The Vikings

126 Pages·2019·7.426 MB·English

by  Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide, Kevin J. Edwards

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The Vikings
Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide
and Kevin J. Edwards
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
© 2019, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds
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Contents
List of Illustrations ............................... vii
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .xi
Chapter 1. The Vikings ............................ 1
Chapter 2. Viking Age Scandinavia.................. 13
Chapter 3. The Viking Diaspora .................... 47
Chapter 4. The Viking Phenomenon................ 103
Further Reading ................................ 111

List of Illustrations
Figures
Figure 1. A geographical overview of the Vikings........ 3
Figure 2. Two main variations of the
Viking Age runic alphabet. ................ 14
Figure 3. Pit house under excavation
from Bjørkum in Lærdal................... 17
Figure 4. A reconstructed Norse longhouse
at Borg................................ 18
Figure 5. Aerial photograph of Trelleborg............. 20
Figure 6. A map of Scandinavia with
Viking Age towns. ....................... 21
Figure 7. View of the grave field beside the
Viking emporium, Birka, and one
of the chamber graves at the grave
field with the so-called warrior woman. ...... 23
Figure 8. The Oseberg ship........................ 27
Figure 9. Object interpreted as a seið staff........... 30
viii  LIST OF ILLUSTrATIONS
Figure 10. Typical female dress accessories............ 32
Figure 11. Penannular pin, Hatteberg................. 32
Figure 12. A cosmological model of
the Old Norse world...................... 33
Figure 13. A ritual site, Tissø, Denmark. .............. 36
Figure 14. A schematic overview of Viking
artistic styles........................... 38
Figure 15. Map of eastern Europe with
waterways to Constantinople............... 48
Figure 16. Part of grave field with barrows
by the river in Staraya Ladoga.............. 50
Figure 17. Reconstruction of an urban house
from Dublin. ........................... 58
Figure 18. The British Isles—map with key names....... 62
Figure 19. Typical Viking silver hoard objects........... 64
Figure 20. Map of Scotland including the Isles. ......... 68
Figure 21. A Norse longhouse at Belmont, Shetland. .... 71
Figure 22. North Atlantic voyage times. .............. 74
Figure 23. Map of Iceland and the Faroe Islands......... 76
Figure 24. Palaeoenvironmental and archaeological
data associated with Á Sondum, Sandoy,
Faroe Islands. . ......................... 77
Figure 25. Peat section near Hrísbrú, Iceland........... 81
LIST OF ILLUSTrATIONS  ix
Figure 26. A reconstructed Norse house
at Eirikstaðir, Iceland. .................... 82
Figure 27. Greenland. ............................ 84
Figure 28. Landscape and ruin group from
Hvalsey Fjord, Greenland.................. 86
Figure 29. Map of Newfoundland and adjacent
areas of eastern Canada. ................. 88
Figure 30. L’Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland......... 88
Figure 31. The richly decorated Borgund
stave church, Sogn, Norway............... 108
Figure 32. Roadside tourist sign,
Newfoundland, Canada. ................. 109
Text Boxes
Text Box 1. Ottar’s voyage ........................ 10
-
Text Box 2. Ibn Fad . la n’s description of the Rus......... 91
Text Box 3. Dicuil’s observations on perhaps
Iceland and the Faroe Islands............. 94
x  LIST OF ILLUSTrATIONS
The authors wish to thank the following who have kindly given per-
mission to reproduce illustrations or have assisted in their production:
Figures 1, 6, 12, 15, 18, 20, 22, 23, 27, and 29 were produced by Jamie
Bowie of the School of Geosciences, University of Aberdeen.
Figure 2 is after R. I. Page in Viking og Hvidekrist, ed. Else Roesdahl
(Copenhagen: Nordisk Ministerråd, 1992), 162. Courtesy Nordisk
Ministerråd.
Figures 3, 16, 26, and 31: photographs by S. W. Nordeide.
Figure 4: photograph by Jörg Hempel, and Figure 5, both from Wiki-
media Commons.
Figure 7: photographs: top—Harald Faith-Ell, Riksantikvarieämbetet;
bottom—one of the chambered graves included what is often
discussed as the ‘warrior woman’ (Bj 581), Evald Hansen based
on the original drawing by Hjalmar Stolpe, “Ett och annat på
Björkö,” Ny illustrerad tidning 25 (1889): 4–16.
Figures 8 and 10: Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo; Fig-
ures 9 and 11: photograph by the University Museum, University
of Bergen; Figure 19, photograph: British Museum. All licensed
by https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/.
Figure 13: drawing by Lars Jørgensen, in The Viking World, ed. Ste-
fan Brink and Neil Price (London: Routledge, 2012). Courtesy S.
Brink.
Figure 14: after Bergljot Solberg, Jernalderen i Norge (2003), p. 233.
Courtesy Cappelen Akademisk Forlag.
Figure 17: drawing by Michael Hefferman, National Museum of Ireland.
Figures 21, 23, 28, 30, and 32: photographs by K. J. Edwards.
Figure 24: from Church et al. in Quaternary Science Reviews 77
(2013): 228–32.
Figure 25: photograph by David Zori.
Text Box 1: The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark, kindly
permitted us to print the excerpts.
Text Box 2: Printed with permission from New York University Press.
Text Box 3: Permission to print provided by The School of Celtic Stud-
ies of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.