This is John Batchel, speaking with the author-historian Eleanor Barakloff about her new book,

Embers of the Hands, Hidden Histories of the Viking Age.

Here, Eleanor addresses the story of England being invaded by the Norsemen, the Northmen,

who had been raiding for about 100 years at this point, but in the

middle of the 9th century, the great heathen army, or was it, is Eleanor Barakoff on the origin

story of what we now call the United Kingdom, all mixed up, embers of the hands.

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,

Ha'anahara 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,

and they have then the element of surprise. They can also sort of split up. Some can head

north, some can head south. And that makes it much more difficult to predict what's going to

happen. And that's...