Viking Age Archaeology

introduction When the existence of different socio-political areas and regional identities in the Baltic Sea region is discussed, one should remember that people did not live their lives in isolation. People, then as now, had social relations that stretched to other regions and societies. These could concern social contacts such as blood brotherhood and marriage alliances, or trade relations and tribute dealings, as well as relations based on common values (Burströ m 1991, 39; Callmer 1991). For the central Baltic Sea region and the Russian river valleys the archaeological material reveals evidence of the existence of diversified interaction. This is apparent not only through the raw material, partially manufactured items, and prestige objects that were mediated between different regions. It can also be seen through the jewellery and the personal belongings that are found far away from where they were manufactured or where the prototype existed. In the following study, the presence of Scandinavian groups in the Baltic Sea region and Russian area provides an example of the interaction that existed. As will be shown, some Scandinavians were involved in activities connected to trade. Since trust is vital for trade being conducted, this article also addresses how trust was created through material culture and how material culture could facilitate interaction between trading actors.

Viking Age textiles with interwoven gold threads are rare in Scandinavia. Two such textiles were found in a Viking ship grave at Gokstad in Norway. Apart from brief overviews, the materials, techniques and find context of these textiles have not been described in detail before. The silk and gold embroidery was made with stem-stitch and simple laid-work. A madderdyed silk thread was used to make the flower pattern, in combination with a thread consisting of 80% pure gold lamella
with a core of silk. A similar gold thread was used in a narrow band found with the embroidery. The 4 mm to 4.5 mm wide
band is probably a remnant of tablet weaving. Both embroidery and band were found hidden inside a hollow ridgepole holding up the roof of a grave chamber. The precious gold and silk materials and the time-consuming and specialised technology used to make the gold thread suggests that these textiles were very valuable.

The Drakkar was the Viking war ship, the Dromon that of the Byzantine world.  The Vikings and Byzantines collided, cooperated, fought for and against each other. 

Since the Dromon (and other galleys in the Med) was rowed standing up, perhaps a look at the Drakkar or other Viking style ship did also.

The Dromon went on as galleys up to the 1700's while the Drakkar got fat and short and became the head of long line of sailing ships.

Since the early days of archaeology, Viking-Age burials and burial customs have attracted much attention. Evocative tales of warriors and their deeds preserved in Old Norse poetry and sagas, and recorded in the historical chronicles of church and court scribes formed the background for the interpretation of some of the most prominent finds, the burials with weapons and horse furnishings. To antiquarians and archaeologists of the nineteenth century, it was almost self-evident that a life so closely tied to warfare and violent expansion abroad would also find expression in the burials of the time, and many of the early discoveries appeared to confirm the view of the Nordic warrior who was expected to arrive with full fighting gear in Valhalla to continue his life amongst the brave warriors of Odin. Since then, the archaeological evidence has increased considerably, providing a far more extensive basis for the study of Viking-Age burial practices today than a century ago. Typological and chronological analyses of individual objects and burials demonstrate the diversity of the weapon burial practice of especially the 10th century. In a period of significant political and religious transition in southern Scandinavia elaborately furnished equestrian burials and weapon burials were one of the means of to demonstrate the position and the political and religious preferences of the Viking elite.
The study is divided into two parts: Vol. 1 Text, including bibliography and site index, and Vol. 2 Catalogue with 24 maps and 70 artefact plates.

The paper compares and contrasts Kaupang and Dublin as two early Viking Age towns. While the importance of Kaupang as a permanent settlement and active trading partner throughout the Scandinavian trade network has only just begun to be understood, Dublin has primarily been understood as an Irish town founded by Scandinavians instead of as a Scandinavian town that gradually became an Irish city. Through the application of central place and network theory, I posit that both served as major nodal points within a well-connected intra- and inter-regional long-distance Scandinavian trade network. Using archaeological field reports, contemporary primary source material, and secondary interpretation, I will examine the two sites side-by-side in order to discuss the key aspects of each town, including chronological history, the physical layouts of the sites and the buildings that were present, the monetary systems in place, the nature of their imports and exports, and the different peoples who inhabited them. In this way, I will reach my conclusion as to why Kaupang failed and Dublin survived.

In 2017 a throne-amulet made from bone, once retrieved from the diggings of harbour excavation 1979/80 in Hedeby, was committed to the Wikinger Museum Haithabu. It constitutes the second specimen known from the site and fits well into the larger group of throne-amulets known from south-eastern Scandinavia. The academic discussion of these amulets as devotional pagan objects either in connection with the worship of Óðinn or else as thrones of vǫlur is controversial. The piece from Hedeby harbour does not seem to depict the typical block-chair, though, but is about the first indication for the existence of Viking-age barrel-chairs used continuously until Early modernity.

Late Iron Age boat rituals and ritual boats

The most famous ship burials in Norway are found at Oseberg and Gokstad. Beside the magnificent ships, the rich grave goods of all kinds have made these burials important sources to increase knowledge and adventure the Viking period. A boat is frequently part of the equipment of a burial in late Iron Age in Norway, even if not everywhere and in the same way. There are however various opinions among scholars on the reason for putting a boat in the grave.
The boat or ship is often forming some sort of a coffin for the body, and the place for the burial has been carefully arranged. In the case of Oseberg the funeral including preparations and closing rituals took months. But how should we interpret the boat finds that obvious were part of a ritual, but lack a body and other characteristics of a funeral?

The political structure of Scandinavian society underwent radical change between AD 500 and 1350. Through analyses of c. 170,000 sites of single graves and cemeteries, 1,700 hillforts, and 130 royal sites and manors, this article investigates the emergence of larger law areas and their relation to the peoples and kingdoms in Scandza (i.e. Norway and Sweden). In this period the number of kingdoms was reduced from around thirteen to two. We find 29 peoples in the 6th century mentioned in contemporary written sources (Getica and Widtsith), and these are geographically identified through a big data analysis of prehistoric graves and cemeteries (Kernel Density Estimation). In addition, we have identified thirteen clusters of graves representing other unmentioned groups. The emergence of larger legal entities was a prerequisite for the emergence of the Scandinavian kingdoms. In eastern Scandinavia kingship emerged through the control of major lakes connecting various folklands, while in the west control of trade and transport along the major sailing route (leden) was a driving facor for trans-regional kingship.

This thesis focuses on the concept of female warriors during the Viking age. I list seven cases from different parts of the Norse world where women have been buried with weapons and compare these archaeological sources with written sources using methods of material culture studies and theories of gender identity and feminist thought. By looking at these I found evidence of special ideas on- and treatments of- female warriors in line with a concept of third genders which could explain the rarity of their existence. However I concluded that female warriors did indeed exist in the Viking age, even though there were very few of them.

The Bodleian Libraries’ c. 1400 manuscript, MS Douce 390, is comprised of folios containing artistic renderings and portolan charts. Folio 8r illustrates the Atlantic Ocean west of the Portugal and Spain. The cartographer/illustrator rendered on the western margin an approximate 1.25° run of the North American coastline. Within this latitude run various miniature illustrations of structures, tower icons, and X symbols representing Christ may be found. North of the illustrated coastline are additional features, primarily at 40.42° and 40.70° latitude. The features at these higher latitudes represent the Newport Tower, including one conjoined feature which illustrated a rectangular tower icon and a circle (partial). Scholars have already connected the MS Douce 390 portolan charts with Petrus Vesconte, an earlier work of Vesconte’s produced in 1320 being the model for the charts in the MS Douce 390. The c. 1400 illustrator copied Vesconte’s placement and illustration of a circular tower on the North American landscape.

Presentation is 65 slides.

PowerPoint presentation shared via my Google Drive location: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HCYS6y0k4mfSdgFIFWF9VVEyxOpI5VwU/view?usp=sharing

Our aim with this paper was to discuss two possible Viking Age and Early medieval wooden hall buildings from Viklem at Ørlandet in relation to the Scandinavian Viking Age halls. To do this we analysed the buildings from Viklem to see to what extent they meet well-established criteria for Viking Age halls in Scandinavia. Since the Viklem halls are the northernmost known examples of such freestanding hall buildings, we have to take local and regional conditions into consideration, such as fundamental geographical factors, political demands and its physical manifestations at Ørlandet and the surrounding areas. Our results showed that the large buildings at Viklem meet many of the criteria that have been established by research in southern Scandinavia. However, we see that the Viklem halls are smaller, and lack the large number of prosperity items that that are associated with most in most of the known halls in the south. We discuss these differences in the perspective of Viklem's l...

N. V. Lopatin
Walls and towers of ancient Izborsk.

Izborsk is one of the most beautiful places of Northwest Russia. The main attraction of Izborsk is the fortress of the 14th–15th centuries, well preserved to our days. However, there is another great historic landmark – Truvor fortified settlement, where the town was situated earlier. The hillfort was studied in 1971–1992 by the expedition of V. V. Sedov from the Institute of archaeology, Academy of Sciences of the USSR. One of significant discoveries were the remnants of walls and towers of the early-medieval town, which were completely unknown before the excavations.
Remains of stone masonry walls preserved beneath the earth (in the cultural layer) up to the height of over 1 m were built of local limestone without mortar, only sometimes the joints between the stones were filled with clay. The width of the walls comprises from 2.5 to 4 m, and the height likely was less. Thus, the stone structure should be rather called a basement for a wooden defensive wall. At the headland of the hillfort a semicircular base of a tower was revealed. Sedov attributed the building of the stone fortifications to the turn of the 11th–12th centuries, but available evidence suggests an earlier date for the construction start – late 10th century.
The article describes the detailed reconsruction of one of the elements of the fortress – the Western gate, where the author supervised the study in 1987–1992. The gate was destroyed and rebuilt several times. The most representative data for the reconstruction secured from two building periods – the beginning of the 11th and the first half of the 13th centuries. The materials of the excavations indicate that the entry was fortified by a wooden gate tower.

This small (4.72” diameter) map is part of the combined Ptolemaic system planisphere illustrated on the frontispiece of the 16th century MS. Ashmole 1789 manuscript, a holding of the Bodleian Libraries. This manuscript, commonly referred to as the "Primi quadriui mysterium," was authored by the famed English polymath, Dr. John Dee. The exact date of the manuscript is not certain.
    Public thanks to the staff of the Bodleian Libraries for re-imaging the frontispiece of the MS. Ashmole 1789 manuscript. The re-imaging produced two high-resolution TIFF images that were more than sufficient to conduct a detailed analysis on what John Dee had drawn over four centuries ago. 
    John Dee operated in the inner circle of Queen Elizabeth I. His knowledge of navigation and geodesy supported the English efforts directed at colonizing the North American continent. His authored works outlined the basis for England’s historical claim to North America. Dee was slated to acquire a significant parcel of land in the Narragansett Bay region had the 1583 expedition of Sir Humphrey Gilbert reached the bay and planted a colony. Gilbert’s expedition failed and he perished on the return trip to England.
    This map of Dee illustrated the Newport Tower on the edge of an island situated off the North American coast at 41.50° latitude. The offshore island was outside of a large, over-emphasized bay that cut into the interior of North America. The illustration on this present map parallels another map that Dee produced where he illustrated the Newport Tower on the edge of the triangular-shaped island of CLAUDIA.
    Additional tower icons were illustrated by Dee on this present map. One icon is on the western edge of the large, over-emphasize bay. A cityscape arrangement of tower icons were positioned at the southern opening of the bay. Lastly, a rectangular white pigment tower icon was rendered adjacent to the southern end of the island containing the Newport Tower.
    Dee also illustrated various tower icons in England, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain.
    Presentation is 47 slides.
   
Google Drive PowerPoint: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PlIMNzHdSR4jnzoKarEzgOHE0WkUaMcv/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108078659971084354140&rtpof=true&sd=true

Scandinavian women are regularly depicted as warriors, or shieldmaidens, fighting both in international raids and in defending their homes in the popular television series Vikings. But is this portrayal likely to be accurate? Following an examination of the depiction of warrior women in the series, this paper will try to answer this question by focussing on one of the regions that shieldmaidens in the series are shown fighting in, Anglo-Saxon England. England benefits from having primary written sources for the Viking Age, as well as numerous excavations, including the burials of three females with weapons, making them potential shieldmaidens.

An international conference bringing together geneticists, historians and archaeologists for an open exchange about the possibilities, limitations and risks of the emerging new discipline "Genetic History" (the use of DNA as a historical source). Convened by Joerg Feuchter and Stefanie Samida (Archaeology/Public History, Potsdam) and funded by Fritz Thyssen Foundation. For more information please click on the link to the program or go to the conference website (www.genetic-history.com)

A tapeçaria no mundo medieval, consistiu em um dos mais importantes elementos de registros históricos das sociedades daquele período, muitas continham eventos marcantes, celebrações e até mesmo de cunho religioso, na Escandinávia naquele período algumas dessas peças continham eventos associados a mitologia nórdica e a vida cotidiana de seus habitantes, há maior parte delas provém do período de ascensão do cristianismo naquela região, bem como de regiões que possuíam descendentes dos nórdicos, como a França, a Rússia, a Inglaterra, etc. E somente dois exemplares até o momento são oriundos da chamada Era Viking, conheça um pouco sobre elas, bem como as atuais tapeçarias que são realizadas nos dias de hoje.
Palavras chave: Tapeçaria, Era Viking, Registro Histórico, Normandos, Escandinávia.

This article deals with the inscription on a rune-stone fragment discovered in 1985 at Igelsta in Östertälje parish in Södermanland, which according to the author commemorates a man named Øygrīmʀ. This name is very rare and is previously unrecorded in East Scandinavian
sources.