Quote:🌞 A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2024
A Kirkus Reviews Editor's Pick

A "brilliantly written, brilliantly conceived" (Tom Holland) history of the Viking Age, from mighty leaders to rebellious teenagers, told through their runes and ruins, games and combs, trash and treasure.
In imagining a Viking, a certain image springs to mind: a barbaric warrior, leaping ashore from a longboat, and ready to terrorize the hapless local population of a northern European town. Yet while such characters define our imagination of the Viking Age today, they were in the minority.
Instead, in the time-stopping soils, water, and ice of the North, Eleanor Barraclough excavates a preserved lost world, one that reimagines a misunderstood society. By examining artifacts of the past-remnants of wooden gaming boards, elegant antler combs, doodles by imaginative children and bored teenagers, and runes that reveal hidden loves, furious curses, and...