Smithsonian Journeys Experts

Dr. Victoria Whitworth grew up in Kenya, where she developed a passion for the deep past and the natural world. At the universities of Oxford and York, she studied medieval literature, art, and archaeology; and in between degrees she worked and traveled in Greece and qualified as a Blue Badge Guide with the London Tourist Board. Her doctorate was on the origin of medieval Christian ideas of landscape, burial, and commemoration, and since then her research has focused primarily on the medieval art of Scandinavia, England, Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man. In parallel, she has explored the Viking Age in three historical thrillers, The Bone Thief, The Traitors’ Pit, and The Daughter of the Wolf. Victoria worked for a decade on the remote Scottish archipelago of Orkney and has written a best-selling memoir about her time in the islands, Swimming with Seals. Her new book about Greece, Dust and Pomegranates, will be published in October 2024, and her major study of the world’s most famous medieval manuscript, the Book of Kells, will appear in 2025.