid Thor killing him; depictions of Valkyries show long ponytails neatly twisted at the back of the head.
Letters and chronicles indicate distaste for Viking grooming among Anglo-Saxons. One letter urges Northumbrians to reconsider, “your trimming of beard and hair, in which you have wished to resemble the pagans” (161); another says a man’s wish to style his hair in the way of the Vikings is an insult to his ancestors and kin. This hairstyle, shaved in the back and shaggy in the front, is a hallmark of Viking Age culture and influence. In 1220, John of Wallingford complained that the “frivolities” of Viking style and their weekly bathing caused some English women to prefer well-groomed Scandinavians to their Anglo-Saxon counterparts.
Criticisms of Norse hygiene and style reveal tensions simmering between two cultures in close proximity. On November 13th, 1002, the Anglo-Saxon king Æthelred ordered the murder of Norse settlers at Oxford; the St. Brice’s Day massacre is described by John of Wallingford in the same chronicle as that of their grooming habits. He says settlers were driven from their lands and sought sanctuary in the Christian church, which the king’s forces then burnt down.
A mass grave on the grounds of St. John’s College in Oxford might be the resting place of the massacre’s victims. At least 35 bodies have been found there, most of them young males with trauma indicating they were attacked violently from behind. Charring on bones aligns with the description of the church burning. However, dating and analysis of the bones suggests these individuals lived a few decades earlier than the known date of the massacre, and had a higher concentration of marine protein in their diet than most people who lived in the area.
Barraclough reminds the audience that while the bodies of the dead don’t always fit with the historical record, science can reveal other stories about their lives. DNA analysis from archaeological sites around the world confirms that one of the bodies in the mass-grave was a close relative to a Viking Age warrior discovered on the island of Funen. Together, their bodies confirm the far-flung nature of Viking life and family ties; their skeletons were reunited at an exhibition at the National Museum of Denmark.
Bath Time
John of Wallingford’s description of the St. Brice’s Day massacre includes a note that the king and his advisors chose a Saturday for their attack, when Norse settlers were known to bathe. They may have chosen the date so they could catch their victims unaware. The importance of bathing on Saturday was enshrined in the Old Norse name for the day, which survives in the languages of Scandinavia today.
Open-air bathing is well-recorded in Iceland. Snorri Sturluson had his own outdoor hot tub with underground passages connecting it to his farmhouse, and Christian converts insisted on being baptized in local hot springs. A peace treaty between the Byzantines and the Rus included the stipulation that Rus merchants who traveled south should have as many baths as they desired. In contrast with the Anglo-Saxon complaints that the Norse bathed too often, the account of Ahmad ibn Fadlan of the Abbasid Caliphate complains that they bathed too little, and describes their habit of sharing water for washing with disgust.
The Look of the Past
Ahmad ibn Fadlan also described the bodies of the Vikings as perfect, and covered from toes to neck in green tattoos. Though no preserved bodies from Viking culture have yet been found to support this, some Egyptian mummies and ancient bodies preserved in ice bear tattoos. Viking tattoos are not remarked upon in the Anglo-Saxon record, but if tattoos were also common practice among Anglo-Saxons, they wouldn’t have seen them as noteworthy.
Another form of body modification was filing horizontal or diagonal grooves into the teeth. The practice seems most common in Sweden and Gotland, where over 130 bodies with filed teeth have been found. Two others were found in Denmark and one was found at the site of a mass execution in Dorset. There is, as yet, no clear historical narrative to explain the purpose of these dental modifications, though Barraclough argues they must have been intended to indicate something about identity, character, or origin.
Viking Age depictions of faces reveal elegantly knotted hair and carefully twisted or braided beards and mustaches. New technology blends art with DNA analysis to create models of facial features based on the outline of the skull and facial muscles. The elder of the two related skeletons from Oxford and Funen was reconstructed for exhibition at the National Museum of Denmark; though killed by violence, his reconstructed figure was dressed as a farmer, reminding viewers that his existence included a range of experiences.
Physical Needs
Basic physical needs leave little evidence behind. One piece of evidence is the Lloyd’s Bank Coprolite, the largest piece of fossilized human feces ever discovered. From 9th century York, the coprolite testifies to an individual who ate a diet of mainly meat and bread and suffered from intestinal parasites. Barraclough relishes the idea that the person who produced it had no idea it would be studied by scientists a millennium later.
Scribes in 13th-century Iceland testified to the discomforts of daily life, including cold, darkness, hunger, and physical ailments.
Sick Bodies
Medical interventions in the Viking Age were “rudimentary at best” (179), including medieval practices like applying herbs, bandaging and cauterizing wounds, and bloodletting. Sagas indicate many healers were women, and that they used tools and other methods to diagnose and treat battlefield wounds. Supernatural elves and demons were blamed for ailments like pain and fever. Versions of “helping runes” from the 13th century illustrate such methods continued after the conversion to Christianity.
Vulnerable Bodies
Barraclough states that a society’s values are revealed by the ways it cares for the most vulnerable among its population. Infanticide occurred during the Viking Age, but was not particular to this region or part of history, and evidence shows disabled individuals could live to adulthood.
Some Norse gods had disabilities—Odin was blind in one eye, Tyr lost a hand to the wolf Fenrir—and the author quotes the poem Hávamál, where Odin offers a reminder that the lame can ride horses and the deaf can fight. Further, Barraclough suggests daily life during the period made acquiring a disability—through violence, accident, or the challenges of living and aging—nearly inevitable. Skeletal remains show many people lived with consequences of injuries, including improperly healed broken bones, or with painful conditions like fused vertebrae and arthritis.
Barraclough highlights a burial in Skämsta, Sweden. Among the eight individuals buried there, two had spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia, a rare form of dwarfism; DNA analysis revealed that they were brother and sister. Evidence shows they lived to be 40 or 50 years old, and lived and died as ordinary members of the community. They were buried with that ubiquitous artifact, the comb, which the author uses to represent the necessity of upkeep of all human bodies, remarking that the bodies of these siblings survive “to tell a story so extraordinary precisely because these people were ordinary” (186).
Chapters 5-6 Analysis
These two chapters juxtapose the spiritual world and the physical one. In “Belief,” Barraclough acknowledges the limitations of the archaeological and written record, while in “Bodies,” she explores their plentiful though sometimes contradictory evidence. Both chapters examine tensions that accompanied The Economic and Societal Impacts of Cultural Diffusion, as pagan beliefs and daily rituals collided with Christianity and the wider world.
“Belief” illustrates the limitations of using written or archaeological evidence to understand the private values behind public ritual. Thietmar of Merseburg wrote that the people who participated in pagan rituals and sacrifices “were convinced that these would do service for them and those who dwell beneath the earth and ensure their forgiveness for any misdeeds” (139); but as Barraclough notes in “Introduction,” Norse gods didn’t represent a dichotomy of good versus evil, so Thietmar’s observation belies his Christian theology. Though the author addresses the archaeological evidence related to Thietmar’s account as well as Adam of Bremen’s, this chapter is less concerned with rituals than the challenge of parsing the beliefs that motivated them.
Understanding the ephemeral beliefs of individuals is largely a matter of inference, for which the author turns to the sagas and archaeology of Iceland’s diaspora. Her description of Iceland’s landscape of fire and ice presents an alien setting, and the devastating volcanic eruption in 900 emphasizes the likelihood that people responded to their environment by reimagining existing religious beliefs and values. While artifacts throughout Scandinavia seem to bear out Sturluson’s stories, his writing does not capture the way belief might have evolved across time and place. By reaching back further in time to analyze the etymology of Tyr and the references to gods in place names, images, and runes throughout Scandinavia, the author provides context for viewing Norse religious belief as malleable in response to cultural diffusion, shifting to meet people’s needs, anxieties, and hopes.
The book highlights the necessity of this malleability at a time when pagan and Christian beliefs were confronting each other in daily life. People may have hedged their beliefs to avoid this confrontation, or as a way to maintain ties to their pagan identity. This hybridity is borne out by the presence of Thor’s hammers in or near Christian contexts: As Barraclough points out, “a Thor’s hammer sits as neatly on one’s chest as a crucifix” (148). However, the mass conversions that took place late in the Viking Age help to account for the lack of evidence of individual pagan beliefs. When the old customs must be practiced in private, and churches are erected where the old rituals once took place, evidence of belief is literally erased.
By contrast, the archaeological and written record offer a wealth of evidence for exploring the physical world in “Bodies,” illustrating the confrontations and societal conflicts that resulted from cultural diffusion. Viking diaspora in the Danelaw brought traditions and rituals that set them apart from their Anglo-Saxon neighbors, and their grooming made these differences readily apparent. The author quotes Abbot Ælfric of Eynsham’s letter haranguing the English, “that you do wrong in that you abandon the English customs which your fathers observed and love the customs of the heathen people [… and insult] your ancestors by such evil customs when you dress […] in Danish fashion” (162). Ælfric’s loathing for the Viking hairstyle indicates a deeper fear that English customs would be replaced by Norse ones, possibly motivated by his view of them as “heathens” whose pagan beliefs made them lesser or other.
Abbot Ælfric’s resentment is echoed in John of Wallingford’s lament that English ladies were being seduced by men who brushed their hair and bathed. The author’s emphasis on the fact that in the same chronicle Wallingford described the St. Brice’s Day massacre as a “most just extermination” of “cockle amongst the wheat” (164) highlights the extent to which Anglo-Saxons dehumanized the Norse, and to which fears about their culture and religion were at the root of violent confrontations.
Elsewhere, examining grooming rituals, treatment of sick and disabled individuals, and physical needs touches on evidence that conveys a sense of The Nature of Social Structures and Daily Life in Viking Society. The emphasis on evidence of beautifully styled hair in depictions of the gods and of the necessity of bathing in a trade treaty indicates that physical appearance was an important part of daily life, and connects to the ubiquity of Thor’s hammer pendants the author notes in “Belief.” If Vikings used their outward appearance to signal identity, including body modification like tattoos and tooth-filing, then the pendant takes on particular significance. Norse culture centered on the community, and appearance could signal who was within and who was without.
Physical evidence suggests that those within the community were valued and care was taken for their comfort. In a world where rudimentary medical knowledge and the harshness of daily life made comforts—like a weekly bath, a freshly combed hairdo, or a dip in a hot spring—a precious thing, this reveals important societal values and structures.
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