Vikings Across Boundaries

Viking-Age Transformations – Volume II

Hanne Lovise Aannestad, Unn Pedersen, Marianne Moen, Elise Naumann, Heidi Lund Berg

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000204728
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

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.

1 Introducing Vikings Across Boundaries

Marianne Moen

The following volume presents papers from two separate, though ultimately connected, ViS conferences organised by the Centre for Viking-Age Studies at the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, in cooperation with the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, with the University of Bergen a contributor to the second conference. These were Viking Age Scandinavia: One, Three or Many? organised in 2014, and Vikings: Beyond Boundaries organised in 2015. Hence, the title of the volume was chosen so as to span themes common to both conferences, allowing it to reflect on a shared fundamental theme of the texts gathered here. We sought to find something that speaks of a diversity of approaches, of being representative of different methodologies and data sets, of reflecting scholarly traditions from different countries. Finally, we wanted something that brings to mind Scandinavian influence abroad as well as the roots of this influence in the homelands.

We believe the title of this volume speaks for the transience of borders, and how the Viking Age saw the expansion of cultural spheres from the heartlands in Scandinavia. It also speaks for how these heartlands were in themselves diverse. This introduction aims to tie together the chapters which make up this book, by offering a reflection on the diversity of perspectives, materials and methods. The chapters herein are presented through their contributions to the prism of what the Viking Age is, both in a historical perspective and in view of differing scholarly traditions.

In this volume, we are able to combine both more established researchers with those who are newer to the field, thus bridging different perspectives and a plethora of theoretically informed examinations of a wealth of material. The volume manages to combine perspectives from the East, the West and the so-called homelands. We have also been able to bring perspectives on identities from a multitude of angles, from concepts of a warrior to women as bearers of cultural tradition in settlements abroad. The following contributions present an overview of Viking-Age scholarship from different schools and traditions, and thus bring together several points of view. The underlying thought here is that as there is no view from nowhere (Wylie, 2016: 9), views from many places may help create a multi-vocal panorama of sorts, all contributing to a wider understanding of an ever-expanding story.

The ‘Age of the Vikings’

The Viking Age occupies a special place in the hearts and minds of many scholarly traditions, as can be surmised by the name alone: the Viking Age. We do not, in the Scandinavian Iron Age, recognise any other period under the epitaph of Age. The Merovingian or Vendel Period, the Roman Period, the Migration Period, all these nomenclatures speak to them being subdivisions of the catch-all of Iron Age. The Viking Age, however, stands on its own, designated as special by its very name, and thereby also loaded with implicit and explicit meanings. The academic community is well aware of the singular role attributed to the Viking Age in, for example, Norway, where its active use in nation-building around the turn of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth is well attested and has been examined by many scholars across the disciplines engaged with Viking-Age research (see, amongst others, Arwill-Nordbladh, 1998; Svanberg, 2003; Haavardsholm, 2004; Steinsland, 2005; Hillerdal, 2009). Indeed, the coupling of ideas of the Viking Age with national romanticism and the active use in Scandinavia of its Viking Heritage has by now become so well known in academic circles as to require little introduction. This typecast of the Viking Age as a catalyst in the formation of collective identity in the Scandinavian nations has been absorbed into the mainstream narrative of research history.

The Viking Age does stand in a rather singular place, being as it were the domain of several academic disciplines. More than this, it also retains a power to enthral and enthuse on a more general basis than does many other prehistoric periods, emphasised by popular depictions of the Viking Age in recent years, such as the dramatic television series Vikings and The Last Kingdom, and indeed in the contribution of the Norse pantheon of gods in the endemic Marvel Universe. By contrast, most people would be hard pressed to name a popular TV series set in the Bronze Age or the Neolithic. The Viking Age, in other words, sells. It sells more than many other periods, and perhaps because of this it has become something of a paradox of public property and knowledge which does not always correspond with the latest research. The very popularity of the Viking Age therefore can be seen to help perpetuate a simplistic, pop-culture version of what was in reality a highly complex, nuanced society. The question of how well we actually know the Viking Age is worth asking, as it bears a direct relation to how we conduct our research on this period, and how we present it to a wider public.

What makes an Age?

In this light, we need to place the Viking Age into the wider debate on the concept of human history as linear and delineated by technological advancement. We can ask: what makes an age? How do we define it? The concept of prehistory as a series of successive Ages has in itself seen a legitimate and well-reasoned critique in recent years (McGlade, 1999; Lucas, 2005; Dobres, 2010; Maynes, et al. 2012). This neat compartmentalisation of the vast field of prehistory gives the illusion of clear-cut transitions and uniform developments, which of course is a vast simplification. Further, through using technology as the mode of classification (Dobres, 2010: 103), we inherently lend credence to a bias which places technological advance over other societal changes. Though this is not the right forum for an in-depth discussion of how we classify the past, it is always worth bearing in mind the implicit cultural baggage which comes with such terminology. If the Iron Age is so named because of the innovation and exploitation of iron as a resource and the technological advancement this entailed, one might equally assume that the Viking Age was defined by Vikings. But we then need to ask what a Viking is, and whether or not they were as all-pervasive as the name might imply. And crucially, as we believe this volume will showcase, we must ask whether or not the Viking Age represents a comprehensive unit: is it perceived and understood as the same thing by all people who study it? Turning the question on its head, we can already be fairly confident that it was not experienced in the same way by those who lived in it, in an emic way, making the question of who is encompassed by etic studies of the Viking Age another pertinent point.

Any given period in history or prehistory comes with inherent challenges in this manner. The people of the Mesolithic did not define themselves as such, because the concept of the Mesolithic would have carried no meaning for them. Hence, we need to acknowledge that within these overarching classifications lies a multitude of differentiating factors creating several concurrent Mesolithics, or as is the case here, multiple Viking Ages. Hence, within the overarching narrative of what categorises and defines a given period of prehistory, we need to recognise that this is a simplification, and that other lives were lived, where the dominant experience might not bear much in common with the most prominent perceptions. Seeing the Viking Age as a time of expansion neglects the human cost of this for example, as can been seen if we for instance direct the focus on to slavery, or to those who were on the receiving end of the expansion, as it were. Assuming everyone in Scandinavia in this particular period bought into a standardised warrior ideal neglects experiences such as is indicated by the burial Bj581 (Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., 2017; Price et al., 2019 and also as discussed by Hedenstierna-Jonson in this volume). Equally, the different life experiences of rural and urban identities can be assumed to have been widely different. It is safe to assume that the Viking Age is far from easily squeezed into a set of reductive categories, but is instead reflective of a multitude of cultural, collective and indeed individual experiences.

The Vikings of the Viking Age

The fine details of what a Viking was have been discussed eloquently in a number of other places, and need not be reiterated here at great length (Jesch, 1991: 1; Christiansen, 2002: 1–4; Price, 2002: 26; Jesch, 2015: 4–8). Whether or not a Viking denoted someone from the Viken area, whether it was a self-characterisation of a sea-faring warrior, whether it meant someone who went Viking as a verb; these are all variations of the same theme, whereon the word ‘Viking’ clearly denotes an us/them divide between Scandinavian travellers and the inhabitants of foreign lands to which they journeyed. Of course, this could and should be further nuanced by the recent isotope revelations from mass graves in the British Isles, which seem to indicate that some of the ‘Vikings’ buried there may not have been of Scandinavian origin (Evans et al., 2018), which challenges the idea of all Vikings hailing from the traditional heartlands. Be that as it may, even if we agree that Vikings were travellers who ventured abroad, often in the form of raiders or traders, that still leaves the majority of the population unaccounted for: the farmers who ran the subsistence economy, the craftspeople who created the beautiful brooches and ornaments for which the Viking Age is famous, the shipbuilders who made the ships and the sails that enabled the Viking expansion, those who maintained and supported the infrastructure of society through their upholding of rules, norms and daily lived lives. The Viking Age contained much more than just Vikings in other words, regardless of what exactly we decide a Viking is.

It does seem worthwhile to point out that defining an age through such a narrow slice of the population tends to neglect other segments, with equally valid contributions to the overall fabric of history. Though we might indeed struggle to rename the period at this stage, the Viking Age contained far more than just raiders and traders, as we of course all know very well. But the purpose of this section is not to introduce a critical discussion of terminology; rather, it is meant to introduce this volume in light of being a combination of viewpoints and voices on several levels, reflecting to a certain extent the diversity of the culture under study. The hope is to contribute to the wide variety of perspectives on the Viking Age which is currently evident in the research landscape.

The different Viking Ages

In keeping with the objective of the conference Vikings: Beyond Boundaries, this volume presents chapters from different scholarly traditions. An emerging pattern that became evident was that whilst studies within Scandinavia tend to see the Viking Age from an insider’s perspective, those in the so-called expansion areas tend to view them from the receiving end, lending an outsider’s perspective to those very same movements and actions. This creates an interplay of perspectives, which opens up possibilities of new understandings and different points of view.

To add further voices to the debate, we also aim to show how the idea of a homogenous Scandinavian homeland is in itself a falsity, as per the conference Viking Age Scandinavia: One, Three or Many? This is because the Viking Age encompassed the lives and experiences of many who were not directly part of that culture, and because the Vikings at home and abroad were very different. Indeed, the Vikings at home were also diverse in terms of there being variations and differences internally in and between the Scandinavian countries and sub-regions.

In other words, we wish with this volume to highlight how ‘the Viking Age’ as a term hides a multitude of experiences, cultural spheres, lived lives and indeed group identities. Within this world, we must make room for craftspeople who created textiles and perhaps never travelled abroad, alongside those who trained for a life of professional travel and warfare. We need to make room for the experiences of the Sámi population in Scandinavia, who lived in close cultural contact with the Vikings for centuries, alongside those of the people who carried with them newly coalesced cultural knowledge and maintained and transmitted this in foreign contexts. We need to acknowledge the perhaps enslaved makers of pots alongside the warrior ideals, because all of these different facets together contribute to making up what we today call the Viking Age.

Presentation of the chapters

As the above has promised, and as is only right for a volume designed to showcase the variety of approaches and subjects encompassed by the Viking Age, the following contributions represent different schools of academia: the Scandinavian heartlands are represented by, amongst others, Aina Margrethe Heen-Pettersen, Mats Roslund, Ingrid Ystgaard, Torun Zachrisson, Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, Jens Ulriksen, Hege Skalleberg Gjerde and Jostein Bergstøl, Frands Herschend and Sarah Croix. The British Isles are represented by Jane Kershaw and Frida Espolin Norstein, whereas the eastern routes and expansions are explored by Marika Mägi, Hauke Jöns and Anna Kowalska, Nikolaj Makarov and Ingrid Gustin and Anna Wessman. Within these contributions, we find a multitude of different subjects explored, which offers up insights into just how complex the idea of the Viking Age is.

Mats Roslund’s investigation of cultural identities and provision provinces through pottery styles also explores the extent of slavery, and the cultural transmission of skills and knowledge, thus exploring a key demographic segment of the population which falls outside the typical idea of the Viking Age. Slavery was most likely widespread (Iversen, 1997; Karras, 1999: 19; Sigurðsson, 2008), and the exploration of lived experiences and cultural traditions from the side of those who lived in slavery is a significant contribution towards broadening our understanding of the Viking Age.

At the other end of the hierarchical social spectrum, we find two studies of warrior identities, albeit with different material and approaches. Ingrid Ystgaard has explored the changing nature of warfare in Norway in the Late Iron Age, transitioning from the Migration and Merovingian periods into the Viking Age. In this chapter, the changes in warfare are put into context with the changing political landscape, showing how such fundamental changes are best seen in connection with each other. Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, meanwhile, explores warrior identities through concepts of war and violence as an integral part of the fabric of Viking-Age society, where martial codes of conduct were part of the societal structure. These discussions of the importance of warrior identities and concepts of war, rife throughout the overall structure of Viking-Age social norms, helps demonstrate the underlying influence of a martial ideology on society at large. Even though many people were not warriors, nor perhaps even in close association with anyone of that class, the concept of a warrior was known throughout, and their codes and their conduct recognised.

Another form of high-status identity is approached in Aina Margrethe Heen-Pettersen’s chapter, through tracing Insular imports in Trøndelag, Norway. In her chapter, she explores in particular the significance of imported Insular tableware and its use in feasting, thus entering the realm of alliance building, the maintenance of networks and friendships through the complex social negotiation of feasting, and the key point that foreign influences were brought back to the homelands in highly significant ways: cultural transmission went both ways.

Continuing along the theme of identity, Sarah Croix’s concept of urban identity argues for a sense of belonging specifically grounded in an urban way of life, for the inhabitants of Ribe in Denmark. Using daily practices as a way to understand how such a collective identity could be constructed and maintained, her article argues for a sense of belonging in this particular social setting as an integral part of the resultant way of life. A further delve into u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of plates
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Preface and acknowledgements
• 1. Introducing Vikings Across Boundaries
• PART I: Exchange and travel: connections across the Viking world
• PART II: Communicating identities: at home and abroad
• PART III: Dynamic social expressions in life and death
• Index