You're Dead to Me - Viking Women (Radio Edit)

Episode Date: November 28, 2025

Greg Jenner is joined in medieval Scandinavia by historian Dr Eleanor Barraclough and comedian Chloe Petts to learn about the fascinating women of the Viking age.The popular stereotype of the Vikings is pretty macho: bearded men on boats, heading out to raid, pillage and burn down monasteries. There are some famous images of Viking warrior women: shieldmaidens, Valkyries and various goddesses. But what about the lives led by ordinary women in medieval Scandinavia and across the Viking world?In this episode we look at the real history behind the myths and stereotypes, exploring daily life for Viking women: their roles as wives and mothers, the work they did as weavers and healers, the gods they prayed to, the archaeological traces they left behind, as well as the sad reality that many women in the Viking world were enslaved. We also look at women who lived lives out of the ordinary – as queens, sorceresses, and warriors.This is a radio edit of the original podcast episode. For the full-length version, please look further back in the feed.Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Clara Chamberlain Written by: Clara Chamberlain, Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Julie Andrews, and it is my great pleasure to bring you Jane Austen Stories, the new show from the Noiser Podcast Network. I'll be reading Pride and Prejudice. We'll walk grand estates and take tea with well-dressed gentlewomen, but in this tranquil corner of England, not everything is quite. as it appears. Listen to Jane Austen stories wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to You're Dead to Me, the Radio 4 comedy podcast that takes history seriously.

My name is Greg Jenner. I'm a public historian author and broadcaster. And today we are loading our loomweights and launching our longship as we sail back to medieval Scandinavia to learn all about Viking women. And to help us, we have two very special guests. In History Corner, she's a historian-righted. and broadcaster, based at Bath Spa University, where her research focuses on the cultures, literatures, and languages of the medieval North. You may have read her sensational new book, Embers of the Hands, Hidden Histories of the Viking Age. It's a wonderful book. And you will definitely remember her.

From our episode on Leif Erikson is Dr. Eleanor Baraklough. Welcome back, Eleanor. Yay, thank you so much for having me back. Delighted to have you back. And in Comedy Corner, they're an award-winning... Sorry, and in Comedy Corner, they're an award-nominated stand-up comedian. When it comes to awards, I am famously always... is the bridesmaid, never the bride.

And what you just did, your mouth typo just cut deep. I'm so sorry, Chloe. Okay. And in Comedy Corner. They're an award-nominated stand-up comedian. You might have seen them on TV, on Celebrity Pointless, Richard Osmond's House of Games, Jonathan Ross's comedy club,

or commenting on the women's football Euros on the Sky Sports. Maybe you caught their recent stand-up tour. How you see me, how you don't. Awesome supporting Ed Gamble. It's Chloe Pets. Welcome to the show, Chloe. Thank you so much for having me. Plowy, first time on the pod.

Yes. How are you with history? Did you like it at school? Are you comfort zone? I did like it. I think I did it for A level? Did I do it for A level? You think you.

Did I do it for A level? You're not that old. What did I? I wasn't there, gosh. Like, we're going to know. Oh my God. Yes, you did it for A level. I think I must have because I really liked it.

Did I do it for A level? Now I'm going to list my A levels. I definitely did English because I did that at uni. I did maths. Oh. History. Theatre Studies. Oh, and then I did classics as well.

The area of history that I enjoy the most, because I really like consuming history via novels. So I'm a big fan of the Victorian era and the regents era. Those are kind of my areas of speciality. So if I say to you Vikings, did your brain just go? No. Slightly, yeah. I mean, I don't have any sort of context of really where they're located in history.

They seem like kind of vacuum-packed in their little section. So, yeah, getting a bit of, like, context of where they're located in human history will be really interesting. So what do you know now? This is the So What Do You Know? This is where I have a go at guessing what you are lovely listener might know about today's subject. And I reckon when you hear Viking, you're probably thinking big, hairy men in historically inaccurate horn helmets. No horns. But today we're honing, ah, sorry, honing in on the women.

Now, you might be imagining fearsome. Warriors tossing axes while tossing their immaculate blonde braids. And maybe you're thinking also of the mythological Valkyries, made famous in Wagner's opera and the Marvel Thor movies, of course. You might have seen the TV show, Vikings, with the scary shield maiden Lagather and her bloody post-divorce glow up, or you've watched Skade, the sinister sorceress, in the last kingdom. What was life really like for the average Viking gal about town?

And how many people can you incinerate and still be made a saint? Let's find out. Eleanor. Let's start with the basics because Chloe said vacuum-packed them for us. Let's give some dates. Yeah. So we're talking first raids that we know about, we think of Vikings being sort of really raidy on the British Isles, end of the 8th century. So like 793 classic raid on Lindisfan, possibly a little bit before then, all right?

And then how long the Viking Age goes on for sort of depends on how we're defining it. But let's say kind of up to 1,100, except a lot of the evidence actually comes from our after that. Then in terms of where we're talking geographically, the homelands are Scandinavia, so Denmark, Norway and Sweden. That's where it all starts, except a really exciting thing about the Viking Age is that it's all about expansion, colonisation, exploration. You know, people are coming into contact with each other across this vast area. So, you know, they expand across the North Atlantic. They make it all the way to Iceland and Greenland, even to the edge of the North American continent, around the year 1000. They go east down the north.

waterways of what's now Russia, Ukraine. They end up in the Byzantine Empire, which is centred on what's now Istanbul in Turkey. And then they end up further east than that. They end up sort of around Baghdad, that sort of region. So they're really far travelling. And that's a really important part of what they are. But also because it's over several hundred years, there are big changes over that time. So for example, they start pagan. But then around the year 1,000 or so, we see this sort of conversion to Christianity. The fact that you were like the Vikings went to the Byzantine lands, it feels like a Marvel DC kind of crossover.

They knew each other. They knew about each other. Like they saw the big hairy gingermen. Yeah. Okay. So Chloe, what do you imagine the Viking women were up to while the lads were on tour? They're off doing all these galavancing around half the world. What are the women up to?

I hope a lot of intense lesbianism, if I'm honest. that must have been more there's probably some I mean let's be honest there's probably some oh yeah there's there's sort of later prohibitions against it

which suggests people are up to things yeah we're talking we're trying to reframe the picture because I think it's quite easy to think of men in their longboats going off to pillage and to plunder and to settle how do the women

what is their life like how does it sort of fit into that story well there's no Viking age without the women for start sure you know so so if you if you so for a start it's things like that sound

a little bit tedious or worthy if you're into Vikings because they're glittering, cool and fun and dramatic. Things like textile production, you need clothes. But you also need sales to, if you're going to go across the ocean, if you're looking to trade or to raid or to saddle or to colonise, find new lands, you need wind power to actually get across that ocean. Without the women, you don't have sales. You don't have clothes. You also don't have children. And that's because, obviously, some people are having the children, but other people are also helping bring up the children you know so you need that next generation so on a very very basic level take away the women and you've got nothing also they're doing most of the food preparation they're looking

after the houses when when all the long houses and the farms when sort of the men might be on their hunting or their raiding expeditions whatever it is and so take away the women and you've got some hungry naked men in a rowing boat which is a channel four documentary that I would watch We need to start, I suppose, with the life of women. Actually, let's start with girlhood, right? What would you expect of a Viking girl's upbringing, Chloe? She's probably getting taught just to do the classic stuff, the food making. Skateboarding.

Yeah, yeah, a couple of ollies. Yeah, I think probably skateboarding. Yeah, you took the words out of my mouth. Sorry, I'm doing it. Is it skateboarding? Yeah, skateboarding. I don't. Sorry, I ruined it there.

You're making a very sensible point, ruined it. No, no, I think it's important that we allow our intrusive thoughts to win on this podcast. It's really important to say up top, there's no such thing as an average experience. We've got to think, you know, we've already said the Viking Age extends over hundreds of years. And then within that, you've got lots and lots of different social strata. And so someone who is, say, you know, a young child who is

enslaved is going to have a very different experience growing up compared to someone who is much further up that social pecking order. But exactly as you say, yeah, a lot of it's going to be learning from a young age, domestic crafts and sort of textile manufacture. Was there any culture of play amongst kids? That's a really good question. Well, I think there's a very, I don't know what you think. Children play.

Play is sort of a universal impulse. The question is, at what point does that stop? And I think that's certainly compared to today, you know, at the point where, yeah, children nowadays might be going out on their skateboards, you know, these girls are probably in there learning how to weave. There's also slightly less pleasant stuff. So, for example, it looks like there's a higher rate of female infanticide. I was wondering whether that might be the case. Yeah, that seems like it's really hard to prove it. So just to be clear, that is the deliberate killing of little baby girls because you don't want a girl.

you want a boy. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Which is horrible. We know, we're a comedy show, but that is, you know, we have to talk about this stuff. Does it improve for teenagers? Like, you know, is it fun? You know the answer to that.

I don't know the answer. It's not going to improve for teenagers. If they're killing girls at birth and then putting them to work at eight, I don't think they're all of a sudden they're going to be like, okay, off you go into the world. Now you can go to university. When you get to sort of be of child-bearing age and pretty young, marriage is obviously on the cards.

And that is an important part of teenage, as you sort of head towards the latter part of that, if you're lucky. And do the girls get to pick their hubbies? Or does Dad go, I've chosen Sven. Yeah. He's exactly what you need. I think more to the point, exactly what I need. Certainly, once again, when you look at the latest saga evidence,

bearing in mind, sagas are not history, as we would think of history. They're stories, but they do sort of reflect something of that earlier time and the time in which they're written. But certainly, yes, it's I have picked out, you're going to be married. him whether you like it or not. Can a man divorce a woman easily? You call witnesses and you say, I'm divorced and it can be all sorts of reasons.

And this is true, I think, of the men and the women. So as far as the bit, the important thing is that women can do it too. So the interesting thing about the Viking age, historians often say that women in the Viking era were better off than anywhere else in the Viking, sorry, anywhere else in the European Christian world, like they had more rights, more laws, more freedoms. We've heard maybe that's not entirely true.

There's quite a lot of pressure, so on. but widowhood kind of is, that's kind of a quite comfortable life. That's what you're aiming for, basically. That's the ideal, right? But you have really, I mean, so for example, we mentioned Iceland being settled, second part of the 9th century. Some of the first settlers, the big settlers,

are women. There's one in particular, she's called Eider or Unather the Deep Minded, and it's only once she's a widow, she sort of gathers her family and her followers and her, and her sort of, like, slaves at that point around her and takes them off to Iceland, frees the enslaved people, and sort of sets up this sort of matriarchy out there.

Yeah, this community of women, right? She's the, I mean, she ends up. It's on the night, I think it's her grandchild, on the night of her grandchild's wedding, she dies upright in bed, having basically just sorted everyone out. She's an East Ender's matriarch. Yeah, exactly.

Get out of my pub. Longhouse. Sorry. Okay, we should talk about a childbirth, which obviously, you know, you mentioned before that obviously in order to keep having violence, Vikings going out into the world. You need children that grow up. We need babies. I mean, obviously, childbirth is dangerous at any time in history. In the Viking world,

there are kind of rituals, routines, there's magical spells. There's all sorts of ways of trying to protect a woman in childbirth and a baby. Can you talk us through some of those? Yeah, so I mean, yeah, exactly as you say. So mortality rates were huge as they always have been. There's a really touching grave from Orkney, Rousey, and it's a woman. But she is, she's buried with an infant who's full term. And so the likelihood is that she, she's died in childbirth and so as the child. So exactly as you say, that there has to be measures in place. One of these is called, they're called Biagrinar, sort of helping runes, ruins of protection.

Those seem to have been used. We've got like sort of just evidence on the edge, often with childbirth, with pregnancy. Everything is on the edge because it's female histories and they don't, you know, they just don't get recorded. But we have sort of a few little runic inscriptions that might sort of back that up. There's an amazing, again, it's later, it's very much within a Christian context, but it's a roon stick. And it looks like basically the baby's gone over term and is still, you know, inside. And this runic inscription is to the baby.

And it ends and it says, come out, hairless one, the Lord calls you into the lights. Right? It's kind of beautiful. That's really. It is beautiful. I love that one. Yeah. But let's get back to a woman's work.

You know, the kind of daily domestic. She's not just, obviously, giving birth the next generation. There's a lot she's got to look after in the house. Yes, definitely. So they're very much in charge of the household. The household isn't just sort of immediate family or relatives. You know, you've got quite a community, depending on how big this farmstead is. You've got responsibilities for making sure everyone stays alive throughout the winters.

You've got to be able to cook, but you've got to be able to store food. You're going to be looking after the farmstead. As I said before, you're going to be textile production. Medicine? Exactly. So that's the other, and again, yeah, so there's a really interesting episode from Hames Kringler, which is sort of a big group of kings sagas, essentially, where there's a battle. Someone's injured and they go into the tent and there's a healing woman there. And she basically feeds them this mixture of sort of garlic and herbs and nasty stuff. Because the idea is that once you eat it, if you can sort of smell the garlic from the wound, you know it's gone through and it's sort of a fatal wound, essentially. That's one of the worst things I've ever heard in my life. I think I'd rather just not know I think I'd rather just die

and not stinking a garlic That's what the character says He's like, no I'm cool, thanks very much No, you keep your garlic soon But the fact is there's women in there doing that There's also sort of religious aspect There's a type of sort of magic called Sather And again we're back in sort of more pagan context here

That a woman is particularly meant to practice The Old Norse word for a female practitioner of magic Or Cirrus is a vulva So there you go Yes. So shows up where we get that. It's spelled differently. And then, of course, there's sort of textile production, which is just like, I know it sounds boring to keep on going on about it, but it's so important.

It's like, if we didn't have textile production, we would all be sitting here naked, right? It's like, we would, nothing happens. And we get a strongly worded email from HR, wouldn't we? But yeah, but there's a special sort of women's quarters called the dingya. And the dingya, it's not necessarily just for textile production, but in the archaeological record all over the North World. So Greenland is a really good example of this. You see these sort of textile production spaces

where you have women, where you have children. The sagas again have episodes where, you know, women sit there talking about, for example, their former lovers in one case where one of the husbands here is. It doesn't go well. Oh, okay. And in terms of weaving, it's not just humans who are doing the weaving. The gods weave too.

Do you know what the gods would weave with when they were determining people's futures? Oh, the clouds. Oh, that's charming. That's beautiful. I mean, you're so wrong. But it's... No, I'm going to say you're not so wrong, right?

Because you've got these supernatural beings called the norns, the nornia. There's these three. And they're responsible for weaving the fates of humans, essentially. I like to think, yeah, they're basically just like pulling down threads from the clouds. So I'm like totally with you there. Yeah, but there was a nastier one. Yeah, come on. Yeah.

Let's have the gory one. Right. So the gory one, it's Valkyries this time. You know, do-d-do-do-do-do-do. Right, that's how we know Valkyries on their horses. Right, and there is an episode from, again, it's in Nyao Saga. Essentially, on the night before a battle, someone sees these women going into one of these dingya, one of these weaving rooms. He peeps inside, and he sees them and they're singing as they weave on this big loom,

but what it is is that the entrails of the dead and there's like kind of heads hanging from the... So the loom weights are severed heads. Exactly, the loom weights as... Yeah. And the thread is just gut. Yeah, just Viking guts. Yeah. Do women go out on the ships, right?

So we've heard them at home, they're doing the farming, they're doing the medicine, they're doing the weaving, they're looking after the kids. But like, do they get on long ships and go and settle Iceland in Greenland? Yes, absolutely they do. This is really important. So Iceland, we've already talked about this like matriarch at the beginning, one of the widows who goes out there, under the deep-minded. Greenland is a really interesting thing.

So Greenland gets settled, first of all, from Iceland in sort of Eric the Red, it's kind of 9-8-5 or something. And there are women absolutely going out there to settle. There's a run stick that they found in one of the graveyards from Greenland. And it's not got a body in it, but it says, you know, this woman, she died on the Greenland Sea. So basically she died on the journey over. Very much part of that cultural sphere. Let's talk about the lives of the rich Viking women, the elite. I've got a favourite here, right?

Okay, so this is Norway, Osseberg, so sort of southern Norway. Oh, my God. The classic. But there's a reason. It's an oldie and it's a goodie, right? So this is one of the most sumptuous burials. It's a ship burial. It hasn't been burnt, but these two...

A what burial? A ship. Thank you. What did you hear? Really bad burial is why I thought you were saying. It's an absolutely rubbish burial. It's terrible burial. One of the worst I've ever seen.

These two women have been placed in it. One of them is really quite old, sort of over 70. The other sort of late middle age, kind of maybe in her 50s. But it's, there's nothing like it. You know, there's wagons all like beautifully carved with cats. and faces and possibly the cats, you know, that's that sort of the classically linked to Freya,

one of the goddesses. There's wagons, there's beautiful things like sort of buckets and like sacrificed horses and all, also, I mean, there is nothing like it in terms of the amount of stuff that has been placed into it. They can even tell exactly what time of year

this initial, but yeah, little crab apples have been found. Oh, beautiful. But also, talking of this sort of organic material, Henbane seeds, I think, either henbane or cannabis. There's also this incredible tapestry. You think beautiful. Look closely.

You see the trees are full of hanging bodies. So, sorry. These ladies sound terrified. I know, yes, right. You think you're a lovely granny. Hang on a minute. Dead bodies, what? This is the woman I want to meet from the Viking Age.

I'm like, I could have fun with you, right? But that's it. They're so elite high status. It used to be thought that one of them was a queen. The other one, maybe her, we could say handmaiden. She could be an enslaved person. But so it's very much this sense of these high status women, possibly with some sort of magical position in society.

Yeah, the seethe thing maybe, or the hallucinogenic medicine. Exactly, yeah. I mean, obviously we have rich Christian widows who leave money to the church. They've found nunneries and churches and monasteries and they build bridges and churches and roads. You know, they're kind of putting back into the community, which is amazing too. But we need to talk about Olga of Kiev.

Of course we do. It's very important that we think about Olga of Kiev. She's one of the most. I was getting antsy. You were thinking, when are we getting to Olga of Kiev? I mean, again, listeners might be thinking, Keeves in Ukraine, yes. I mean, the Vikings really get very far afield.

Olga of Keeve, Chloe, how did she get revenge on the men who killed her husband? I guess she killed them back. I'm thinking of a sort of, I'm thinking of a sort of John Wicks, a man-armie kind of scenario where I think she's, yeah, she's gathered up all of her weapons. Like ballerina, like, yeah, exactly like ballerina. And maybe she like kills or what did John Wick kill in like Johnwick three? He kills him with books or something like that. I mean, it's not far off.

I mean, if anything, she's more badass than that. Olga, by the way, sounds like a very sort of Slavic name. It's actually Old Norse. Olga is Helga, right? 10th century. And she is sort of her husband is called Igor. Again, very Norse name doesn't sound it, but Ingvar, Norse name, right? He is killed by sort of a local tribe called the Dreblians.

they've got beef with them, right? So, Olga then says, oh, ambassadors, please, come see me. Did she bake a pie? Did she bake a pie? There are pies in... Not this one. There are women who bake their children in...

Okay, we're not even going to go there. I'm so going to go right. No, no, stick with Olga. She's cool, right? Okay, so the first lot, yeah, she basically buries the ambassadors alive, okay? How? Well, it's all there in, I think,

the sources from the sort of the 12th century. so it's maybe slightly exaggerated. But then the next lot, she lures the noblemen. She's like, oh, please come, please come. Have a bath. Yeah, have a sauna, isn't it? Come have a nice spiking sauna. And then she locks them in the sauna and then she sets fire to him.

Yep. Yep, so that's the next lot. And then she just, for good measure, burns the whole settlement to the ground. Yeah, in revenge. It's giving John Wick. Yes. And then she converts to Christianity and it's made a saint. So she...

Well, you know, if you're going to get forgiven... Like, if you're going to, if you're going to convert to Christianity and get forgiven for all your sins, then I think I would just like really sin. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm not just doing like, you know, I've worn mixed fabrics. I'm doing like, I've killed, I've killed all of my husband's murderers. Yes.

Okay. So, August's bloody revenge leads us nicely to the warrior women who we would have seen in TV shows. So I mentioned Vikings. I mentioned, you know, the last kingdom. It's a bit of a trope. Yeah. The kind of shield maiden thing. Yeah.

Is that pure Hollywood? Do we have any evidence for women going into battle? Yeah, it's not pure Hollywood. So there's a skeleton found on the island of Birka in Sweden, very important sort of trading settlement in that period. People always thought, oh, well, that's a man, because it was buried with weapons. It was found in the 19th century. Exactly.

So for well over 100 years, we were like, that's a bloke. Yeah, exactly. Then 2017, they look at the DNA and it's female DNA. They're like, oh, okay. So, but the question is then. It was mental, but no one checked. Well, to be fair, I don't think they had DNA sampling in the 19th century. Yeah, to be fair to them.

But it's the fact that, yeah, you see one thing and you assume that's what it must be. Yeah. Now, that doesn't mean that that was a, that she was a practicing warrior. There's all sorts of possibilities. Because she's buried with swords and all the kind of a future of a warrior. Exactly, exactly. And it's possible that she, what we would call, the terms don't really apply, but we need to sort of, she was sort of non-binary or she, she kind of presented as more male than, you know, there's, that's, there's sort of, there's sort of, there's sort of. possibilities there. There's also the possibility that yes, she was a warrior, but it's like there's no evidence of sort of healed injuries and there's no evidence of, you know, you often see

sort of one arm is bigger than the other because they're used to wielding weapons. So you don't have that. It's possible that say her father was a warrior and she's the only surviving child or something and so therefore she becomes the encapsulation of that warrior lineage. There's all sorts of possibilities. It doesn't make it, I think it makes it more exciting. yeah we don't we don't know right we have this fascinating burial and we've got and science has gone it's not what you think and now we've got question marks and question marks are exciting but we don't we can't pin it down there could be multiple identities to this person or you know one but it's it's really interesting and that's how archaeological science is changing quite a lot of what we think of the Vikings in some ways I guess what's so interesting also about history is like we're always reading it through our own very partial lens and I think we're in a moment now where like we probably want to go the other way and have women as like these like total independent badasses because A we're sort of like in a feminist

rewriting of history but also I think there's also an element of like men find hot Viking women wielding swords titillating Yeah it's definitely a niche corner of the internet It's dedicated to that Yeah so it's simultaneously like an incredible like a feminist reading of history

But also quite a patriarchal one Yeah yeah yeah Yeah the lads want blunt warriors Yes, exactly. Yeah, with like, sort of like shells over their boobs or something. I don't know. Yeah, but I think what we've learned so far, you know, it's women could be all sorts of different things. Yeah, exactly. And the evidence points in different directions. And we like that place on record that women can be all sorts of things.

The nuance window! Time now for the nuance window. This is the part of the show where Chloe and I weave in the dingyat for two minutes. Well, Dr. Eleanor spins us a yarn about something we need to know about Viking women. My stopwatch is ready. You have two minutes. Take it away, Dr. Eleanor. Well, I think Chloe's pretty much done it for me, because I want to pick up on exactly that last point that you've been talking about.

And it ties us back also to the images that, you know, Greg, you conjured up at the beginning. It's sort of like Valky, shield maidens, hotness or not so hot. You know, it's like, it's feminist, and it's also sort of quite reductive. And that's, it's a really tricky thing because, you know, you know, it's like, you know, it's feminist. There's a reason we love that, right? They're badass. I didn't go into Viking Age history because I want to sort of look at textile production all the time. I mean, don't get me wrong. Plenty of people do, but I didn't. I like the badass stuff, right? But there is an issue there, which is when we look back in time, especially at this sort of like stereotypical hyper-masculine eras such as the Viking Age, it's that idea that women are only exciting or interesting or worth talking about if they're aping male role models and sort of like quite extreme ones at that. And what I'm trying to do in Embers of the Hands, this book, it's like meet ordinary humans on their own terms. And that's particularly true of the women. It's the way to find, you know, it's how to bring their stories to life, not by shoving swords or axes in their hands.

But, you know, although that does happen. In fact, there's one saga where a woman actually says, put an axe in my hands. Okay? So that does happen there. But I think, historically speaking, women actually deserve better than that because their lives are so much more nuanced and multidimensional and more very. varied than these cartoon stereotypes. And so for me, that is my nuance window that women themselves are nuanced.

And when we look back in history and these hyper-masculine periods of history from our perspectives, it's even more important. Meet them on their own terms. Brilliant. Any final thoughts on that? Oh, applause.

You've got a clap. And you've got, I can see you've got 25 seconds left, so I'll do quite a long laugh. Can we do a really long one? Yeah, there we go. I want those 25 seconds of clapping. 25 is like a standing ovation at Cannes. We're just like, very good, very good nuance to end.

Thanks so much, Chloe. And also, of course, thank you, Dr. Eleanor Baraklough. Listener, if you want more Vikings, check our episode on Lefe Verrickson. Also, we have one on Norse Literature, which is lots of fun, cake heard. And for more warrior women, why not listen to our episode

on Injingo of Indombo and Matamba, which is good fun as well. And remember, if you enjoyed the podcast, please share the show with your friends. Subscribe to Your Dead to Me on BBC Sounds to get the episodes 28 days earlier than on any other app. Switch on your notification,

so you never miss an episode. I'd just like to say a huge thank you to our guests in History Corner. We have the excellent Dr. Eleanor Baraklough from Bath Spa University. Thank you, Eleanor. Thank you, Eleanor. And in Comedy Corner, we have the incredible Chloe Pets. Thank you, Chloe.

That was amazing. Thank you so much to you both. And to you, lovely, listener, join me next time as we unearth more buried historical secrets. But for now, I'm off the going to suggest entrail weaving as a fun craft activity for my daughter's school. Bye! Your debt to me is a BBC Studios audio production for BBC Radio 4. Hello, my name is Alex von Tunselman and I want to introduce you to history's heroes, the BBC's breathtaking, high-stakes, story-led podcast, shining a light on extraordinary people

and ordinary people who become extraordinary, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny. you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. And the woman who created the international charity, Save the Children. Subscribe to History's Heroes on BBC Sounds. I'm Julie Andrews, and it is my great pleasure to bring you Jane Austen Stories, the new show from the Noisor Podcast Network. I'll be reading Pride,

and prejudice. We'll walk grand estates and take tea with well-dressed gentlewomen, but in this tranquil corner of England, not everything is quite as it appears. Listen to Jane Austen stories wherever you get your podcasts.