Processing Death: Oval Brooches and Viking Graves in Britain, Ireland, and Iceland

360 Pages·2020·35.002 MB·English

by  Frida Espolin Norstein

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Processing Death
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Oval Brooches and Viking graves

in Britain, Ireland, and Iceland

F Frida Espolin Norstein
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Department of Historical Studies

PROCESSING DEATH

GOTARC Series B. Gothenburg Archaeological Theses 73
PROCESSING DEATH
OVAL BROOCHES AND VIKING GRAVES
IN BRITAIN, IRELAND, AND ICELAND
Frida Espolin Norstein
Doctoral thesis in archaeology
Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg
© Frida Espolin Norstein, 2020

GOTARC Series B. Gothenburg Archaeological Theses 73
ISSN 02 82 – 6860
ISBN 978-91-85245-79-6 (print)
ISBN 978-91-85245-80-2 (pdf)
Cover image: Frida Espolin Norstein. Detail of
oval brooch 3928 Þjóðminjasafn Íslands.
Typeset: Thomas Ekholm
Print: GU Interntryckeri, University of Gothenburg 2020
Distribution:
Department of Historical studies, University of Gothenburg,
Box 200, SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden
Abstract
Title: Processing death: Oval brooches and Viking graves in Britain, Ireland, and Iceland
Author: Frida Espolin Norstein
Language: English, with a Swedish summary
Supervisors: Henrik Janson, Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh, and Unn Pedersen
Department: Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg
Burials with oval brooches from the Viking Age settlements in Britain, Ireland, and Iceland have
frequently been interpreted as the graves of a specific and uniform group of people: (pagan) Scan-
dinavian women of relatively high status. This interpretation is partly a result of the way in which
the material has been treated, as static entities with more or less fixed meanings. How similar were
these graves, however, and can they be interpreted as belonging to a specific group of people? By
studying oval brooches and the graves in which these appear, this thesis examines how grave-goods
were used in life and in death, and how the funerary rites themselves were performed. It provides
an approach to grave-goods and graves that allows for the identification of variation in the material.
Seeing the material as processes rather than objects is accentuated in order to identify variation.
Through a theoretical framework emphasising ritualization, the focus is placed on ritual practice as
meaningful in and of itself, rather than as reflective of uniform ideas and concepts. The meaning of
funerary rites is also acknowledged as relational rather than essential; they must be understood in
relation to each other and to other ways of acting.
The thesis comprises two in-depth case studies. The first case study (chapter 2) demonstrates
that there are considerable differences in how oval brooches were used in both life and death and
argues that these variations in use affected the brooches’ abilities to evoke remembrances in funerary
rites. Instead of regarding their meaning as static, the chapter emphasises how their meaning was
relational and dependent on people’s previous experience with oval brooches, both as a category and
as individual objects. The second case study (chapter 3) examines how the funerary rites themselves
were performed. It demonstrates that there were norms governing the funerary practices, but also
that these practices in several cases varied or deviated from the norms. These variations and deviations
highlight funerary practices as responses to an actual and contemporary situation: the death of a
specific member of the community.
Whereas earlier studies have regarded graves with oval brooches as clearly defined and uniform,
this study demonstrates that there was considerable variation in how the actual practices were
performed. The graves with oval brooches were not uniform. Therefore, interpretations should not
be uniform either. The considerable differences in how artefacts were used and funerary practices
performed strongly suggest that there would have been distinctions in the intentions and effects of
the funerary rituals. Although burials with oval brooches could at times be regarded as informative
about the identities and social groups of the dead, this would have depended on factors other than
merely the presence or absence of specific objects. Overall, the thesis argues that studies of burials
with oval brooches – and Viking graves more generally – have been too concerned with the supposed
paganism and ‘Scandinavianess’ of the graves. Such research stands in danger of reducing all parts
of the Viking graves to questions about identities, and leave little room for the funerary rites as re-
sponses to the death of specific individuals. Instead, by decentralising the significance of grave-goods,
both as an ethnic and religious marker and also as the unifying feature of the rituals, the approach
presented here opens up for the possibility to explore communal as well as case-specific approaches
and attitudes towards death and dying in Viking Age Britain, Ireland, and Iceland.
Keywords: Oval brooches, Burials, Viking Age, Funerary rituals, Memory, Performance, Death,
England, Scotland, Ireland, Iceland

Acknowledgments
Finishing this thesis in the midst of a global pandemic has been rather strange. It
has certainly provided some much needed perspective, though perspective has not
necessarily been conducive to productivity. Despite finishing the writing process
in a somewhat isolated state, there are many people who have been essential to
this project. First and foremost, I am grateful to my veritable team of supervisors.
Henrik Janson and Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh have been incredibly helpful and
supportive. Thank you for never doubting that I would be able to do this, even in
those times when I felt like I had no idea what the thesis was about. Unn Pedersen
might have read this text more times than I have myself and certainly with a better
eye for the various inconsistencies in argument. Thank you for all the effort you
put in, this text is infinitely better because of it, and hopefully, there is at least
some difference between premises and results now. Håkan Karlsson was my main
supervisor for the first two years and instrumental in getting the project started.
Thank you for all your help, and also for giving me the freedom to continually
change the topic.
So many other people have also generously shared their time, expertise, and
resources. I would especially like to thank Adam Parsons for answering all my
questions about the production of oval brooches. I am also grateful to Fornlei-
fastofnun Íslands, and in particular Adolf Friðriksson, for letting me use their
library while I was in Reykjavík. Auður Magnúsdóttir helped me with Icelandic
translations, highly necessary as the word ‘penis’ occurred surprisingly often in the
Google Translate versions of eighteenth and nineteenth century excavation reports.
In order to complete this project, I have needed access to several to several mu-
seum collections, and I would like to thank the people who assisted me: Else-Britt
Filipsson at Göteborgs Stadsmuseum, Ármann Guðmundsson at Þjóðminjasafn
Íslands, Maeve Sikora and Margaret Lannin at the National Museum of Ireland,
and Martin Goldberg and Jim Wilson at the National Museums Scotland. The
visits to these museums were made possible with funding from Helge Ax:son
Johnsons Stiftelse, S.B.F Janssons Minnesfond, Svenska Fornminnesföreningen,
and Wilhelm och Martina Lundgrens Vetenskapsfond, for which I am very grate-
ful. In addition to my contacts at the different museums, there are several other
people who helped me procure permission to use illustrations. I would therefore
like to thank: Inga L. Baldvinsdóttir, Colleen Batey, Andrew Dunwell, Hannah
Leighton, Per Kristian Madsen, Adam Parsons, Kurt Risskov Sørensen, Charlotte
Whiting, and Margaret Wilson.
VII
Processing death
I am also very grateful to the many people who have commented on versions of
this text at various seminars throughout the years. I would particularly like to thank
Julie Lund for her valuable feedback on the text for my final seminar, and Sophie
Bergerbrant for her comments on the project for my mid seminar. I would also
like to thank Sophie for all her help the first couple of years and for always being
available to answer any question I had about Swedish archaeology. Thanks are also
due to Sari Naumann, Lewis Webb, and Irene Selsvold who very generously read
and gave feedback on different parts of this text, and also to Avigail Rotbain who
translated the summary into Swedish. My fantastic proof-reader Ricky LaBontee
deserves all the credit in the world for dealing with my never-ending sentences and
chaotic relationship with commas. All remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.
There are so many colleagues at the Department of Historical Studies who have
made the years of writing this thesis not just bearable, but also quite a lot of fun.
This includes all the PhD students, current and former, but there are a few who
deserve an extra mention. So, in no particular order, I would like to thank Irene
Selsvold for everything, but of course mainly for the birds, Aija Macāne for all our
travels, Mari Malmer for the puns, Lewis Webb for the polite e-mail tutorials, Sari
Naumann for the wine tasting courses, Paul Borenberg for sharing the madness,
Anna Locke for being the grown-up in the room, and Avigail Rotbain for explaining
the department, Sweden, and life in general.
To all my friends and family in Norway, England, and everywhere else, I am
grateful for the patience, understanding, and interest (real or otherwise). It has
been a long and weird journey, but at last, it is at an end.
Frida Espolin Norstein
Göteborg, 8 april, 2020
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