This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchel. It's a delight to spend time with Eleanor Barclough. Her new book is Embers of the Hands, Hidden Histories of the Viking Age. We have the Vikings as raiders, but what about as conquers? Quickly now, the Carolingian Empire is falling apart in mainland Europe.

The Vikings are very good raiders, and they do very well.

They raid Paris and Eleanor reports that they walked away with 7,000 pounds of gold.

Good God.

At the same time, they decide to bring an army and conquer England.

East Anglia, Northumbria, and Mercia all fall.

Only Wessex holds out.

So you're English, Eleanor, but you're Norse.

Is that it?

Is this your origin story in the United Kingdom?

So the thing with the United Kingdom is there are so many origin stories, and that's what

makes it such a fascinating melting pot of cultural influences and incomers. I mean, the Anglo-Saxons

are sort of what we tend to characterize these kingdoms at the time of the

sort of Norse incursions, as you say, you know, this proper, you know, more military conquest

style invasion. But of course, the Anglo-Saxons themselves are different cultural groups that have come

over to England a few centuries earlier. Before then it's the Romans, you know, so it's much more

interesting, you know, and it's much more complicated, that sort of melting pot. But certainly,

yes, what's sometimes called the Great Heathen Army that like Mitchell,

Hathena Herra in Old English, arrives in around 865. And it's been suggested that actually,

rather than thinking of it as one big invading force, it's more useful to think of it as smaller mobile war bands

with different leaders, which makes it much more possible for them to essentially, you know,

nipping through the waterways, they can overwinter, and then they can keep going inland,

...