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. Much more of this tonight and tomorrow night. 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 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,

...