ABSTRACT

This volume explores the changes that occurred during the Viking Age, as Scandinavian societies fell in line with the larger forces that dominated the Insular world and Continental Europe, absorbing the powerful symbiosis of Christianity and monarchy, adapting to the idea of royal lineage and supremacy, and developing a buzzing urbanism coupled with large-scale trade networks. Presenting research on the grand context of the Viking Age alongside localised studies, it contributes to the furthering of collaborations between local and ‘outsider’ research on the Viking Age. Through a diversity of approaches on the Viking homelands and the wider world of the Vikings, it offers studies of a range of phenomena, including urban and rural settlements; continuity in the use of places as well as new types of places specific to the Viking Age; the social significance of change; the construction and maintenance of social identity both within the ‘homelands’ and across large territories; ethnicity; and ideas of identity and the creation and recreation of identity both at home and abroad. As such, it will appeal to historians and archaeologists with interests in Viking-Age studies, as well as scholars of Scandinavian studies.

part I|88 pages

Exchange and travel

chapter 2|14 pages

Feasting, friendship and alliances

The socio-political use of Insular vessels in Viking-Age Norway

chapter 3|17 pages

Viking-Age landing places

A time for reconsideration?

chapter 6|17 pages

Pre-Viking-Age ship burials at Salme in Estonia

The first eastern Vikings or indications of a shared cultural milieu?

part II|98 pages

Communicating identities

chapter 8|14 pages

Urban way of life as identity?

A case study from Ribe’s emporium 1

chapter 9|22 pages

Displaying and (re)negotiating identities

Migration and funerary rites in Viking-Age Northern Scotland 1

chapter 11|13 pages

Sámi Vikings?

part III|109 pages

Dynamic social expressions in life and death

chapter 16|27 pages

A geography of slavery

Ceramic networks and communities in the Lake Mälaren valley, Sweden c. ad 950 to 1150