Denmark Archive
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Feasting with Early Medieval Chiefs: Locating Political Action through Environmental Archaeology
Posted on May 18, 2013 | No CommentsThis excellent paper was the first given in the session on Early Medieval Europe. It looked at various archaeological excavations in Iceland and Denmark and the political role feasting played in pre-Christian Viking societies. -
Louis the Pious and the Conversion of the Danes
Posted on May 17, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper was part of a very interesting session on the Early Middle Ages. The papers covered Eastern European Infant Burial, the archaeology of medieval feasting and conversion. This paper contrasted the conversion policies of Charlemagne versus those of Louis the Pious. -
Margaret of Denmark, Queen of Scotland
Posted on March 6, 2013 | No CommentsThe marriage of Margaret of Denmark and King James III of Scotland may not have been very happy. But the union had a significant impact on the territorial gains of Scotland. -
“The Wrath of the Northmen”: The Vikings and their Memory
Posted on March 2, 2013 | No CommentsThese raiding peoples emerge out of all three Scandinavian homelands--Norway, Sweden, and Denmark--sending off their young men all over the known world in search of wealth and prestige. -
The Dominican Convents in Medieval Norway
Posted on January 6, 2013 | No CommentsIn the Middle Ages, the Kingdom of Norway was larger than it is today, where the former Norwegian districts of Jämtland and Bohus are now parts of Sweden. In 1380, the Norwegian throne was inherited by the Danish king, and for the rest of the Middle Ages, Danish monarchs ruled Norway, but even though the kings often made use of Danes in the administration, the Norwegian kingdom did in fact remain as an independent part of a so-called double monarchy. -
Kind hearts are more than cunning heirs and simple pride than property
Posted on December 4, 2012 | No CommentsReading the excursus alerts the reader and raises the question whether there is any foundation in the rune-stones for such revision as Birgit Sawyer argues for. One should bring along these doubts when turning to the two chapters dealing with rune-stone inscriptions as expressions of claims to inheritance of property. -
Murder and Execution within the Political Sphere in Fifteenth Century Scandinavia
Posted on November 23, 2012 | No CommentsA quick glance at the regnal list of fifteenth-century Sweden shows that members of the nobility were at each others' throats more or less all the time, especially from the 1430s and onwards. -
Modern nationalism and the medieval sagas
Posted on August 5, 2012 | No CommentsNineteenth-century romanticism had a special interest in both the medieval world and primitive, untainted rural culture. As the nineteenth century progressed and turned into the early twentieth, the Danes fell more and more under the nostalgic spell, tending to look upon the Icelanders through increasingly romantic and patronizing eyes -
The Religious Orders of Knighthood in Medieval Scandinavia: Historical and Archaeological Approaches
Posted on August 5, 2012 | No CommentsEven if the various Orders of Knighthood reached Scandinavia somewhat later than most of the Christian civilization they soon became important religious institutions in Scandinavian societies in the same way as they already were in the rest of western Europe. -
The Oldest Danish Book about Gardening
Posted on June 27, 2012 | No CommentsOur knowledge about which plants were cultivated in Denmark in the antiquity and in the Middle Ages is still improving, because of new excavations, studies of archives, better dating methods and macro- and micro- fossil analyses in old cultural layers. -
The Idea of North
Posted on May 31, 2012 | No CommentsTacitus’s two important treatises, vital as sources for our knowledge of the life of the Anglo-Saxons, represent a people who know their limits and stick to them. -
Canute and his Empire
Posted on May 20, 2012 | No CommentsThe first mention of Canute in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is in the entry for 1013, where it is recorded that his father Sweyn, after taking hostages from the conquered territories of Northumbria, Lindsey, and the Five Borough Towns, -
The Runic System as a Reinterpretation of Classical Influences and as an Expression of Scandinavian Cultural Affiliation
Posted on April 22, 2012 | No CommentsAccompanying discussions of the runic system’s graphical origins are arguments concerning its geographical origins. Von Friesen’s theory that runes derived from Greek characters looked east to the Gothic territories, while scholars arguing for North Italic origins have pointed towards the Alps. Moltke, who looked to a largely Latin source for the runic characters, suggested a runic origin in Denmark. -
Bones4Culture project to examine a thousand medieval skeletons from northern Europe
Posted on April 16, 2012 | No CommentsA new project is underway to analyze population, life, health and culture of the people that lived in the German-Danish border land during the Middle Ages (AD 1050 – 1536). -
’I am well done – please go on eating’ – Food, Digestion, and Humour in Late Medieval Danish Wall Paintings
Posted on February 29, 2012 | No CommentsJesus never laughed or smiled. Holy people behave like Him: they tend to be solemn, austere, and their body language is restricted. They ought in any case to behave like Jesus. But in late medieval Danish wall paintings some holy people rebel, and St Laurence even jokes. -
Scandinavian Influences on the English Language
Posted on February 5, 2012 | No CommentsThe Viking Age lasted roughly from the eighth century to the eleventh, with the Viking attacks on Europe beginning around 750 AD. The Scandinavians were excellent sailors, and they had impressive ships and navigational skills that carried them as far as North America (‘Vinland’) long before the arrival of Columbus in 1492. -
Ohthere’s voyages seen from a nautical angle
Posted on January 22, 2012 | No CommentsBut whatever Ohthere and his English hosts exchanged in the way of news and information, the re- corded account keeps closely within ränge of its objective: a geography of unknown and little known areas of Scandinavia and their inhabitants. -
Beowulf, Orality and the Anglo-Saxon Conversion
Posted on December 19, 2011 | No CommentsThere is no source quite like the Beowulf manuscript, as it is the longest poem and the only epic composed in Old English which has survived to the modern era, and thus is central to any understanding of Anglo-Saxon literature. -
Remnants of Revenants: The Role of the Dreaded Draugr in Medieval Iceland
Posted on December 11, 2011 | No CommentsThe Vikings brought the ancient Germanic literary tradition from Scandinavia to the rest of Europe. -
Christianization of the Norse c.900-c.1100: A Premeditated Strategy of Life and Death
Posted on December 7, 2011 | No CommentsExamines how Christianization of the Norse in the tenth and eleventh centuries was the effect of a premeditated mission strategy borne from the experiences of converting the Anglo-Saxon English in the seventh century AD. -
Buried with Honour and Stoned to Death? The Ambivalence of Viking Age Magic in the Light of Archaeology
Posted on December 5, 2011 | No CommentsIn 1981 Danish archaeologists revealed a remarkable Viking Age grave mound in the village of Gerdrup. -
HASKINS CONFERENCE: Public and Private Audiences: Reflections on the Anglo-Saxon Archive of Bury St. Edmunds Abbey in Suffolk
Posted on November 6, 2011 | No CommentsThis paper focused on the Anglo-Saxon writs, and charters of Bury St. Edmunds. -
The Dynamics of Landed and Portable Wealth: Defining Elites in Northwest Europe from an Archaeological Perspective, between AD 650 and 1150
Posted on November 4, 2011 | No CommentsWhat was the relationship between material wealth and social status? Did portable wealth convey to social status for elites? -
Ships, Fogs, and Traveling Pairs: Plague Legend Migration in Scandinavia
Posted on October 16, 2011 | No CommentsShips, Fogs, and Traveling Pairs: Plague Legend Migration in Scandinavia By Timothy R. Tangherlini Journal of American Folklore, Vol.101 (1988) Abstract: This article examines the various forms the plague assumes... -
Nails, Rivets, and Clench Bolts: A Case for Typological Clarity
Posted on October 2, 2011 | No CommentsNails, Rivets, and Clench Bolts: A Case for Typological Clarity Zori, Davide (University of California) Archaeologia Islandica 6 (2007) Abstract This paper reevaluates the current terms and typology used for small functional...
