Mapping Midgard: Reconstructing Mental Geographies of Viking Age Seafarers

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This project aims to reconstruct the mental geographies and sailing routes used by Viking Age communities along the Atlantic façade by combining experimental archaeology and critical cartography. This session will present some of the results of recent fieldwork conducted in Norway and explore alternative mapping methods for constructing critical and epistemologically diverse understandings of past peoples and their worldviews. Despite a growing body of evidence for the importance of maritime travel in the Viking Age, we still know surprisingly little about the sailing voyages themselves. In answer to this, a fieldwork campaign was conducted in western Norway between 2021 and 2022 that involved sailing over 1,500 nautical miles in a range of traditional, clinker-built square-rigged boats. These trials have revealed several important considerations about Viking Age seafaring and maritime geographies, some of which are notably absent in the relevant literature. Furthermore, conventional methods for representing these voyages are far removed from the experience of sailing, and of the consequent mental geographies that are conjured up by such experiences. A range of cartographic alternatives will be discussed that may help us come closer to Norse mental geographies and provide a new perspective on sailing, space and experience among maritime communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Negotiating Watery Worlds: Impacts and Implications of the Use of Watercraft in Small-Scale Societies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36190.0