Writing

I always love the idea of writing something new until I start trying to write it, at which point I am filled with the existential terror of the blank page. My agent knows when this is happening because he will start to get lots of panic-texts and memes from me. My spouse knows when this is happening because I am invariably discovered face down on the floor at home, vowing never to write anything again. In theory, I write in a potting shed covered with twinkling fairy lights, listening to the bellows of rutting stags coming from over the deer leap wall in Richmond Park. But my best work is usually done in my head when I'm out walking, or in cafes where I can scribble on post-it notes and the backs of used envelopes. Unfortunately I can rarely read my writing afterwards, so it’s not a perfect system, but I tend to get there in the end.

Books

Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile)

Nominated for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and chosen as a Times History Book of the Year (2024), 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.

‘Brings us as close to an intimacy with a strange past as we are likely to get’

Financial Times

‘Barraclough’s book is a scholarly delight … Perhaps the greatest virtue of this wonderful book, though, is that it captures the sheer strangeness, the ultimate unknowability, of the distant past’

Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

‘Endlessly fascinating, authoritatively informative and, above all, great fun’

Times Literary Supplement

‘Brilliantly written, brilliantly conceived, a history of the Vikings that deploys their material legacy – from combs to slave collars,

from skulls to sundials – to evoke the wonder of an entire civilisation’

Tom Holland

‘If each individual artifact reveals relatively little, the enormous array Barraclough assembles … adds depth to the traditional

portrait of Viking culture’

New Yorker

‘A fascinating tour … Barraclough looks beyond the soap-opera sagas to those lost in the cracks of history’

The New York Times

‘From glittering treasure to lost ephemera, racy runes to hidden tombs, Barraclough reveals people both endearingly familiar, yet

sometimes also bafflingly, even unnervingly, strange’

Rebecca Wragg Sykes

‘Barraclough keeps on expanding our horizons’

Literary Review

‘The great success of this book is that it finds the “little fragments of lives lived, the bits and pieces that fell between the

cracks in the floorboards,” and constructs a story that helps us comprehend the messiness of the period, in all its wonders as

well as its horrors’

Washington Post

‘A fascinating journey through all facets of the Viking world’

Elizabeth Wayland Barber

‘Extraordinarily intimate – a rich tapestry of lives and things interwoven in lively prose. This is history made material’

Madeleine Pelling

‘Vibrant … Beautifully written, with immersively evocative prose and a wry turn of phrase, this is a hugely enjoyable overview [of

the Viking Age]’

World Archaeology

‘Great storytelling, told with extreme authority. This book brings us an exciting new talent’

Emma Gannon

Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas (Oxford University Press))

The Vikings travelled to all corners of the medieval world and beyond; north to the wastelands of Arctic Scandinavia, south to the politically turbulent heartlands of medieval Christendom, west across the wild seas to Greenland and the fringes of the North American continent, and east down the Russian waterways, trading silver, skins, and slaves. Beyond the Northlands explores this world through the stories that the Norse told about themselves in their own words, through the Old Norse-Icelandic sagas.

Chosen as one of Dominic Sandbrook’s Top Twenty History Books of All Time

‘This is a lovely book, written by a young Oxford historian who clearly adores her subject. Her story sweeps from Iceland and Greenland to Russia and the Black Sea, taking in manuscripts, monsters, dragons and runestones. It’s learned, engaging and beautifully illustrated, and she’s brilliant at exploring the real history behind all those blood-curdling stories of Odin, Loki and Thor.’

Chosen as a ‘2017 Book of the Year’ for the Times Literary Supplement
‘Beyond the Northlands splendidly reminds us what a lot else there is to know about [the Vikings], and also how strange they were. […] Adventurous scholarship indeed.’

Times Literary Supplement

‘A book that is entertaining as well as erudite… There is no doubting Barraclough’s meticulous and insightful scholarship.’

Literary Review
‘a delight’, ‘a highly entertaining and informative sense of the real Norse world view’.

Times Higher Education
‘that delightful trick of weaving lightly worn serious scholarship into a publisher- and educated general reader-pleasing “journey” narrative’, ‘her voice is charming, wise’.

Times Literary Supplement
‘a book that is entertaining as well as erudite […] there is no doubting Barraclough’s meticulous and insightful scholarship’.

Wall Street Journal
‘Beyond the Northlands admirably breaks free of both sets [of old viking stereotypes] and bursts into the wide field of Old Norse life and literature beyond the classics’, ‘blessedly, for all the rigor of the endnotes, there is not a trace of academic obfuscation’.

Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat and The Gospel of Loki
‘an excellent, erudite, yet light-hearted glimpse into Norse culture, exploration, and the melding of story and history. […] this is an immensely appealing, accessible resource, whatever your level of knowledge’.

BBC World Histories Magazine
‘What makes Beyond the Northlands so effective is Barraclough’s clear relish for the retelling of the sagas and her lightness of touch in producing a real sense of the vastness and diversity of the world that the Vikings inhabited. The resulting book is a vibrant account that evokes the spirit of the Viking age in a thoroughly entertaining, yet historically sound, fashion’.

Moira Briggs, Vulpes Libris
Moira reviews one of the funniest, and most fascinating books on the Norse Sagas that she’s ever read …
Lively … entertaining … I mean, you don’t expect to find yourself honking inelegantly over the Vinland Sagas.

Northern Echo
‘arguably, what may distinguish her from other Viking scholars is her lively style’.

Library Journal (USA)
‘clever and engaging style’, ‘clarity, humor and a sense of relevance’, ‘thoroughly researched and well rooted in historical context, yet written with wry charm and a thorough command of language’.

Shelf Awareness (USA)
‘Bridging many gaps, Beyond the Northlands is a magnificent contribution to the understanding of a fierce and poetic people’.

Minerva, Diana Bentley

‘Barraclough provides a confident, compelling narrative of their brutal, challenging world and a valuable companion to their sagas.’

US publication of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

‘Brings us as close to an intimacy with a strange past as we are likely to get’

Financial Times

Dominic Sandbrook, Sunday Times

‘Endlessly fascinating, authoritatively informative and, above all, great fun’

Times Literary Supplement

‘Brilliantly written, brilliantly conceived, a history of the Vikings that deploys their material legacy – from combs to slave collars,

from skulls to sundials – to evoke the wonder of an entire civilisation’

Tom Holland

‘If each individual artifact reveals relatively little, the enormous array Barraclough assembles … adds depth to the traditional

portrait of Viking culture’

New Yorker

‘A fascinating tour … Barraclough looks beyond the soap-opera sagas to those lost in the cracks of history’

The New York Times

‘From glittering treasure to lost ephemera, racy runes to hidden tombs, Barraclough reveals people both endearingly familiar, yet

sometimes also bafflingly, even unnervingly, strange’

Rebecca Wragg Sykes

‘Barraclough keeps on expanding our horizons’

Literary Review

‘The great success of this book is that it finds the “little fragments of lives lived, the bits and pieces that fell between the

cracks in the floorboards,” and constructs a story that helps us comprehend the messiness of the period, in all its wonders as

well as its horrors’

Washington Post

‘A fascinating journey through all facets of the Viking world’

Elizabeth Wayland Barber

‘Extraordinarily intimate – a rich tapestry of lives and things interwoven in lively prose. This is history made material’

Madeleine Pelling

‘Vibrant … Beautifully written, with immersively evocative prose and a wry turn of phrase, this is a hugely enjoyable overview [of

the Viking Age]’

World Archaeology

‘Great storytelling, told with extreme authority. This book brings us an exciting new talent’

Emma Gannon

Imagining the Supernatural North

University of Alberta Press, 2016

Edited with Danielle Cudmore and Stefan Donecke

‘Turning to face north, face the north, we enter our own unconscious. Always, in retrospect, the journey north has the quality of dream.’ (Margaret Atwood, ‘True North’.)

In this interdisciplinary collection, sixteen scholars from twelve countries explore the notion of the North as a realm of the supernatural. This region has long been associated with sorcerous inhabitants, mythical tribes, metaphysical forces of good and evil, and a range of supernatural qualities. It was both the sacred abode of the gods and a feared source of menacing invaders and otherworldly beings. Whether from the perspective of traditional Jewish lore or of contemporary black metal music, few motifs in European cultural history show such longevity and broad appeal.