EMBERS OF THE HANDS: HIDDEN HISTORIES OF THE VIKING AGE (HB)

Imagine a Viking and one image probably springs out: a nameless warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, ready to terrorise the hapless locals. Yet while such characters certainly existed, they were in the minority. From the edge of the North American continent to the Russian steppes, and the Arctic wastelands to the Caliphate, this is a history of the Viking Age filled with real people of different ages, genders and ethnicities, told through the traces that they left behind, from hairstyles to place names, love-notes to gravestones.