Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough - Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas

Theres a word in Old Norseheimrthat means both world and home. This says a lot about how the Norse viewed things. Over the course of researching and writing this book, Ive explored many worlds and found many homes, thanks to the kindness of those I met on the way. In fact, Ive met so many people that someone is bound to have slipped off these pages, in which case apologies and thanks to you too. Mistakes, typos, oversights, bloopers, inaccuracies, clangersall are of course my own.

I found my first home as an undergraduate at Cambridge, in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic (ASNC). Many thanks to Judy Quinn, for introducing me to the joys of Old Norse, whetting my appetite for adventures in far-flung northern climes, and good-naturedly refusing to accept my panic-stricken letter of resignation during the first term of my Ph.D. Heartfelt thanks also to Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, for her boundless generosity in reading and commenting on anything and everything I sent her, including a full draft of this book. Thanks also to Jonny Grove for setting me on the right research track several times, first with trolls, then with landscapes, both of which fed into this book one way or another. For their masochistic insistence on reading tortuous early draft chapters that no one should have been subjected to, I am eternally grateful to Rosie Bont and Denis Casey. Warmest thanks also to Pamela Welsh and Dan Carr, who were unfortunate enough to befriend an ASNCer, kind enough to read the whole book, and now know more about vikings than they ever wanted to. Finally, theres no way I could ever thank Paul Russell enough, so Im not going to try. Hopefully he knows.

Moving onto Oxford I found another home. To Heather ODonoghue, who supported me throughout my time there, thank you. I am deeply grateful to Carolyne Larrington for countless reasons, not least for reading an entire draft of this book. From her comments I have learnt many useful things, not least that hoards and hordes are not interchangeable entities, there is no travel-guide series called Lonely Plant, private parts are not covered in public hair, vikings do not sail in hips, and the adjective weird should be used sparingly. I found another extraordinary home and extraordinary friends as an Extraordinary Junior Research Fellow at The Queens College, thanks to Rebecca Beasley, Paul Madden, and many other fellows and staff. Becky, you helped me in so many wonderful ways with this project. To John Blair, thank you for your guidance, support, and friendship. To Chris Salamone, who walked me around the Botanic Garden when my brain needed unknotting and acted as my partner in crime when there were chocolate biscuits to liberate from the tea cupboard, thank you. To Alison Madden, thank you for giving me a place to lay my head and for your stirring performance as Byrhtnoth in our Battle of Maldon re-enactment. Sorry for choosing the coldest day of the year for that road-trip. And to those at the Leverhulme Trust who took a punt on me and offered me the Early Career Fellowship to write this book, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Im very grateful to Durham University for giving me my next home, and to Elizabeth Archibald most of all for her unwavering support and friendship. Like Halleys Comet, people like Elizabeth only appear once or twice in a lifetime, and Im very lucky to have caught her mid-orbit. Through Elizabeth, I also found myself part of another family, St Cuthberts Society: thank you to JCR and SCR members alike for enduring, even encouraging, so many viking-themed conversations. I am extraordinarily lucky to have found such good friends at Durham, many of whom fuelled my writing with tea and cake, read chapter drafts and even provided photographs for this book. Thank you particularly to Helen Foxhall Forbes, Megan Cavell, James Brown, Mandy Green, Phil Bolton, and Frances Leviston. Thank you also to Daniel Newman for his help with Arabic translations, and to Giles Gasper for the elephant tip-off.

Beyond Cambridge, Oxford, and Durham, I am grateful to be part of an extraordinary network of Norse scholars. First and foremost, thank you to Judith Jesch at Nottingham, who is always on hand to impart wisdom, however daft my questions. Thank you to Matthew James Driscoll at the Arnamagnan Institute in Copenhagen, who has also endured more than his fair share of my daft questions over the years. Takk fyrir to Svanhildur skarsdttir and Haukur orgeirsson at the rni Magnsson Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavk, and to everyone in both institutes who helped me out with manuscripts. Thank you to Dale Kedwards and Tom Birkett for not pretending my multiple emails had got lost in the post. Thank you to John Shafer, for directing me to his Ph.D. thesis (available online for all interested readers). Thank you to Turi King, who helped explain viking DNA to a bear of very little brain. And thank you to my Supernatural North partners in crime, Stefan Donecker and Danielle Cudmore, whose ideas helped to shape my own.

Unexpectedly, I also found myself another home in which to finish this book, over the ocean at the University of WisconsinMadison (which is even further than Leif the Lucky got). Deepest thanks to the Department of Scandinavian Studies for welcoming me with open arms, and to Kirsten Wolf and Peggy Hager in particular. Thank you also to the Institute for Research in the Humanities, especially Ann Harris, who looked after me so well that at one point I had