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Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough FSA FRHistS is a British historian, broadcaster and writer.

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) and Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas (Oxford University Press, 2016). She also co-edited Imagining the Supernatural North (University of Alberta Press, 2016).

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. She then moved to the University of Oxford, where she was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in the Faculty of English, and an Extraordinary Junior Research Fellow at The Queen’s College. From there she moved to Durham University, where she was associate professor in Medieval History and Literature. She is currently Senior Lecturer in Environmental History at Bath Spa University. She held an AHRC Leadership Grant from 2020–2024, for a multidisciplinary study of forests in early northern Germanic cultures.

In 2013, Barraclough was chosen as one of ten BBC / AHRC New Generation Thinkers, 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.

Barraclough was a regular presenter on Radio 3’s Free Thinking and hosted three series of the Time Travellers podcast for Radio 3’s Essential Classics. She also presented BBC Four’s Beyond the Walls: In Search of the Celts. In 2020, Eleanor was a judge for the Costa Book Award for Biography. In 2019 and 2020, 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. Thanks to her BBC documentaries, she has jammed with Viking musicians, dunked herself in a frozen lake in search of immortality, and been knighted with a walrus penis bone in the Arctic.

Barraclough lives in London.

Works

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

References

1. "Eleanor Barraclough Official Website". Eleanor Barraclough. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
2. "Embers of the Hands". Profile Books. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
3. "Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas". Waterstones. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
4. "Imagining the Supernatural North". University of Alberta Press. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
5. "Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough". University of Cambridge. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
6. "Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough awarded a Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship". University of Cambridge. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
7. "BBC honours Queen's College junior fellow". The Oxford Student. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
8. "Academia - Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough". Eleanor Barraclough. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
9. "Academia - Eleanor Barraclough - Bath Spa University". Bath Spa University. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
10. "Into the Forest: Woods, Trees and Forests in the Germanic-Speaking Cultures of Northern Europe, c. 46 BC - c. 1500". UK Research and Innovation. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
11. "New research, new broadcasters - Radio 3 announces New Generation Thinkers". BBC. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
12. "Broadcasting - Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough". Eleanor Barraclough. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
13. "Free Thinking". BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
14. "Time Travellers". BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
15. "Beyond the Walls: In Search of the Celts". BBC Four. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
16. "Judges Announced for 2020 Costa Book Awards". Costa Coffee. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
17. "BBC Countryfile Magazine Awards 2019". Countryfile. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
18. "BBC Countryfile Magazine Awards 2020". Countryfile. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
19. "Private Passions". BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
20. "Sunday Feature". BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
21. "A step-by-step guide to ice bathing". BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
22. "The Supernatural North". BBC Radio 3. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
23. Reviews for Imagining the Supernatural North:
    • Sellheim, Nikolas (November 2017). "Imagining the supernatural north". Polar Record. 53 (6): 634–635. doi:10.1017/S0032247417000341. S2CID 135229596.
    • Møllegaard, Kirsten (June 2019). "Book Review: Imagining the Supernatural North". Folklore. 130 (2): 217–218. doi:10.1080/0015587X.2018.1494961. S2CID 197846467. Retrieved October 4, 2022.
    • Ísleifsson, Sumarliãi R. (Summer 2018). "Imagining the Supernatural North edited by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Danielle Marie Cudmore, and Stefan Donecker". University of Toronto Quarterly. 87 (3): 408–409. doi:10.3138/utq.87.3.80. S2CID 166134373. Retrieved October 4, 2022.
    • Millman, Lawrence (September 2017). "Imagining the Supernatural North, edited by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Danielle Marie Cudmore and Stefan Donecker". Arctic. 70 (3): 328. doi:10.14430/arctic4671. Retrieved October 4, 2022.
    • Sommer, Shelly (November 2017). "Book Reviews: Imagining the Supernatural North". Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research. 49 (4): 700. doi:10.1657/AAAR0049-4-book2. S2CID 134355267.
    • Grimbeek, Marinette (Summer 2017). "Imagining the Land". Canadian Literature. 233: 148–149. Retrieved October 4, 2022.
    • Culeddu, Sara (2019). "Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough, Danielle Marie Cudmore and Stefan Donecker (eds.), Imagining the Supernatural North (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2016)". Nordicum Mediterraneum. 14 (1). doi:10.33112/nm.14.1.17. hdl:10278/3714811. S2CID 214385734. Retrieved October 4, 2022.
24. Reviews for Beyond the Northlands:
    • Videen, Hana (5 May 2017). "Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough: BEYOND THE NORTHLANDS: Viking voyages and the Old Norse sagas". Times Literary Supplement. No. 5953. p. 31. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
    • Falk, Oren (May 2018). "Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas". History: Reviews of New Books. 46 (3): 85–86. doi:10.1080/03612759.2018.1436341. S2CID 150338708. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
    • Hudson, Benjamin (May 2018). "Book Review: Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas". International Journal of Maritime History. 30 (2): 362–363. doi:10.1177/0843871418759417. S2CID 220198169. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
    • Shippey, Tom (6 January 2018). "The Vikings, Beyond Horned Helmets and Valkyries". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 3, 2022.
    • Zeitz, Elizabeth (15 October 2016). "History: Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas". Library Journal. 141 (17). Retrieved October 3, 2022.
    • Parker, Philip (October 2016). "Norse Code". Literary Review. 447. Retrieved October 3, 2022.

External links

• Official website

• Living people
• British women historians
• British medievalists
• Academics of Durham University
• Academics of Bath Spa University
• Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship recipients