Download or read book Nordic Elites in Transformation c 1050 1250 Volume III written by Wojtek Jezierski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the practical and symbolic resources of legitimacy which the elites of medieval Scandinavia employed to establish, justify, and reproduce their social and political standing between the end of the Viking Age and the rise of kingdoms in the thirteenth century. Geographically the chapters cover the Scandinavian realms and Free State Iceland. Thematically the authors cover a wide palette of cultural practices and historical sources: hagiography, historiography, spaces and palaces, literature, and international connections, which rulers, magnates or ecclesiastics used to compete for status and to reserve haloing glory for themselves. The volume is divided in three sections. The first looks at the sacral, legal, and acclamatory means through which privilege was conferred onto kings and ruling families. Section Two explores the spaces such as aristocratic halls, palaces, churches in which the social elevation of elites took place. Section Three explores the traditional and novel means of domestic distinction and international cultural capital which different orders of elites – knights, powerful clerics, ruling families etc. – wrought to assure their dominance and set themselves apart vis-à-vis their peers and subjects. A concluding chapter discusses how the use of symbolic capital in the North compared to wider European contexts.
Download or read book Nordic Elites in Transformation c 1050 1250 Volume II written by Kim Esmark and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-01-24 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nordic Elites in Transformation, c. 1050-1250, Volume II explores the structures and workings of social networks within the elites of medieval Scandinavia to reveal the intricate relationship between power and status. Section one of this volume categorizes basic types of personal bonds, both vertical and horizontal, while section two charts patterns of local, regional and transnational elite networks from wide-scope, longitudinal perspectives. Finally, the third section turns to case-studies of networks in action, analyzing strategies and transactions implied by uses of social resources in specific micro-political settings. A concluding chapter discusses how social power in the North compared to wider European experiences. A wide range of sources and methodologies is applied to reveal how networks were established, maintained, and put to use – and how they transformed in processes of centralizing power and formalizing hierarchies. The engagement with and analysis of intriguing primary source material has produced a key teaching tool for instructors and essential reading for students interested in the workings of medieval Scandinavia, elite class structures, and Social and Political History more generally.
Download or read book Nordic Elites in Transformation c 1050 1250 Volume I written by Bjørn Poulsen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-03-27 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, first in a series of three, examines the social elites in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Iceland, and which social, political, and cultural resources went into their creation. The elite controlled enormous economic resources and exercised power over people. Power over agrarian production was essential to the elites during this period, although mobile capital was becoming increasingly important. The book focuses on the material resources of the elites, through questions such as: Which types of resources were at play? How did the elites acquire and exchange resources?
Download or read book The Queens and Royal Women of Sweden c 970 1330 written by Caroline Wilhelmsson and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-10-11 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first major piece of scholarship to provide an overview of the lives of Sweden’s earliest documented queens, together with some of their most influential female relatives, who lived between 970 and 1330. Spanning a period over 350 years, approximately 40 biographies are included from the semi-legendary Viking queen Sigrid Storråda to Duchess Ingeborg of Norway, the first female de jure and de facto ruler of Sweden. Rather than merely summarising previous research, this study offers new perspectives on the evolution of queenship in medieval Sweden. It tracks the different religious, political, and socio-economic trends which defined and shaped the office of queen and identifies three main phases of development which led to royal women’s economic and political emancipation by the mid-fourteenth century. The study’s main strength lies in its close reading and novel interpretation of the surviving primary sources, enabling readers to understand the importance of these women and wider themes such as state formation, Christianisation, and international politics. The Queens and Royal Women of Sweden, c. 970–1330 is of interest to scholars of queenship and gender studies, medieval historians in general, those with an interest in ecclesiastical history, and anyone studying medieval Scandinavia.
Download or read book Making Livonia written by Anu Mänd and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-06-09 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The region called Livonia (corresponding to modern Estonia and Latvia) emerged out of the rapid transformation caused by the conquest, Christianisation and colonisation on the north-east shore of the Baltic Sea in the late twelfth and the early thirteenth centuries. These radical changes have received increasing scholarly notice over the last few decades. However, less attention has been devoted to the interplay between the new and the old structures and actors in a longer perspective. This volume aims to study these interplays and explores the history of Livonia by concentrating on various actors and networks from the late twelfth to the seventeenth century. But, on a deeper level, the goal is more ambitious: to investigate the foundation of an increasingly complex and heterogeneous society on the medieval and early modern Baltic frontier – ‘the making of Livonia’.
Download or read book Tracing the Jerusalem Code written by Kristin B. Aavitsland and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2021-04-19 with total page 805 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the aim to write the history of Christianity in Scandinavia with Jerusalem as a lens, this book investigates the image – or rather the imagination – of Jerusalem in the religious, political, and artistic cultures of Scandinavia through most of the second millennium. Jerusalem is conceived as a code to Christian cultures in Scandinavia. The first volume is dealing with the different notions of Jerusalem in the Middle Ages. Tracing the Jerusalem Code in three volumes Volume 1: The Holy City Christian Cultures in Medieval Scandinavia (ca. 1100–1536) Volume 2: The Chosen People Christian Cultures in Early Modern Scandinavia (1536–ca. 1750) Volume 3: The Promised Land Christian Cultures in Modern Scandinavia (ca. 1750–ca. 1920)
Download or read book Quantitative Approaches to Medieval Swedish Law written by Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a novel framework for studying historical legalisation using quantitative methods, with 10 fully-preserved laws from medieval Sweden, written between c. 1225 and 1350, serving as a case study. By applying a systematic classification scheme to each legal provision, it is possible to investigate the major differences and similarities in structure and content between the 10 laws. This, in turn, allows for the re-assessment of many long-standing problems in Swedish and European medieval legal history that have been challenging to address with traditional methods based on text analyses. Over the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, major changes in the proportion of legal provisions devoted to different fields of law, and to prescribed consequences, are found. The book shows how the proportions of civil law and public law expanded at the expense of criminal law. Furthermore, a clear transition from casuistic to more abstract law provisions can also be witnessed.
Download or read book Scandinavia in the Age of Vikings written by Jon Vidar Sigurdsson and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Scandinavia in the Age of Vikings, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson returns to the Viking homeland, Scandinavia, highlighting such key aspects of Viking life as power and politics, social and kinship networks, gifts and feasting, religious beliefs, women's roles, social classes, and the Viking economy, which included farming, iron mining and metalworking, and trade. Drawing of the latest archeological research and on literary sources, namely the sagas, Sigurðsson depicts a complex and surprisingly peaceful society that belies the popular image of Norsemen as bloodthirsty barbarians. Instead, Vikings often acted out power struggles symbolically, with local chieftains competing with each other through displays of wealth in the form of great feasts and gifts, rather than arms. At home, conspicuous consumption was a Viking leader's most important virtue; the brutality associated with them was largely wreaked abroad. Sigurðsson's engaging history of the Vikings at home begins by highlighting political developments in the region, detailing how Danish kings assumed ascendency over the region and the ways in which Viking friendship reinforced regional peace. Scandinavia in the Age of Vikings then discusses the importance of religion, first pagan and (beginning around 1000 A.D.) Christianity; the central role that women played in politics and war; and how the enormous wealth brought back to Scandinavia affected the social fabric—shedding new light on Viking society.
Download or read book The House of Godwin written by Michael John Key and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2022-03-15 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The most powerful dynasty behind the throne of Anglo-Saxon England, shedding new light on events such as the Battle of Hastings.
Download or read book Urban Elite Culture written by Luisa Radohs and published by Böhlau Köln. This book was released on 2023-10-09 with total page 693 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Medieval towns were vibrant and complex social environments where diverse groups and lifestyles encountered and influenced each other. Surprisingly, in the study of urban archaeology, the aristocracy, one of the leading and most influential groups in medieval society, has so far been neglected. This book puts "aristocracy in towns" on the archaeological research agenda. The interdisciplinary and comparative study explores the significance and representation of aristocrats and their interaction with civic elites in sea-trading towns of the southwestern Baltic from the 12th to the 14th centuries. Essentially, however, the analysis of urban elite culture leads to discussion of a much more fundamental issue: the informative value of material culture for the investigation of social conditions. The book provides new archaeological approaches to the study of social differentiation in towns, and contributes to a deeper understanding of the complexity of urban social structures.
Download or read book Monetisation and Commercialisation in the Baltic Sea 1050 1450 written by Dariusz Adamczyk and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-05-03 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Monetisation and Commercialisation in the Baltic Sea, 1050–1450 explores the varied uses of silver and gold in the Baltic Sea zone during the medieval period. Ten original contributions examine coins and currencies, trade, economy, and power, taking care to avoid an out-of-date approach to economic history which assumes a progression from ‘primitive’ forms to ‘developed’ structures. Combining a variety of methodological approaches, and drawing on written sources, archaeological and numismatic evidence, and anthropological perspectives, the book considers the various ways in which silver and gold were used as monetary currency, fiscal instruments of power, and gifts in the High and Late Medieval societies of the Baltic Sea. This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval European history, as well as those interested in economic history, and the history of trade and commerce.
Download or read book Baltic Crusades and Societal Innovation in Medieval Livonia 1200 1350 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2022-07-25 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The societies of the lands around the Baltic Sea underwent remarkable changes in the thirteenth century. This book examines aspects of these religious, economical, societal, and institutional innovations, such as the adaption of the Christianity, emergence of urban life, and the development of economic resources.
Download or read book The Borgarthing Law and the Eidsivathing Law written by Lisa Collinson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Borgarthing Law and the Eidsivathing Law is dedicated to two closely linked medieval laws which were intended to cover adjacent legal provinces in eastern Norway, around and beyond the modern capital, Oslo. The core of this book consists of new translations of the two laws, based on the recent editions and translations into modern Norwegian by Eyvind Fjeld Halvorsen and Magnus Rindal. Individual rules cover subjects such as Church rites, prohibitions, property, and payments, and shed light on medieval ideas relating to matters as diverse as disability, sexual relations, witchcraft, and forbidden foods. The volume contains a general introduction by Torgeir Landro and Bertil Nilsson, in addition to a translator’s introduction by Lisa Collinson, summarizing in English some of the information on manuscripts and relevant linguistic studies outlined by Halvorsen and Rindal. The translated texts in English are also supplemented by footnotes, supplying key readings from the original, in some cases with significant variants from relevant manuscripts. With a commentary on the individual chapters after each translation, drawing on recent scholarship on medieval law, Church history, and other relevant historical fields, this book is an ideal resource for students and scholars of medieval Norwegian legal history.
Download or read book Friendship Love and Brotherhood in Medieval Northern Europe c 1000 1200 written by Lars Hermanson and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-05-15 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Lars Hermanson discusses how religious beliefs and norms steered attitudes to friendship and love, and how these ways of thinking affected social identity and political behaviour. With examples taken from eleventh- and twelfth-century northern Europe, the author investigates why friendship was praised both by brotherhoods of aristocratic warriors and by brethren within monastery walls. Social and political functions rested on personal connections rather than a strong central state in the High Middle Ages. This meant that friendship was an important pragmatic instrument for establishing social order and achieving success in the game of politics.
Download or read book A Companion to Saxo Grammaticus written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2024-06-13 with total page 725 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ever since the publication of Saxo Grammaticus’ Gesta Danorum at the beginning of the thirteenth century, scholars and laymen have grappled with the complex and marvellous chronicle. As much specialized scholarship has been published in Danish, this companion breaks new ground by giving a comprehensive and up-to-date tour of the work for a global audience. Attention is given to the unity of Saxo’s massive chronicle, whether he is dealing with a legendary pagan past or events from his own time. Saxo’s world and views are explored in ways that shed new light on all of northern Europe. Contributors are Bjørn Bandlien, Karsten Friis-Jensen, Michael H. Gelting, Thomas K. Heebøll-Holm, Lars Hermanson, Lars Kjær, Torben Kjersgaard Nielsen, Annette Lassen, Anders Leegaard Knudsen, Lars Boje Mortensen, Mia Münster-Swendsen, Erik Niblaeus, Roland Scheel, Karen Skovgaard-Petersen, Kurt Villads Jensen, and Helle Vogt.
Download or read book Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe 1000 1200 written by Christian Raffensperger and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-08-24 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rulers and Rulership in the Arc of Medieval Europe challenges the dominant paradigm of what rulership is and who rulers are by decentering the narrative and providing a broad swath of examples from throughout medieval Europe. Within that territory, the prevalent idea of monarchy and kingship is overturned in favor of a broad definition of rulership. This book will demonstrate to the reader that the way in which medieval Europe has been constructed in both the popular and scholarly imaginations is incorrect. Instead of a king we have multiple rulers, male and female, ruling concurrently. Instead of an independent church or a church striving for supremacy under the Gregorian Reform, we have a pope and ecclesiastical leaders making deals with secular rulers and an in-depth interconnection between the two. Finally, instead of a strong centralizing polity growing into statehood we see weak rulers working hand in glove with weak subordinates to make the polity as a whole function. Medievalists, Byzantinists, and Slavists typically operate in isolation from one another. They do not read each other’s books, or engage with each other’s work. This book requires engagement from all of them to point out that the medieval Europe that they work in is one and the same and demands collaboration to best understand it.
Download or read book International law in Europe 700 1200 written by Jenny Benham and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2022-02-15 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Was there international law in the Middle Ages? Using treaties as its main source, this book examines the extent to which such a system of rules was known and followed in the period 700 to 1200. It considers how consistently international legal rules were obeyed, whether there was a reliance on justification of action and whether the system had the capacity to resolve disputed questions of fact and law. The book further sheds light on issues such as compliance, enforcement, deterrence, authority and jurisdiction, challenging traditional ideas over their role and function in the history of international law. International law in Europe, 700–1200 will appeal to students and scholars of medieval Europe, international law and its history, as well as those with a more general interest in warfare, diplomacy and international relations.
