Embers of the hands

Chepstow Books & Gifts Verified independent store

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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 northe rn 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. Show more