“Looking at the past is like looking through a glass darkly: we can see shadowy images on the other side, but also our own reflections staring back at us”
It is but an unfortunate yet understandable truth that in the pursuit of preserving the remembrance of our species’ historical footprint, what is often kept is the dramatic rather than the common. Historians, poets, and writers are naturally inspired by the mythological-like grandeur of kings and warriors, the theatrical tragedies and repercussions of intense romances, and the captivating brutality of the bloodiest battlefields. Left in this shadow is the mundane of the everyday majority. All civilizations essentially had women who cooked and cleaned, had children to care for, and food to grow or hunt; the domestic necessities that are vital to all livelihood, yet less compelling to most audiences. However, British historian and broadcaster Eleanor Barraclough celebrates the tiny pieces of the ordinary lives of the Norse seafarers in her book Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age. Through close examination of numerous archeological finds, Barraclough seeks to see beyond the sensationalized image of barbaric warriors slaughtering towns, inciting knowing dread when their long-boats are spotted on the horizon, while donning their fictionalized horned helmets. Instead, she seeks to see the Norse world that is often considered too unimportant or unmemorable to be included in a tale: the women who mended the ship’s mainsails, the farmers who helped stabilize life in Iceland and Greenland, the tradesmen who interacted with other civilizations by means of finance rather than swords. Through this strategy, Barraclough encourages us as readers to reframe our own perspective of the Vikings, to look at them with a sense of familiarity as fellow people rather than as strange characters that belong in action movies or as part of some dude’s Loki tattoo. She writes, “Through the runes of Bergen and elsewhere, a cacophony of long-dead voices rises from the ashes to tell us their names, their loves, their losses, their secrets. They call us to connect with them down the ages, invite us to imagine them as recognizable humans with emotions and experiences just like ours,” (Barraclough 70).
What I found most delightful about her book was the narrative style. Rather than a mere catalogue list of every artifact and its individual speculation, Barraclough provides a story to capture the imagined moment in time in which each relic stood as an observance of someone’s life. These stories are humorous, intimate, romantic, and above all, human. In Chapter 6, “Bodies,” Barraclough describes a piece of slate found near the seashore in Britain which depicts a doodle of a “punk-haired, bearded figure,” leading a “diminutive human figure,” likely an enslaved captive. It is this eccentric sketch that leads to discussion about the grooming customs of the Vikings and their integration into Angelo-Saxon Britain. The Vikings, for the era, were considerably clean, taking baths at least once a week, often on Saturdays, and combing their hair often. Quite amusingly, this good upkeep caused a light uproar amongst the Brits, as they reported their youth were becoming too fascinated by the womanizing, alternatively fashionable invaders. Barraclough quotes Abbot Elfric of Eynsham, who scolds “. . . you abandon the English customs which your fathers observed and love the customs of the heathen people who did not give life to you and by doing so you reveal that you despise your kindred and ancestors by such evil customs when you dress in insult to them in Danish fashion, with bared necks and blinded eyes,” (Barraclough 162). Almost two centuries later, John of Wallingford warns, “. . . They also changed their clothes often and groomed their bodies with many such frivolities. Hence, they assailed the chastity even of married women and persuaded the daughters of nobles to become their lovers,” (Barraclough 163). I am sure there are many readers who can almost hear their own parents’ voices in this chatter about proper, respectable dress and terrible fashion trends.
I could almost see my grandmother on the phone scolding my grandad to come home before he became too drunk to make it back from his friend’s, or yelling across the lawn to the neighbors to leave him lying there when it was too late, while chuckling at a an anecdote in Chapter 3, “Love.” On a rune stick found in what was believed to be a tavern in Bergun, Norway, was the inscription “GYDA SAYS THAT YOU SHOULD GO HOME” (Barraclough 69). For those who look for the more romantic aspects and complexities of love, a following rune depicts what appears to be a love triangle that was intended to remain hidden. A man called Harvard begins with what appears to be a proposal of marriage to a girl who is only referred to by the letters “GU,” writing, “it is my full desire to ask for you,” before continuing, “if you don’t want to be with Kolbein,” (Barraclough 72). While not the star-crossed love of Romeo and Juliet that led to tears across Verona, Harvard and GU’s narrative is one that most of us will undergo. Perhaps GU was faced with having to marry someone who was more financially prosperous or who her parents preferred. Maybe she just fell out of love with Harvard and was embarrassed by his constant pestering. Harvard could have been the teenage sweetheart you leave behind in high school when you enter the reality of adulthood or the former partner whom you eventually have to block.
In the section titled “Little Ones,” in the same chapter, Barraclough touches upon the heart of the maternal nature that is so intertwined with the female sphere. I write this with caution, for I recognize how the role of motherhood is such a sensitive matter of discussion, especially in today’s political climate, in terms of personal choice. However, I make the guess that even if one does not want children themselves, and this can be extended to men too, those with balanced minds and virtue still care for their well-being. We still turn our heads when we hear a baby cry because it isinstinctively an upsetting sound. It is this impulse that made me smile when Barraclough describes the birch bark artwork found preserved in the swamps of Novgorod, an area that at the time was part of the ethnic state of the Kyivan Rus, a crossroad for East Slavic, Baltic, Finnic, and Scandinavian groups. The tiny artist Onfirm left behind writings of what appears to be schoolwork, but it seems his daydreams soon took hold. Barraclough writes, “. . . Onfirm has started to copy out the alphabet, lost concentration, and ended up with a self-portrait of himself as a stick-figure knight on a stick-figure horse, eyebrows stern as he skewers his trampled enemy with a spear,” (Barraclough 90). She describes another drawing as, “They are holding out their little garden-rake arm towards someone else and smiling at them. The piece of bark has been broken off, and all that remains of the other person is a larger arm, their hand stretched towards the smaller one. I like to think it’s his mummy or daddy,” (Barraclough 91). There is something so warm and tender about envisioning a Viking warrior returning home to his tiny son and scooping him up in his arms. Or thinking of Onfirm being scolded by a schoolteacher for not paying attention. It is a scene that highlights the poetic commonality that no matter what time someone lives in, where they are born, the language they speak, what flag they fight for, or whatever deity they pray to, children are going to be cheeky and most parents just want to hold them.
Other snapshots Barraclough describes are of cats, though much more hirsute and larger than today’s tabby, lying around hearths listening to songs and Norse games of riddles. A weaving sword with another child-like drawing suggests a mother being disrupted from her work by her little ones running around her feet. A myth from “The Saga of Njal,” describes a scene in which a man looks into a weaving room only to see Valkyries (Choosers of the Slain) using severed heads as the warp weights, human entrails as the weft threads, and swords and arrows as a tool to move the wool back and forth, proposing the Vikings had their own taste for grotesque horror that would rival today’s “Terrifier,” films. Two skeletons of a brother and sister with dwarfism show that they must have been accepted enough in society to live through adulthood. For while the world of the Vikings did have elements that seem alien to us today such as tracking walruses, slave trades with the Abbasid Caliphate, human sacrifices and bog gifts left for the gods, and hunting with skis, Barraclough’s quilt of stories confirms that history is not a canal with neat locks in which each period has a simple beginning and end along with a marked demarcation line. Rather, history is an untamable river that shifts, branches off, merges, and rarely ends. Did the Viking Age begin with the 793 C.E., attack on the Lindisfarne monks or the early 2nd century C.E. where there is evidence of Norse trade with the Roman Empire? Did it end with the Christianization and Anglo-Saxon rule of the British Isles, or is it still lingering in parts of our modern language, superstitions, and stories? In truth, if we look into the murky waters of history, we may see a familiar, though distorted, reflection staring back.
I enjoyed reading Barraclough’s work immensely. In truth, when it comes to ancient civilizations, my interest lies with the Slavic people, and my heart with the Greeks and Romans. My previous engagement with the Vikings didn’t go beyond their connection to the Kyivan Rus and their lingering footnote in the aftermath of the fall of Rome. However, Barraclough’s work was as charming and immersive as any of my books about Greek princesses or the women of Pompeii. For those interested in reading about the domestic lives of the ancients, of the people whose lives rarely get acknowledged let alone remembered, I would recommend books like Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls, which, in a historical fiction narrative, tells the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of the women war prizes, who were used for both sexual release and to perform the duties of wives on the battlefield.