The Viking Age and Hidden Histories75%

12/23/2025, 5:01:00 PM

BS Summary: This article contains 8 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Authority, Representativeness Heuristic, and Anchoring Bias, with Halo Effect as the most egregious example at 26.7% saturation with 54 hits. Analysis detected 325 faulty-reasoning hits from 202 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 68.1% and a BS Rank of 75% (4,206 of 16,813 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 75.00% of the article peer group.

Object from the exhibit: "We Call Them Vikings" 
If the word “Viking” conjures for you a braided warrior raiding a village in the north of Europe, you’re not exactly wrong. 
But there’s a lot more to the story. 
In her latest book, the historian and broadcaster Eleanor Barraclough blows back to life the embers of the Viking Age, illuminating the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. 
Artifacts of the era play an important role in the story, like an antler-made comb and a gaming piece. 
Bits of graffiti speak of ancient loves, curses and drunk spouses. 
The Viking world, it turns out, wasn’t simply one of warriors astride longboats, but a society full of people whose concerns we can recognize today. 
GUEST  
Eleanor Barraclough | Historian and Senior Lecturer in the School of Writing, Publishing and the Humanities at Bath Spa University. 
She’s also a broadcaster for the BBC. 
Her book is called “Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age” [Amazon|Bookshop]. 
Airdate: Wed. Feb. 26, 2025 at 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. 
Rebroadcast: Thurs. July 10, 2025 at 9 a.m. and Sat., July 12, 2025 at 11 a.m. 
Rebroadcast: Wed. Dec. 24, 2025 at 9 a.m. and 7 p.m. 
Actor-Observer Bias
0%
Anchoring Bias
23.3%
Availability Heuristic
14.9%
Blind-Spot Bias
0%
Confirmation Bias
0%
Dunning-Kruger Effect
0%
Framing Effect
16.3%
Fundamental Attribution Error
0%
Halo Effect
26.7%
Hindsight Bias
0%
Horn Effect
0%
In-Group Bias
0%
Loss Aversion
0%
Negativity Bias
0%
Optimism Bias
0%
Out-Group Homogeneity Bias
0%
Overconfidence Bias
0%
Pessimism Bias
0%
Primacy Effect
0%
Recency Bias
0%
Representativeness Heuristic
25.7%
Self-Serving Bias
0%
Status Quo Bias
0%
Sunk Cost Effect
0%
Ad Hominem
0%
Ambiguity (Equivocation)
0%
Anecdotal
14.9%
Appeal to Authority
26.7%
Appeal to Emotion
0%
Appeal to Nature
0%
Bandwagon
0%
Begging the Question
0%
Burden of Proof
0%
Circular Reasoning
0%
Composition/Division
0%
False Dilemma
12.4%
Gambler’s Fallacy
0%
Genetic Fallacy
0%
Hasty Generalization
0%
Middle Ground
0%
No True Scotsman
0%
Personal Incredulity
0%
Post Hoc (False Cause)
0%
Red Herring
0%
Slippery Slope
0%
Special Pleading
0%
Straw Man
0%
Tu Quoque
0%

202 words analyzed.

Analysis

Hover over highlighted words in the article to view the associated bias or fallacy analysis.