Viking Age (Other Keyword)
1-19 (19 Records)
Viking Archaeology, conceived of here as a particularly influential subfield of medieval archaeology, originated in antiquarian efforts of early Scandinavian scholars who helped to shape the identities of their nation states. From C.J. Thomson, to Jens Worsae, and Oscar Montelius, these early Scandinavian archaeologists were formative in the establishment of a periodization of the past, development of dating techniques, and the professionalization of archaeology as a discipline. The Viking Age...
Analysis of bones and objects from the Viking Age site of Hrísbrú, Iceland (2017)
At the Hrísbrú site, located in the Mosfell valley just a few kilometers outside Iceland’s capital Reykjavik, the Mosfell Archaeological Project has excavated a 10th-11th century farmstead including a traditional Viking Age longhouse, a farm church with an associated cemetery, and a pagan cremation site. At the cemetery and the cremation site human remains in varying degrees of preservation have been unearthed, while in the longhouse a rich material record has been uncovered consisting of e.g....
Artifact Geographies of the Viking Age (2017)
The hair comb is one of the most commonly recovered bone artifacts from early medieval sites in Northern Europe, particularly in Viking-Age Scandinavia. Beyond the bone hair comb’s association with technological innovation, it acts as a powerful proxy for urbanism, human migration, and long-range trade in Viking-Age towns. Yet despite this prevalence, the bone hair comb remains understudied in recent years and few multi-site syntheses have been undertaken. Existing studies have focused on the...
BACK AND FORTH ALONG THE EASTERN SLAVE ROUTE. Archaeological traces of long-distance trafficking. (2016)
With the expansion of the Eastern trade route during the 9th and 10th centuries a regular contact with the markets of the Muslim world was established. Long-distance trafficking of slaves became an important commodity. It was a high risk venture that required a new level of organisation, control and logistics. The full extent of the trafficking is not known but it included moving people and goods in both ways along a route that offered little infrastructure and difficult terrain. Trafficking of...
Bands of brothers: the socio-political and military organisation of Viking armies during the 9th century (2017)
During the mid- to late-9th century, historical sources attest to large Viking raiding-fleets and ‘armies’ operating in northwestern Europe. These itinerant groups were not only seeking plunder but also land to settle, and some managed to establish colonies and enclaves with varying long-term success. The size and impact of these groups came under scrutiny during the latter half of the 20th century, when some scholars sought to downplay the influence of warfare as a catalyst of social and...
The 'Bare Branches' of Scandinavian Society and the Origins of Viking Raiding (2015)
The surge of violent raiding that traditionally marks the beginning of the Viking Age at the end of the 8th century ushered in a period of turmoil and change across much of Europe. Though the factors that might have triggered this have been repeatedly debated, no hypothesis has thus far provided a convincing explanation for this important historical phenomenon. One of the oldest arguments, discussed in this paper, was that proposed during the 11th century by Dudo of St. Quentin in Gesta...
Cross-cultural comparative approaches to Viking slavery (2016)
Slavery was an integral part of Viking culture, as attested by a variety of contemporary sources such as the observations of the tenth-century Arab envoy Ahmad Ibn Fadlān, which describe the capture, trafficking, sexual exploitation, and employment of slaves amongst Scandinavian societies, including their role in ritual and their treatment after death. Slavery nonetheless remains largely underrepresented in the archaeological record, although a small corpus of finds support historical and...
Entering the Viking Age (2017)
Often depicted as a time of local but powerful chieftains, mounted elite warriors and spectacular boat inhumation burials, the Vendel period preceded the Viking Age in Swedish history writing. While contacts with Central Europe and beyond were extensive the societal structure in Scandinavia was still small scale, spread out and built on personal relations. But times were changing and from the mid 8th century several new features evolve: the emergence of town like structures, changes in scale and...
Environment and Identity in the Viking Age North Atlantic (2015)
The cultures that arose in the North Atlantic during the Viking Age - the Scottish Isles, Faroes, Iceland and Greenland - were emphatically Norse in their ethnic signalling. Yet the environments of these islands, especially the more westerly ones, were significantly different from Scandinavia or Britain and supported quite different lifeways, different economic strategies, settlement patterns and material cultures. Focusing on Iceland and Greenland the paper aims to highlight the tension...
Garnets for the Vikings: Charismatic jewellery and family memories in early Viking Age Scandinavia (2017)
The paper presents how continental-inspired elite jewellery from the Merovingian period (550-800AD) continued to play an important role in the Viking Age Scandinavia (800 -1050 AD).The so-called "disc-on-bow" brooch were covered with garnets, and is one of the most spectacular jewellery types we know from this period in Europe. They nevertheless appear in a number of female graves from the Viking Age, revealing traces of having been used a long time, most likely passed down through several...
Globalization, trade, and magic: Weaving the threads of Iceland's Viking Age textiles. (2017)
Icelandic Viking Age (9th-11th century) textiles are less frequently reported than their medieval counterparts, yet mineralized pseudomorphs adhering to copper alloy objects from burial contexts and a small number of items that survived in their organic forms suggest that this North Atlantic colony's textiles filled multiple roles and were produced through technical approaches with diverse origins. In the North Atlantic's Viking Age, some textiles were used as a form of currency within a...
Globalizing Graves: Necklaces and Networks of Consumption during the Viking Age (2016)
Viking Age graves typically contain two types of exotic goods: coins and jewelry. Coins have long dominated discussions of early medieval economics because they have been understood as being closely linked to exchange. Two factors militate against this one-sided approach. First, coins appear alongside jewelry either as pendants worn singly or as parts of necklace groups. Second, ornamental objects appear in coin hoards, and beads in particular are attested in written sources as a means of...
The Importance of Specialized Use Sites in the Settlement History of Iceland (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Climate and Heritage in the North Atlantic: Burning Libraries" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Sandvík, located in the Westfjords of Iceland, seems to have been a seasonally utilized site focused primarily on winter fishing and fish processing. The site is situated directly on the coast, quite near to the main farm of Bær, and dates to very early in the settlement period of Iceland, which began around AD 877. Even...
The North Sea and the "Long" Viking Age: Connections and Communication (2017)
This talk presents the results of a northern European collaborative pilot study on the compilation and analysis of internationally-derived datasets of metal-detected material culture. Drawing on nascent heritage initiatives across northern Europe designed to protect and record our at-risk portable material culture, the project seeks to develop and trial a methodology for the synthesis and analysis of metal-detected datasets from England, Denmark, Belgium, and the Netherlands, resulting in the...
Pottery Production in Anglo-Scandinavian Torksey (Lincolnshire): reconstructing and contextualising the chaîne opératoire. (2015)
Ninth-century England witnessed major social upheaval. Viking armies moved throughout the north and east, towns flourished again for the first time since the Roman period, and land ownership was fundamentally transformed. Significant in the material record is a veritable revolution in pottery production; pottery was wheel-thrown, kiln-fired, and made on a near industrial scale. A number of production centres were established under a Viking elite hailing from regions characterised by...
Predatory Polities: Viking Raiding Fleets in Ninth-Century Europe (2023)
This is an abstract from the "Beyond “Barbarians”: Dimensions of Military Organization at the Bleeding Edge of the Premodern State" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Viking Age was a time of upheaval and disruption across the northern world. Beginning in the late eighth century CE, historical documents attest to a surge of viking raiding into western Europe. By the mid-ninth century, predatory raiding fleets are recorded as operating across the...
Surviving Violence: Healthcare in the Danish Viking Age (2019)
This is an abstract from the "Systems of Care in Times of Violence" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Viking Era has been characterized as a time of great violence in both modern and historical accounts, however, little work has been done to analyze the cultural norms and practical considerations surrounding healthcare during the Viking Age. If Viking Age society was as violent as purported, it would have needed to have well-honed systems of care...
Viking Age Grave Reentry within the Context of Mortuary Drama (2017)
The present study traces the history of grave manipulation and reentry in Scandinavia from the Stone Age through medieval times, but with a special emphasis on the context and implications of funerary activity during the Viking Age and the early medieval period. During this time span, the people of Scandinavia became a major force that reshaped the economic, political, and social structure of Europe. I examine the phenomenon of grave reentry and alteration within the framework of Neil Price’s...
Viking Age tar production and the exploitation of the Outlands (2017)
In Sweden, recent excavations have revealed how the production of tar evolved from a small scale, household operation situated within the settlements of the Roman Iron Age, to a large-scale activity in the forests during the Vendel and Viking periods. The resulting quantities of tar far exceeded ordinary household requirements. This change in production coincides with the introduction of the sail, characteristic for the Viking Age, with extensive need for large amounts of tar. The change in...