Architecture, Society, and Ritual in Viking Age Scandinavia

Abstract

Most of us take doors for granted. We pass through doorways tens of times each day, without reflection. The door is, however, a powerful feature of human mentality and life-practice. It controls access, provides a sense of security and privacy, and marks the boundary between differentiated spaces. The doorway is also the architectural element allowing passage from one space to the next. Crossing the threshold means abandoning one space and entering another, a bodily practice recognized both in ritual and language as a transition between social roles or situations. Doors and thresholds are thus closely linked with rites de passage, the word 'liminality' itself stemming from Latin limen, 'threshold'. This does not imply that each and every crossing of a threshold constitutes a liminal ritual, but rather that passing through a doorway is an embodied, everyday experience prompting numerous social and metaphorical implications. A volume on thresholds in fiction asks why the threshold exercises such a riveting grasp on human imagination; why it is such a resonant space (Mukherji 2011:xvii). The characterization of the threshold as a resonant space precisely captures its affect. The threshold is evocative, a locus of heightened anticipation.The seeds for this book were sown nearly a decade ago when, during data collection for my master's thesis, I noticed a strange concurrence between two written sources related to the Viking Age. One text, ibn Fadla ¯n's Risãla, was

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