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

Read more

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.’

Read more

BBC History Magazine: Reading the Runes

Mysterious characters inscribed on stone, wood and bone reveal little-known aspects of everyday Viking life. Eleanor Barraclough deciphers runes that recount tales of love, lust, travel and tragedy from a millennium ago.

Women’s Prize: In Conversation with Eleanor Barraclough

Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction 2025, judge Emma Gannon says: ‘An accessible gateway into this period using thematic storytelling to paint a fascinating picture of a very different era. It has both lightness of touch and extreme authority making it extremely readable. This book brings us an exciting new talent and I look forward to following all future work by this author. Read on to find out more about the book we spoke to Eleanor about her writing, research and current reads.

‘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

Read more

BBC Countryfile Magazine: A Giant-Sized Enigma

Roman god? Anglo-Saxon fertility aid? Political statement during the Civil War? Visitors to Dorset have puzzled over the origins of the Cerne Abbas giant for centuries, as Eleanor Barraclough discovers.

BBC Countryfile Magazine: Viking Shores

We picture Vikings marauding coastal settlements, looting and raiding. But what was life really like in the Viking Age? Historian Eleanor Barraclough reveals what the ancient artefacts found on Britain’s shores tell us about our formidable forbears.

Guardian: Top Ten Books About the Vikings

It’s not all raiding and looting – these stories and histories range from family dramas to political thrillers, not to mention man-eating trolls and bawdy gods.

BBC Countryfile: Dark Age Britain

After the end of Roman Britain, the land became a melting pot of Britons, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings – all of whom variously shaped the character of our countryside.

BBC History: Arctic Norway

For the latest in our historical holiday series, Eleanor explores the remote beauty and historical treasures of Arctic Norway.

National Geographic: Viking Lore

Archaeologists have confirmed key details in Norse oral histories (but not the dragons, elves, and trolls). The Vikings had “a long oral history going back centuries,” says Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough. “It’s very hard to separate the facts from the fiction.”

History Today: Warriors of No Nation

Norse travellers reached every corner of the known world, but they were not tourists. The ‘racially pure’ Vikings of stereotype were, in fact, cultural chameleons adopting local habits, languages and religions.

BBC Countryfile: Forests of the Mind

Haven in troubled times or lair of magic and monsters, the forest beguiles and frightens in equal measure. Eleanor Barraclough explores our relationship with the deep dark wood through legends old and new.

BBC Countryfile: Vikings at Large in the Countryside

Waves of Vikings brought terror to the British Isles over 1,000 years ago and they left a deep mark on the landscape, as Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough discovers for a new BBC Radio 4 programme.

BBC History: Ancient Forests

Charlotte Hodgeman and Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough explore Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire, an ancient woodland that for centuries nourished both body and imagination.

Telegraph: True Norse

Idyllic social equality or countries ridden by alcoholism? Eleanor Barraclough visits the Nordic to bust the myths for a radio 3 documentary.

BBC World Histories: Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir

Old Norse sagas laud the exploits of Erik the Red and Leif Eriksson, but their real hero is female. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough introduces the First Lady of Viking Vinland.

BBC World Histories: Global City – Nuuk

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough explores the city once known as Godthåb (Good Hope), settled by Inuit hunters, Norse exiles and missionaries.

 

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.

Read more

BBC World Histories: Global Cities – Oslo

From Neolithic hunters and Viking sailors to Arctic explorers and pioneering painters, Oslo’s inhabitants have left a diverse legacy. Eleanor Barraclough explores the sights of the Norwegian capital.

BBC Countryfile: Medieval Farming

In medieval times, the feudal system dominated the land until the Black Death changed everything, says Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough.

BBC World Histories: Brunhild

Germanic legends of valkyries may have been based on a strong-willed medieval ruler of northern Europe. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough introduces the real Brunhild.

The Best Books on Vikings: A Five Books Interview

The Vikings discovered America and traded slaves in Baghdad. They sometimes buried their dead in ships, but probably did not burn them. And they did not wear horned helmets. Historian Eleanor Barraclough separates myth from reality and recommends books on the medieval Norse pillagers who have fascinated everyone from Hollywood to Hitler.

 

L’éléphant: Les vikings – itinéraires d’une diaspora

Interview about the multicultural history of the Viking diaspora for French magazine L’éléphant.

BBC World Histories: Museum of the World – The Franks Casket

This is testament to the astonishing wealth of cultural and historical influences circulating in England.