Through a diversity of approaches and with attention to both the homelands and the wider Viking world, this volume explores the changes that occurred during the Viking Age, as Scandinavian societies fell in line with the larger forces that dominated the continent and Scandinavia truly became part of Europe.

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.

Autorentext

Hanne Lovise Aannestad is Curator at the Museum of Cultural History, Oslo, Norway.

Unn Pedersen is Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History at the University of Oslo, Norway.

Marianne Moen is Postdoctoral Researcher at the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo, Norway.

Elise Naumann is Researcher at the Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Studies, Oslo, Norway.

Heidi Lund Berg is a doctoral research fellow in the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Inhalt

1. Introducing Vikings Across Boundaries

Marianne Moen

Part I: Exchange and Travel: Connections Across the Viking World

2. Feasting, Friendship and Alliances: The Socio-political Use of Insular Vessels in Viking-Age Norway

Aina Margrethe Heen-Pettersen

3. Viking-Age Landing Places: A Time for Reconsideration?

Jens Ulriksen

4. Scandinavians on the Southern Baltic Coast

Hauke Jöns and Anna Kowalska

5. Western Finland in the Viking World

Ingrid Gustin and Anna Wessman

6. Pre-Viking-Age Ship Burials at Salme in Estonia: The First Eastern Vikings or Indications of a Shared Culture Milieu?

Marika Mägi

Part II: Communicating Identities: At Home and Abroad

7. Women as Bearers of Cultural Tradition in Viking-Age England

Jane Kershaw

8. Urban Way of Life as Identity? A Case Study from Ribe's Emporium

Sarah Croix

9. Displaying and (re)Negotiating Identities: Migration and Funerary Rites in Viking-Age Northern Scotland

Frida Espolin Norstein

10. 'Vikings' and the Formation of the New Identities and New Centres of Power in the Upper Volga

Nikolaj Makarov

11. Sámi Vikings?

Hege Skalleberg Gjerde and Jostein Bergstøl

12. Warrior Identities in Viking-Age Scandinavia

Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson

Part III: Dynamic Social Expressions in Life and Death

13. Socially Significant Viking-Age Housing

Frands Herschend

14. The Martial Function of the Central Places in Viking-Age Scandinavia

Torun Zachrisson

15. The Dead of the Viking-Age Towns in Scandinavia

Sarah Croix

16. A Geography of Slavery: Ceramic Networks and Communities in the Lake Mälaren Valley, Sweden c. AD 950 to 1150

Mats Roslund

17. Warfare and Recruitment in Iron Age Central Norway

Ingrid Ystgaard