Slavery and the Vikings: archaeological perspectives

Summary

The cultures of the Viking Age in Scandinavia (AD c. 750-1100) were economically dependent on widespread, complex and deeply rooted systems of slavery. However, this aspect of the period was long neglected by scholars, partly due to the diluting influence of contemporary terminology. A Viking slave was a träl, producing the rather weaker English word 'thrall', and the nationalistic approaches to the period that dominated Viking studies far into the twentieth century often tended to subsume an unpalatable truth in their preference for a supposedly heroic past. This picture has changed considerably in recent years, and this paper introduces the steadily increasing range of archaeological evidence that we have for Viking slavery. From material culture such as shackles - themselves potentially ambiguous items - to the identification of possible slave quarters in settlements, attempts have been made to trace slave labour in the archaeological record of Viking economies, especially in key areas of production such as the manufacture of sail cloth. Possible slave burials are discussed, and as a rare coda we can even identify the voices of the (former) slaves themselves in runic inscriptions made by freedmen.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Captivity and Slavery in Viking Age Scandinavia

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