Tag: Viking
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‘Anglo-Saxon’ thegnly buildings
In the final part of the series discussing how Anglo-Saxon thegns expressed their power and status, after examining diet and textile use, we move onto the biggest archaeological category – buildings, and the built environment. Anglo-Saxon Long Ranges It is clear that, between the great halls of the royal site at Yeavering (Northumberland) in the…
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The Vikings and Post-Colonialism
This week, in a cannibalised version of a piece of coursework I once wrote, I thought it would be interesting to explore the question of post-colonialism (esp. hybridity) in regard to the study of the Vikings – what can this approach tell us, and how can it challenge past narratives? This can never be more…
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Vikings in the Danelaw – an Archaeological Footprint
This week I thought I’d write a quick article about my favourite article ever – Richard and Haldenby’s 2018 The Scale and Impact of Viking Settlement in Northumbria. You can find a copy of the article here, if you’d like to read along – I’d hugely recommend it. It provides an amazing example of how…
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Rude Viking Nicknames
Understanding Nicknames I’ve had a brief look at offensive and shocking nicknames before, especially among the Anglo-Saxons, but here we’re going to look in a little more depth, with some more examples. Again, I’m drawing primarily from Peterson’s excellent 2015 thesis (which you can access here). Peterson often acknowledges a broad range of potential translations…
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The Vikings – ‘culture-sponges’
Beyond studying a single aspect in great detail, there are 2 primary ways to conceptualise the ‘Vikings’ within a macro-historical narrative, and their impact on the world. One is their role in establishing connecting-lines across Europe (and further afield), raiding and trading. The flow of people, ideas and objects helped open up the world, and…
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Studying ‘Disability’ in History
Understanding and Framing ‘Disability’ A consistent trend in modern academic history has been to challenge ideas that we have traditionally seen as straight-forwards and monolithic. Real life is rarely this simplistic. Variation across time and space makes clear that many cultural trends of the modern world are cultural creations, and vary substantially across history. Recently,…
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Viking Lead Trade Weights
Explaining Viking Trade Weights ‘Viking-Age’ trade weights are a widely attested phenomena in Scandinavia, but equally so in England. Manufactured in a broad range of materials and alloys (Maleszka 2003, 286), they are understood to form part of the system of Gewichtsgeldwirtschaft (bullion economy): a process of exchange of precious metal based on weight, common…
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The ‘Viking’ Settlement of Northumbria: Large and Archaeologically Distinctive, or Invisible?
Contrasting views of the Scandinavian settlement of the Northumbrian ‘Danelaw’ have emerged in the historiography of the period. Archaeologically speaking, can we easily identify the presence of these ‘Vikings’, through culturally distinctive material culture? Or, alternatively, is the narrative of invasion and settlement put forward in contemporary sources far less clear in the archaeological record?…
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Crossing Boundaries – Insular metalwork in Viking-Age Scandinavia
There are relatively large quantities of ‘Insular’ (ie. from the various political kingdoms of the British Isles) decorative metalwork found in ‘Viking Age’ Scandinavia, especially (although not exclusively) in funerary contexts. This has been broadly noted for some time, starting with the simple cataloging of ‘Insular’ items by Petersen (1940), Bakka (1965), and indeed in…