Barraclough interprets objects like reliquaries, initially used in Christian contexts to house relics. Norse raiders took these back to Norway, valuing the metal and jewels while often discarding the relics inside. These reliquaries were given as presents

The John Batchelor Show

John Batchelor

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🗓️ 29 September 2025

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

Barraclough interprets objects like reliquaries, initially used in Christian contexts to house relics. Norse raiders took these back to Norway, valuing the metal and jewels while often discarding the relics inside. These reliquaries were given as presents to women and passed down female generations, suggesting early raids were motivated by young men seeking wealth and status to attract wives and set up farmsteads. The conversation also covers pre-Christian belief systems, specifically a piece of human skull found in Denmark (Ribe, early 8th century) with runes carved on it. This object may have been an amulet intended to protect against malevolent supernatural beings like dwarves or elves, which were believed to cause sickness.
1904 VIKING AGE

Transcript

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0:30.9	I'm John Batchelor, and I'm exploring mysteries in a book, Embers of the Hands, Hidden Histories of the Viking Age by Eleanor Baraklough, and we go now to reliquaries.
0:36.3	These reliquaries were found in graves, and they're part of a collection that is associated in Eleanor's telling with a place called Malhus, and the burial mounds give up grave treasures that you then interpret.
0:53.8	One of the things that comes immediately when you find a reliquary is that this is a high
0:58.2	status and you presume female.
1:01.6	What else do we read from the reliquaries, Eleanor?
1:04.7	So to really think about the significance of reliquaries and where they're found, we have to
1:09.4	think about where they came from.
1:11.2	And this takes back in a way to those first raids on monasteries such as Lindisfarne, because
1:16.5	a reliquary was initially something that very much within a Christian context would have been
1:22.6	used to house little bits and pieces of sort of the saints or sort of other things associated with sort of the
1:32.2	sort of highest, holiest levels of Christian belief. And this meant that they were beautifully
1:39.0	decorated, you know, beautiful patterns and a lot of metal and other decorative items, which are
1:46.2	significant. Because of course, within a Christian context for the monks, what really mattered
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