Scandinavia Archive
-
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. -
Saga Motifs on Gotland Picture Stones: The Case of Hildr Högnadóttir
Posted on March 17, 2013 | No CommentsThis article will only examine one of these legends, namely the ‘Hildr legend’ in the context of two of these stones, lärbro stora hammars and stenkyrka smiss . An attempt will be made to place the images in a larger context than has been done before, and by doing so to strenghten the probability that they were indeed intended to refer to the original Hildr legend. -
Widows in Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsOwing to a fairly large number of mainly vernacular codes of law that have survived, we are in a position to see at least how in legislation the position of women in general, but also of widows in particular, was defined. -
Novgorod the Great in Baltic Trade before 1300
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsThe information on trade contacts between Novgorod and Scandinavian countries preserved in the works of Old Norse -
“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. -
Scandinavian late Viking Age art styles as a part of the visual display of warriors in 11th-century Estonia
Posted on February 24, 2013 | No CommentsArtefacts decorated in Scandinavian Late Viking Age art styles have been known for a long time in the Estonian archaeological material, and were first published as early as 1914 by Max Ebert; a more comprehensive overview was given in 1929 by Birger Nerman. The finds include silver-plated and sometimes partially gilded weapons, as well as belt and scabbard fittings, plaques, and only a few pieces of jewellery. -
Strangers in Icelandic Society, 1100-1400
Posted on February 11, 2013 | No CommentsThe term ‘stranger’ (der Fremde) was defined by Georg Simmel (1858-1918) in a brief excursus (1908, 685–91). Scholars following in the footsteps of Simmel have distinguished at least two different types of stranger. One is the sojourner, who clings to the culture of his own ethnic group. The other is the immigrant, a newly-arrived outsider who has come to stay (see Siu 1952; Wood 1934, 43–44). The merchant Örn is close to the first type... -
Riding To The Afterlife: The Role Of Horses In Early Medieval North-Western Europe
Posted on February 6, 2013 | No CommentsIn order to establish the role of horses in the pre-Christian religions of Anglo-Saxon England, Viking-Age Scandinavia and other Germanic regions in mainland Europe, this dissertation will look for evidence of burial, sacrifice and other rituals involving horses in both archaeological and literary sources -
Anaphrodisiac Charms in the Nordic Middle Ages: Impotence, Infertility, and Magic
Posted on January 16, 2013 | No CommentsThis essay, however, looks to explore, not this seductive form of charm magic, but rather its opposite, ie charm magic that prevents the consumption of a relationship, or that makes a fruitful union impossible. -
The Scandinavian element beyond the Danelaw
Posted on January 8, 2013 | No CommentsThe present paper concentrates on the Scandinavian element present in Eng- lish in the area beyond the Danelaw, i.e. in the West Midlands and Southern parts of the country. -
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. -
Matrimonial politics and core-periphery interactions in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century Scotland
Posted on December 31, 2012 | No CommentsThe medieval kingdom of Scotland was a rich amalgam of diverse ethnic elements which reflected the turbulent history of the first millennium of its development. -
THE CHRISTIAN KINGDOM AS AN IMAGE OF THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM ACCORDING TO ST. BIRGITTA OF SWEDEN
Posted on December 30, 2012 | No CommentsThe thesis of this study is that her task was to start a great work of reform in the church, beginning with the personal conversion of the individuals responsible for the wellbeing of the community and gradually involving all Christians. She intended this reform to prepare society for the second coming of Christ. -
INTERVIEW: Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths
Posted on December 13, 2012 | No CommentsAn interview with author Nancy Brown on her latest medieval offering: "Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths". -
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. -
The Consuetudines canonice of Lund
Posted on December 4, 2012 | No CommentsIn this paper we shall deal with the customs in Lund, the so-called Consuetudines canonice. -
Where does Old Norse religion end?
Posted on December 1, 2012 | No CommentsHow did the believers of the Old Norse religion perceive other religions, and to what extent did people from the outside get in contact with myths and rituals? -
The Church in Fourteenth-Century Iceland: Ecclesiastical Administration, Literacy, and the Formation of an Elite Clerical Identity
Posted on November 28, 2012 | No CommentsIn what follows, therefore, I provide a detailed study of Icelandic clergy and the institutions of the Icelandic Church in the period from 1300 to 1404. -
Nordic Witchcraft in Transition: Impotence, Heresy and Diabolism in 14th-century Bergen
Posted on November 26, 2012 | No CommentsWithin the orbit of witchcraft, what is the relationship between sexuality, heresy, and diabolism? -
Madness in the Old Norse society: Narratives and ideas
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsIn the Viking Age (800-1030 a.d.) and the Middle Ages (1030-1500 a.d.) in Northern Europe, the main available information stems from fictional literature - more precisely the sagas, written predominantly in Iceland during the 13th century. -
Conquest or Colonisation: The Scandinavians in Ryedale from the Ninth to Eleventh Centuries
Posted on November 25, 2012 | No CommentsThe study of settlement history has developed within the fields of history, archaeology and geography. As a result much of the work carried out in settlement studies has borrowed the research and conclusions of scholars from other disciplines. -
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. -
The Archaeology of Colonialism in Medieval Ireland: Shifting Patterns of Domination and Acculturation
Posted on November 19, 2012 | No CommentsThis project seeks to identify the processes at work in Scandinavian and Anglo- Norman colonialism in Ireland, and their interaction with the landscape, by examining the impact of each phase of activity on the settlement pattern in two representative case-study regions. The successes, failures, similarities and differences of Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman settlement and society in Ireland are examined and compared in this project in terms of three sub-phases of the overall process, namely expansion, consolidation and domination, within an overall developmental diachronic framework. -
The Dangerous Dead: The Early Medieval deviant burial at Southwell, Nottinghamshire in a wider context
Posted on October 30, 2012 | No CommentsThis was the deviant burial, which had been buried (or reburied) intact along with a further leg and lower arm bone...Without speculating wildly on the implications of the iron studs, it is known that treatment of this sort was accorded to bodies which had died unnaturally or when there was some reason to fear the supernatural’. -
The archaeological evidence for equestrianism in early Anglo-Saxon England, c.450-700
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsMost of our evidence is drawn from the funerary record,and more specifically from the rite of horse inhumation,or the provision of horse equipment as a grave good. Insacrificing horses to accompany the dead the Anglo-Saxon elite were doubtless influenced by Continental burial theatre, where the rite is to be observed at itsmost explicit.
