Eleanor Barraclough

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough FSA FRHistS is a British historian, broadcaster and writer. ^[1]

Much of her work explores the cultures, literatures and languages of the medieval north, particularly Viking Age history and Old Norse-Icelandic literature. She is the author of Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age (Profile, 2024)^[2] and Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas (Oxford University Press, 2016).^[3] She also co-edited Imagining the Supernatural North (University of Alberta Press, 2016).^[4]

Eleanor Barraclough studied at the University of Cambridge, in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, where she earned an MA (Cantab), MPhil, PhD.^[5] She then moved to the University of Oxford, where she was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of English,^[6] and an Extraordinary Junior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College.^[7] From there she moved to Durham University, where she was Associate Professor in Medieval History and Literature.^[8] She is currently Senior Lecturer in Environmental History at Bath Spa University.^[9] She held an AHRC Leadership Grant from 2020–2024,^[10] for a multidisciplinary study of forests in early northern Germanic cultures.

In 2013, Eleanor was chosen as one of ten BBC / AHRC New Generation Thinkers,^[11] in a competition to develop a new generation of academics who can bring the best of university research and scholarly ideas to a broad audience through the media and public engagement. Since then, she has presented many documentaries on BBC Radio 3 and 4, for series such as Costing the Earth, On Your Farm, Sunday Feature and Open Country.^[12]

Eleanor was a regular presenter on Radio 3’s Free Thinking^[13] and hosted three series of the Time Travellers podcast for Radio 3’s Essential Classics.^[14] She also presented BBC Four’s Beyond the Walls: In Search of the Celts.^[15] In 2020, Eleanor was a judge for the Costa Book Award for Biography.^[16] In 2019^[17] and 2020^[18], she was a judge for the BBC Countryfile Magazine Awards. When she appeared as a guest on Radio 3’s Private Passions, her music choices included ‘Rotlaust tre fell’ by Wardruna.^[19] Thanks to her BBC documentaries, she has jammed with Viking musicians,^[20] dunked herself in a frozen lake in search of immortality,^[21] and been knighted with a walrus penis bone in the Arctic.^[22]

Eleanor lives in London.^{[citation needed]}

• —; Cudmore, Danielle Marie; Donecker, Stefan, eds. (October 2016). Imagining the Supernatural North. University of Alberta Press. p. 328. ISBN 978-1-77212-267-1.^[23]
• — (December 2016). Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas. Oxford University Press. p. 320. ISBN 978-0198701248.^[24]
• Barraclough, Eleanor (September 2024). Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age. Profile Books. ISBN 978-1-78816-674-4.

• Official website