71 pages • 2-hour read
Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age
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Themes
The Economic and Societal Impacts of Cultural Diffusion
Embers of the Hands examines the interactions between environment, culture, and belief that created Norse social and economic structures, and how they carried these with them into the world. The author’s primary concern is the people behind the warriors in their longships, yet the environmental and economic factors that motivated them were a driving factor in Norse cultural diffusion. Barraclough analyzes how Norse society developed economically as a result of its expansion into the wider world, how this expansion created religious tensions, and the lasting effects of the Viking diaspora and its culture on the wider world.
Early in the book, Barraclough explains that contact with large empires provided models of “kingship” societies, which influenced a Norse social structure with wealthy males at the top, followed by a free population where women were subordinate but essential, and enslaved people with no legal rights or protections. This economic stratification, the author hypothesizes, was the motivation behind the earliest Viking raids: In a region with limited arable land, expeditions provided a source of wealth to build a life, marry, and have a family. Men brought reliquaries and jewels home to the women “who were the keys to these futures, who would be buried one day with their exotic gifts from over the sea” (66). As social classes solidified, Vikings shifted from raiding to settlement; the geography of settlement yielded dramatically different results.
As Vikings sailed west, their Norse culture, economy, and belief adapted to the physical environment. Greenlandic wadmal was a necessary adaptation to the frigid temperatures, but it became so economically important elsewhere it became a form of currency, while walrus ivory from the Northern Hunting Grounds was a source of wealth traded as far as Baghdad. In Iceland, belief met and melded with the environment, and the fierce independence of that island resulted in language and traditions that preserved many aspects of medieval Norse heritage, including athletic competitions and pagan sanctuaries. Though cultural upheavals accompanied diffusion and conversion, “in Iceland the irony is that it was Christians who preserved much of what we know (or think we know) about the older Viking myths and gods” (129). The diaspora who moved east and south created economic and geographic ties to wealthy empires. Although Norse ancestry remains in the regions settled by the Rus and Normans, they adopted the language and customs of their new homes.
Outside of Scandinavia, the marks of Norse culture appear most strongly in England, Scotland, and Ireland, where a wealth of artifacts illustrates that violent convergence of different habits and customs was followed by a gradual blending of cultures: Place names and word roots have roots in Old Norse, and even leaders recorded to history as English have Norse ancestry. Paradoxically, the Viking diaspora looked different everywhere, but left a distinctly Norse cultural mark on the local economies and cultures it touched.
The Nature of Social Structures and Daily Life in Viking Society
Barraclough explores evidence of the ways people practiced their religion, worked and made homes for themselves, and found time for fun or a good bath. Daily life was influenced by a hierarchical social structure and gender roles that reflected the medieval age. Barraclough examines the ways these ideas are reflected in tools for work and personal care, poems and personal notes, and games and instruments similar to those used today. Throughout the book, Barraclough seeks to illuminate the nature of social structures and daily life in Viking society.
Barraclough explains how pagan beliefs, rudimentary medical knowledge, and a harsh and unforgiving climate made medieval Norse lives distinctly different from modern ones. Life was often uncomfortable and there was little to be done about it: Injuries from work, war, or travel; congenital disorders; and maternal mortality made daily life riskier than it is today. To cope, people asked the gods and other supernatural beings for help. These beings were “sharing the familiar landscapes of everyday life, living in the fields and woods around the farmsteads” (137)—-they were part of daily life, and runes were a way people at any level of society could communicate with them.
Barraclough also discusses the hierarchical structure of society, especially regarding enslavement. She uses artifacts like the hostage stone, which depicts a captive being led away by rope, to illustrate how enslavement was deeply interwoven into Viking society. The historical testimonies of outsiders such as Ahmad ibn Fadlan depict the cruel treatment enslaved persons were often subjected to, including sexual abuse. She also notes, however, that the experience of enslavement could vary, and emphasizes the important role enslaved people played in Viking society, even if their individual contributions often go unacknowledged in the historical record.
The author also uses colorful vignettes and creative reimagining of what it might feel like to wait at a dockside for a returning ship, send or receive a love note, or tell stories by a fireside to illuminate familiar scenes. In seeking the realities of domestic life, Barraclough focuses a lot of her attention on women and children. Though she acknowledges that medieval Norse society was patriarchal and women were more “socially constrained” than their male counterparts, they were still a societal and economic force. The author describes the weaving room of the Farm Under the Sand as a place where children play underfoot and women are the point around which everything else revolves, literally putting clothing on people’s backs and the wind in warriors’ sails. Elsewhere, women are healers, seeresses, vengeful lovers, and mothers who need comfort and give it in return.
Within this domestic sphere and the broader world, Barraclough finds the familiar in the distinctly unique. Through a blend of archaeological findings and creative interpretation, she seeks to illuminate what life was like even for ordinary members of the Viking Age.
The Role of Artifacts in Reconstructing Historical Narratives
The book’s stated goal is to read between the lines of history and find the hidden details that defined the Viking Age. Beginning with the Prologue, the author centers artifacts and their importance to uncovering emotions, relationships, and experiences of people who lived a millennia ago or more. Recorded history is present at the margins, providing context for understanding the artifacts’ significance. By analyzing the relationship between these kinds of evidence and applying the benefits of modern science, the author reconstructs key ideas about communities, celebrations, and conflicts and “reminds us what we have to gain from venturing off the beaten historical track into the undergrowth of material evidence” (32).
The comb pulled out of the Vimose bog in the Prologue introduces the value of artifacts for giving voice to people and times absent from recorded history. By examining the comb and other artifacts from Vimose at length, the author explores this idea as well as the value of runes, early cultural diffusion, and the practice of making offerings to the gods. She also establishes the comb as a motif in the book, an artifact that turns up throughout the Norse world and represents the personal and intimate routines of daily life.
Artifacts provide evidence of communities and their interactions elsewhere. The debris left behind on the Lendbreen ice patch allows archaeologists to reconstruct the travel habits of medieval Norwegians by piecing together the things they left behind, connecting them to images of skiing from even farther into the past, and to themes about travel and hospitality recorded in sagas. Unearthed Greenlandic settlements provide a snapshot of life frozen in time, without which researchers would know little about the lives of those settlers and their insights about Norse culture at large.
Runestones, pendants, and other artifacts left behind at sites of worship help illustrate religious rituals and beliefs, which in some cases can be compared to written records. Though the author dismisses Adam of Bremen’s and Thietmar of Merseburg’s accounts of mass human sacrifice at Uppsala and Lejre as “lurid descriptions” and “a good piece of gossip” (138-139) unsupported by evidence, she makes a point of noting that’s “as yet,” suggesting further archaeological excavation is the key to understanding the truth of the written accounts.
The relationship between artifacts and recorded history is most strongly demonstrated in the analysis of burial sites, which yield a wealth of information about the nature of conflict and its relationship to economic and cultural diffusion. Sites indicate social structures, hierarchies, and beliefs, including clues that enslaved people were sacrificed for service in the afterlife, what people believed they would need to get there, and the overlap between pagan and Christian beliefs. Significantly, artifacts from the burials in Salme and Oxford seem to confirm aspects of the written record, but Barraclough focuses on new questions about who died there and how this affected their families back home. From the bones of the dead, researchers can draw conclusions about family ties and cultural diffusion through DNA analysis, or even reconstruct a man’s face.
Barraclough explains that “scientific advances continue to open up new paths in the historical landscape” (44). As time marches forward, artifacts will only become more valuable in helping historians reconstruct historical narratives.
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