Vikings Archive
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The Sack of Viking Limerick
Posted on January 20, 2013 | No CommentsThey carried of their jewels and their best property, and their saddles beautiful and foreign; their gold and their silver; their beautifully woven cloth of all colours and of all kinds... -
L’Anse aux Meadows was a ‘temporary base camp’ for the Vikings in North America, study finds
Posted on January 9, 2013 | No CommentsA new study of the archaeological remains from the only confirmed Viking settlement in North America argues that it was never meant to be a long-term settlement. It is also very likely that it was the home to at least one Norse woman. -
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 Gendered Landscape: A discussion on gender, status and power expressed in the Viking Age mortuary landscape
Posted on January 5, 2013 | No CommentsI will attempt to show that the gender roles of the Viking Age are perhaps often interpreted and represented too simplistically, and that popular stereotypes fail to take into account the complex multitude of categories, variations and negotiations which one ought to expect from the interpretation of gender. -
The Children of Ash: Cosmology and the Viking Universe
Posted on December 24, 2012 | No CommentsWhat I am really going to be talking about throughout these lectures is stories, the power of stories, and the role that narrative played in the life of the Vikings, its influence on their perception of the world in which they understood themselves to move. -
Greenland’s Viking settlers gorged on seals
Posted on December 17, 2012 | No CommentsA Danish-Canadian research team has demonstrated the Norse society did not die out due to an inability to adapt to the Greenlandic diet: an isotopic analysis of their bones shows they ate plenty of seals. -
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". -
Tolkien’s Heroic Criticism: A Developing Application of Anglo-Saxon Ofermod to the Monsters of Modernity
Posted on December 12, 2012 | No CommentsThe structure of this study follows the development of Tolkien’s social criticism and heroic aesthetic. The study begins by looking at some biographical elements of Tolkien’s life and how those elements shaped the creation of Tolkien’s anti-hero, the Hobbit. -
Horses of Agency, Element, and Godliness in Tolkien and the Germanic Sagas
Posted on December 12, 2012 | No CommentsWhat is the contract between man and equine that allows a beast ten times our size and one hundred times our strength to willingly serve in our ambitions? What magnetism (and who placed it) is it that draws humanity and horses together? -
Up Helly Aa: an ancient Viking festival?
Posted on December 11, 2012 | No CommentsEach year on the last Tuesday of January the town of Lerwick is awash with Vikings. The day culminates with the burning of an ornate longship, complete with dragon head and tail, thus creating a striking image of a Norse sea - king’s funeral pyre. -
Alfred the Great: Viking Wars and Military Reforms
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe purpose of this piece is to examine Alfred the Greats Viking wars and to ascertain why his kingdom of Wessex survived the Viking onslaught in the ninth century. -
Viking Camps in Ninth-century Ireland: Sources, Locations and Interactions
Posted on December 9, 2012 | No CommentsThe first part will reflect on how viking bases can be identified in written records. This is followed by a study of the location of these camps. -
Hincmar of Reims on King-making: The Evidence of the Annals of St. Bertin, 861–882
Posted on December 5, 2012 | No CommentsThe Histories and Chronicles Hincmar had in mind were presumably Frankish ones; and Lothar II, succeeding his father, thus clearly came into this section of Hincmar's third category. But of the timing or form of Lothar's becoming king, Hincmar said not a word, preferring, instead, to spell out the Biblical lesson that a bad king (and he hastily disclaimed any allegation that Lothar's father had been a bad king) would see the succession depart from his line. -
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. -
Death on the Dorset Ridgeway: a Viking Murder Mystery
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsAngela Boyle recounts the extraordinary archaeological discovery made in the summer of 2009 in Dorset in southwest England. -
Two dozen Viking and medieval swords up for auction
Posted on November 14, 2012 | No CommentsIf you want to get your Christmas shopping done early, and have a medievalist on your list, perhaps you can put in a bid for one of two dozen medieval and Viking-era swords that will be sold at auction later this month. -
The Representation of Hakon Sigurdsson and other Heathen Characters in Viking Age Literature
Posted on November 7, 2012 | No CommentsIn this essay I will attempt to understand the motives behind the portrayals of Hakon jarl and other heathen characters in several sagas and to decipher the symbolic meaning of some literary depictions of heathen ritual. -
Against the Heathen: Saints and martyrs in late Anglo-Saxon literature
Posted on November 6, 2012 | No CommentsIn this essay I will argue that the militarised martyrs and saints in Anglo-Saxon England are both a shining example to Saxon Christians and an enticing lure to encourage the Scandinavian settlers to adopt the Catholic faith like King Cnut did. -
Monstrosity in Old English and Old Icelandic Literature
Posted on October 31, 2012 | No CommentsIn medieval Europe belief in monsters allowed for corresponding acceptance of the possibility of humans transforming into monsters. In medieval Iceland and Anglo-Saxon England the mixture of Christian and pagan world views and beliefs create a situation where the boundaries are not merely fluid but can be transgressed, in either direction. -
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’. -
An island archaeological approach to the Viking colonization of the North Atlantic
Posted on October 28, 2012 | No CommentsThe present paper is a brief exploration of the application of methods commonly used in the archaeological study of the Pacific and Mediterranean islands to the expansion of the Vikings across the North Atlantic during the ninth to eleventh centuries AD. -
Archaeological research reveals new insights about the Vikings in Wales
Posted on October 24, 2012 | No CommentsRecent excavations by archaeologists from the National Museum Wales at the Viking age settlement of Llanbedrgoch on the east side of Anglesey have shed important new light on the impact of Anglo-Saxon and Viking-age worlds operating around the Irish Sea. -
Iron Smelting in Vinland
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsAny former iron smelting site presents a special problem for archaeologists. The process of converting iron rich ore into a working iron bar requires a complex series of steps. Each separate function is most likely to be undertaken by heavily modifying the previous equipment set up. Unfortunately for the archaeologist, the evidence of those important earlier stages is certain to be blurred, if not totally obliterated, by later steps. It will be the very last part of the whole process which alone remain as evidence. -
Explaining Viking Expansion
Posted on October 4, 2012 | No CommentsThis thesis studies and explains employment opportunities, political motives, and societal norms as separate, individual motives that perpetuated Scandinavian migration, conquest, and adventure from the eighth through the eleventh centuries AD.
