Event Type: HA

Takes Place: 25th February 2026

Time: 7.30pm

Venue: Online

Description: There are many myths and legends surrounding the Vikings and their legacy. In this talk Eleanor Barraclough will reveal the material culture left behind of these people and what it can tell us about their real lives, experiences and impact. Dr Eleanor Barraclough FRHS, FSA, FRSA is a historian, author and broadcaster. Her most recent book, Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age, was shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, longlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, and chosen as a Times History Book of the Year. Currently Reader in Public History at Bath Spa University, she was previously Associate Professor in Medieval History and Literature at Durham University. Before then, she was a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Oxford, and before then she studied Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge. As a BBC New Generation Thinker, Eleanor has presented BBC documentaries on everything from apocalypses to zombies. She has jammed with Viking musicians in longhouses, dunked herself in a frozen lake in search of immortality, sledged with huskies across the snowy wastes of Svalbard, and been knighted with a walrus penis bone in the Arctic. Thanks to the last of these, she is also a member of the Royal and Ancient Polar Bear Society.

How to book: Book via Zoom link below

Price: Free & open to all. Recordings of talk will be available to HA members.

Website: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_IYtzJ-49QWu_9D05rgp0YQ

Organiser: HA

Lecturer: Dr Eleanor Barraclough