Download or read book Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World written by James H. Barrett and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a study of communities that drew their identity and livelihood from their relationships with water during a pivotal time in the creation of the social, economic and political landscapes of northern Europe. It focuses on the Baltic, North and Irish Seas in the Viking Age (ad 1050–1200), with a few later examples (such as the Scottish Lordship of the Isles) included to help illuminate less well-documented earlier centuries. Individual chapters introduce maritime worlds ranging from the Isle of Man to Gotland — while also touching on the relationships between estate centres, towns, landing places and the sea in the more terrestrially oriented societies that surrounded northern Europe’s main spheres of maritime interaction. It is predominately an archaeological project, but draws no arbitrary lines between the fields of historical archaeology, history and literature. The volume explores the complex relationships between long-range interconnections and distinctive regional identities that are characteristic of maritime societies, seeking to understand communities that were brought into being by their relationships with the sea and who set waves in motion that altered distant shores.

Download or read book The Sea Kings written by R. Andrew McDonald and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2020-05-28 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The archipelagic kingdoms of Man and the Isles that flourished from the last quarter of the eleventh century down to the middle of the thirteenth century represent two forgotten kingdoms of the medieval British Isles. They were ruled by powerful individuals, with unquestionably regnal status, who interacted in a variety of ways with rulers of surrounding lands and who left their footprint on a wide range of written documents and upon the very landscapes and seascapes of the islands they ruled. Yet British history has tended to overlook these Late Norse maritime empires, which thrived for two centuries on the Atlantic frontiers of Britain. This book represents the first ever overview of both Manx and Hebridean dynasties that dominated Man and the Isles from the late eleventh to the mid-thirteenth centuries. Coverage is broad and is not restricted to politics and warfare. An introductory chapter examines the maritime context of the kingdoms in light of recent work in the field of maritime history, while subsequent chronological and narrative chapters trace the history of the kingdoms from their origins through their maturity to their demise in the thirteenth century. Separate chapters examine the economy and society, church and religion, power and architecture.

Download or read book Viking encounters written by Anne Pedersen and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2020-09-25 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Viking Congresses bring together scholars of archaeology, philology, history, toponymy, numismatics and a number of other disciplines to discuss the Viking Age from a variety of viewpoints. This volume contains 44 peer-reviewed papers selected from those presented at the 18th Viking Congress held in Denmark in August 2017. The contributors take up the interdisciplinary challenge, and the papers cover a wide range of subjects, rooted in the past, but also connecting to the present.

Download or read book The Birsay Bay Project written by Christopher D. Morris and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2021-06-23 with total page 1229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Brough of Birsay was the power-center of the Viking earldom of Orkney and is one of Historic Environment Scotland’s key monuments and visitor attractions on the islands. This publication is the culmination of 60 years of investigations that took place on the site between 1954 and 2014. This new volume incorporates comprehensive accounts of work undertaken by Dr Ralegh Radford and Mr Stewart Cruden between 1954 and 1964, excavations by the Viking and Early Settlement Research Project under the direction of the author on site between 1974 and 1981, a rescue excavation in 1993, a geophysical survey in 2007 and archival research up to 2014. Specialist artefactual and palaeobiological studies of metallurgical material, ogham inscriptions and a gilt-bronze mount of Insular origin are included, together with re-analysis of the radiocarbon dates from all sites in Birsay Bay, and a re-assessment of the architecture and dating of the church and related buildings on the Brough itself. The final two chapters put the Brough, as both a Pictish power-center and the hub of the Viking earldom, in the overall context of Birsay Bay and Viking and late Norse Orkney, and the wider world between the Pictish and late Norse/Medieval periods. As well as being the author’s third and final volume reporting on work for the Birsay Bay Project, this volume completes a trilogy of studies of the Brough itself, alongside Mrs Cecil Curle’s and Prof John Hunter’s earlier monographs.

Download or read book Viking Age Transformations written by Zanette T. Glørstad and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Viking Age was a period of profound change in Scandinavia. As kingdoms were established, Christianity became the encompassing ideological and cosmological framework and towns were formed. This book examines a central backdrop to these changes: the economic transformation of West Scandinavia. With a focus on the development of intensive and organized use of woodlands and alpine regions and domestic raw materials, together with the increasing standardization of products intended for long-distance trade, the volume sheds light on the emergence of a strong interconnectedness between remote rural areas and central markets. Viking-Age Transformations explores the connection between legal and economic practice, as the rural economy and monetary system developed in conjunction with nascent state power and the legal system. Thematically, the book is organized into sections addressing the nature and extent of trade in both marginal and centralized areas; production and the social, legal and economic aspects of exploiting natural resources and distributing products; and the various markets and sites of trade and consumption. A theoretically informed and empirically grounded collection that reveals the manner in which relationships of production and consumption transformed Scandinavian society with their influence on the legal and fiscal division of the landscape, this volume will appeal to scholars of archaeology, the history of trade and Viking studies.

Download or read book The Charisma of Distant Places written by Courtney Luckhardt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This cultural history of early medieval travel and religion reveals how movement affected society, demonstrating the connectedness of people and regions between 500 and 850 CE. In The Charisma of Distant Places, Courtney Luckhardt enriches our understanding of migration through her examination of religious movement. Vertical links to God and horizontal links to distant regions identified religious travelers – both men and women – as holy, connected to the human and the divine across physical and spiritual distances. Using textual sources, material culture, and place studies, this project is among the first to contextualize the geographic and temporal movement of early medieval people to reveal the diversity of religious travel, from the voluntary journeys of pilgrims to the forced travel of Christian slaves. Luckhardt offers new ways of understanding ideas about power, holiness, identity, and mobility during the transformation of the Roman world in the global Middle Ages. By focusing on the religious dimensions of early medieval people and the regions they visited, this book addresses probing questions, including how and why medieval people communicated and connected with one another across boundaries, both geographical and imaginative.

Download or read book Silver Butter Cloth written by Jane Kershaw and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Silver, Butter, Cloth discusses what constituted 'money' in the Viking Age, and how 'money' was used? It is widely accepted that silver constituted the main form of currency. Silver, Butter, Cloth examines how silver functioned as payment but also explores the monetary role of non-silver currencies in the Viking economy.

Download or read book Studies in the Medieval Atlantic written by B. Hudson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-06-04 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays offers fresh analysis of topics in the exciting area of Atlantic World studies. Challenging standard assumptions, the essays advance the argument that the Atlantic Ocean was a region that encompassed ethnic and political boundaries, in which a sub-community shaped by culture and commerce arose.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Merovingian World written by Bonnie Effros and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-01 with total page 1056 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Merovingian era is one of the best studied yet least well known periods of European history. From the fifth to the eighth centuries, the inhabitants of Gaul (what now comprises France, southern Belgium, Luxembourg, Rhineland Germany, and part of modern Switzerland), a mix of Gallo-Roman inhabitants and Germanic arrivals under the political control of the Merovingian dynasty, sought to preserve, use, and reimagine the political, cultural, and religious power of ancient Rome while simultaneously forging the beginnings of what would become medieval European culture. The forty-six essays included in this volume highlight why the Merovingian era is at the heart of historical debates about what happened to Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. The essays demonstrate that the inhabitants of the Merovingian kingdoms in these centuries created a culture that was the product of these traditions and achieved a balance between the world they inherited and the imaginative solutions they bequeathed to Europe. The Handbook highlights new perspectives and scientific approaches that shape our changing view of this extraordinary era by showing that Merovingian Gaul was situated at the crossroads of Europe, connecting the Mediterranean and the British Isles with the Byzantine empire, and it benefited from the global reach of the late Roman Empire. It tells the story of the Merovingian world through archaeology, bio-archaeology, architecture, hagiographic literature, history, liturgy, visionary literature and eschatology, patristics, numismatics, and material culture.

Download or read book The Vikings in Islay written by Alan Macniven and published by Birlinn Ltd. This book was released on 2015-11-23 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Hebridean island of Islay is well-known for its whisky, its wildlife and its association with the MacDonald Lords of the Isles. There would seem to be little reason to dwell on its fate at the hands of marauding Northmen during the Viking Age. Despite a pivotal location on the 'sea road' from Norway to Ireland, there are no convincing records of the Vikings ever having been there. In recent years, historians have been keen to marginalise the island's Viking experience, choosing instead to focus on the enduring stability of native Celtic culture, and tracing the island's modern Gaelic traditions back in an unbroken chain to the dawn of the Christian era. However, the foundations of this presumption are flawed. With no written accounts to go by, the real story of Islay's Viking Age has to be read from another type of source material - the silent witness of the names of local places. The Vikings in Islay presents a systematic review of around 240 of the island's farm and nature names. The conclusions drawn turn traditional assumptions on their head. The romance of Islay's names, it seems, masks a harrowing tale of invasion, apartheid and ethnic cleansing.

Download or read book A Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides written by Niall Sharples and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2019-12-19 with total page 1056 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The settlement at Bornais in the Western Isles of Scotland is one of the largest rural settlements known from the Norse period in Britain. It spans the period from the fifth to the fifteenth century AD when the Atlantic seaboard was subject to drastic changes. The islands were systematically ravaged by Viking raiders and then colonised by Norse settlers. In the following centuries the islanders were central to the emergence of the Kingdom of Man and the Isles, played a crucial role in the development of the Lordship of the Isles and were finally assimilated into the Kingdom of Scotland. This volume explores the stratigraphic sequence uncovered by the excavation of Bornais mounds 2 and 2A. The excavation of mound 2 revealed a sequence of high status buildings that span the Norse occupation of the settlement. One of these houses, constructed at the end of the eleventh century AD, was a well preserved bow-walled longhouse and the careful excavation and detailed recording of the floor layers has revealed a wealth of finds that provides invaluable insight into the activities taking place in this building. The final house in this sequence is very different in form and use, and clearly indicates the increasing Scottish influence on the region at the beginning of the thirteenth century. The excavation of mound 2A provides an insight into the less prestigious areas of the settlement and contributes a significant amount of evidence on the settlement economy. The area was initially cultivated before it became a settlement local and throughout its life a focus on agricultural activities, such as grain drying and processing, appears to have been important. In the thirteenth century the mound was occupied by a craftsman who produced composite combs, gaming pieces and simple tools. The evidence presented in this volume makes a major contribution to the understanding of Norse Scotland and the colonisation of the North Atlantic in a period of dramatic transformations.

Download or read book Viking Law and Order written by Sanmark Alexandra Sanmark and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-14 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until very recently Viking and Norse assembly sites were essentially unknown, apart from a few select sites, such as Thingvellir in Iceland. The Vikings are well-known for their violence and pillage, but they also had a well-organised system for political decision-making, legal cases and conflict resolution. Using archaeological evidence, written sources and place-names, this book provides a comprehensive analysis of their legal system and assembly sites, showing that this formed an integral part of Norse culture and identity, to the extent that the assembly institution was brought to all Norse settlements.Sites are analysed through surveys and case studies across Scandinavia, Scotland and the North Atlantic region. The author moves the view of assembly sites away from a functional one to an understanding of the symbolic meaning of these highly ritualised sites, and shows how they were constructed to signify power through monuments and natural features. This original and stimulating study is set not only in the context of the Viking and Norse periods, but also in the wider continental histories of place, assembly and the rhetoric of power.

Download or read book The Vikings in Poland written by Leszek Gardeła and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-09-26 with total page 451 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pioneering work offers a meticulous exploration of Scandinavian presence in Viking Age Poland. Unveiling the complexities and controversies of past research and delving into the nuances of reciprocal interactions between Western Slavic and Scandinavian populations as revealed through archaeology and medieval texts, the book casts genuinely new light on a previously overlooked part of the Viking world. In setting the stage for these investigations, the monograph traces the evolution of Viking and Old Norse studies in Poland. It covers the romanticisation of Norse culture and literature, the dark days of the Second World War when archaeology was strongly driven by violent ideologies, and the profound changes that occurred in academia after the fall of communism and Poland’s accession to the European Union. At the core of this book are thorough investigations into cross-cultural interactions along the shores of the southern Baltic as well as in the interior of Poland. Using first-hand analyses of archaeological evidence from bustling ports of trade, settlement sites, silver hoards, and burial grounds, it is argued that the relationship between the local Western Slavic population and the Scandinavian migrants was highly complex but overall very symmetrical. Crucial notions such as the construction of identity in diasporic communities, ritual behaviour, and the symbolic content of Viking Age material culture are also discussed at length, offering new insights into Scandinavian and Slavic minds. Enriched with high-quality illustrations, photographs, as well as artistic reconstructions, this book fills many blank spaces in the field of Viking studies and is intended both for professional audiences and general readers interested in the intricacies of our shared past.

Download or read book The Vikings written by Neil Price and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-12 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vikings provides a concise but comprehensive introduction to the complex world of the early medieval Scandinavians. In the space of less than 300 years, from the mid-eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries CE, people from what are now Norway, Sweden, and Denmark left their homelands in unprecedented numbers to travel across the Eurasian world. Over the last half-century, archaeology and its related disciplines have radically altered our understanding of this period. The Vikings explores why we now perceive them as a cosmopolitan mix of traders and warriors, craftsworkers and poets, explorers, and settlers. It details how, over the course of the Viking Age, their small-scale rural, tribal societies gradually became urbanised monarchies firmly emplaced on the stage of literate, Christian Europe. In the process, they transformed the cultures of the North, created the modern Nordic nation-states, and left a far-flung diaspora with legacies that still resonate today. Written by leading experts in the period and exploring the society, economy, identity and world-views of the early medieval Scandinavian peoples, and their unique religious beliefs that are still of enduring interest a millennium later, this book presents students with an unrivalled guide through this widely studied and fascinating subject, revealing the fundamental impacts of the Vikings in shaping the later course of European history.

Download or read book The Norse Sorceress written by Leszek Garde?a and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2023-08-24 with total page 1062 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Old Norse literature abounds with descriptions of magic acts that allow ritual specialists of various kinds to manipulate the world around them, see into the future or the distant past, change weather conditions, influence the outcomes of battles, and more. While magic practitioners are known under myriad terms, the most iconic of them is the völva. As the central figure of the famous mythological poem Völuspá (The Prophecy of the Völva), the völva commands both respect and fear. In non-mythological texts similar women are portrayed as crucial albeit somewhat peculiar members of society. Always veiled in mystery, the völur and their kind have captured the academic and popular imagination for centuries. Bringing together scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds, this volume aims to provide new insights into the reality of magic and its agents in the Viking world, beyond the pages of medieval texts. It explores new trajectories for the study of past mentalities, beliefs, and rituals as well as the tools employed in these practices and the individuals who wielded them. In doing so, the volume engages with several topical issues of Viking Age research, including the complex entanglements of mind and materiality, the cultural attitudes to animals and the natural world, and the cultural constructions of gender and sexuality. By addressing these complex themes, it offers a nuanced image of the völva and related magic workers in their cultural context. The volume is intended for a broad, diverse, and international audience, including experts in the field of Viking and Old Norse studies but also various non-professional history enthusiasts. The Norse Sorceress: Mind and Materiality in the Viking World is a key output of the project Tanken bag Tingene (Thoughts behind Things) conducted at the National Museum of Denmark from 2020 to 2023 and funded by the Krogager Foundation.

Download or read book The Economy of a Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides written by Niall Sharples and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-12-31 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the economic evidence for the settlement at Bornais on South Uist. It reports in detail on the large assemblages of material found during the excavations at mounds 2 and 2A. There is important evidence for craft activity, such as bone and antler working and this includes the only comb making workshop from a rural settlement in Britain. A large proportion of the copper alloy, bone and antler assemblages comprise pieces of personal adornment and provide important information on the dress and thereby social relations within the settlement occupation. There is a large assemblage of iron tools and fittings, which provides important information on the activities taking place at the settlement. The information derived from the artefact assemblages is complemented by that provided by the ecofactual material. Large amounts of animal, fish and bird bones plus carbonised plant remains provide detailed information on agricultural practices, and the processing, preparation and consumption of foodstuffs. It is clear that the Norse inhabitants of the settlement had access to a much richer variety of resources than had been exploited before the Viking colonisation of the region. The settlement also had a significantly wider range of connections; material culture indicates contacts to the south with the Irish Sea ports and Bristol, and to the north with Shetland and the Viking homelands of Norway. The evidence produced by these excavations is exceptional and provides an unparalleled opportunity to explore medieval life in the Scandinavian kingdoms of Western Britain.

Download or read book Archaeology Economy and Society written by David A. Hinton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-18 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the contribution of archaeology to the study of the social, economic, religious, and other developments in England from the end of the Roman period at the start of the fifth century to the beginnings of the Renaissance at the end of the fifteenth century. The first edition of the book was published in 1990, and remains the only synthesis of the whole spectrum of medieval archaeology. This new edition is completely rewritten and extended, but uses the same chronological approach to investigate how society and economy evolved. It draws on a wide range of new data, derived from excavation, investigation of buildings, metal-detection, and scientific techniques. It examines the social customs, economic pressures, and environmental constraints within which people functioned; the technology available to them; and how they expressed themselves, for example in their houses, their burial customs, their costume, and their material possessions such as pottery. Their adaptation to new circumstances, whether caused by human factors such as the re-emergence of towns or changing taxation requirements, or by external ones such as volcanic activity or the Black Death, is explored throughout each chapter. The new edition of Archaeology, Economy, and Society will be essential reading for students and researchers of the archaeology of Medieval England.