Crossing the Maelstrom: New Departures in Viking Archaeology

Abstract

This paper reviews the achievements and challenges of archaeological research on Viking Age northern Europe and explores potential avenues for future research. We identify the reemergence of comparative and cross-cultural perspectives along with a turn toward studying mobility and maritime expansion, fueled by the introduction of biomolecular and isotopic data. The study of identity has seen a shift from a focus on collective beliefs and ritual to issues of personal identity and presentation, with a corresponding shift in attention to individual burials and the “animated objects.” Network ontologies have brought new perspectives on the emergence of sea trade and urban nodes and to the significance of outfield production and resources. Field archaeology has seen an emphasis on elite manors, feasting halls, and monuments, as well as military sites and thing assembly places, using new data from remote sensing, geophysical surveys, geoarchaeology, and metal detectors. Concerns over current climate change have placed the study of environment as a key priority, in particular in the ecologically vulnerable North Atlantic settlements. Discussing future directions, we call for alignment between societal/economic and individual/cultural perspectives, and for more ethically grounded research. We point to diaspora theory and intersectionality as frameworks with the potential to integrate genomics, identity, and society, and to ecology as a framework for integrating landscape, mobility, and political power.

Flow of Resources in a Changing World

“…This specific approach to archaeological data has been referred to as The Third Science Revolution (Kristiansen 2014) and has, according to some scholars, been opposed to the post-processual approach in archaeology. The alleged revolution in archaeology has met critique (Chilton 2014;González-Ruibal 2014;Huvila 2014;Larsson 2014;Niklasson 2014), and concern has been raised that the increased focus on results from natural sciences will shadow the more humanistic part of archaeological research to the extent that scientific results will be considered more factual and reliant and thus will come to determine the direction for archaeology and its research paradigm (Lund and Sindbaek 2021;Ribeiro 2019;Sørensen 2017). However, a true interdisciplinary collaboration between natural sciences and traditional archaeological methodology can be beneficial (cf.…”

Kerbing Relations through Time: Reuse, Connectivity and Folded Time in the Viking Age

“…These notions also contain the idea that power was constructed through a deception performed by the social elite toward the lower social layers. This interpretational framework includes the use of the past as a means of manipulation by the elite (Lund & Sindbaek 2021; for a similar critique of the use of the power concepts within archaeology in general, see Crellin & Harris 2021). These interpretations of the use of the past as a power strategy thus built upon the premise that a scheming elite managed to construct links to past monuments in order to remain in their social position.…”

“…Thereby, indirectly studies of the use of the past also emphasize the closeness of archaeology and heritage studies. The use of the past in the past was a distinct part of the post-processual and interpretive archaeology wave, but as a field of study it was more or less abandoned in the following decades (Lund & Sindbæk 2021). However, several perspectives introduced in other parts of archaeology may strengthen the need for renewed attention to the use of the past in past societies.…”

“…In some instances they may even be prime or relevant movers of actions, as will be explored in the following, where I will argue that kerbstones were used on a small group of Viking Age mounds due to the kerbs’ capacity to mediate ‘a sense of the past’. As the past was actively used through various types of material culture in Viking Age Scandinavia, from small objects to whole landscapes of monument (Lund & Arwill-Nordbladh 2016; Lund & Sindbæk 2021 with references), an attempt will be made in this analysis to explore how and why this was a desirable capacity for these kerbstones at this specific site during the Viking Age.

Figure 1.(Left) the Old Maid card from the game of Old Maid; (right) the Scandinavian and northern German version, the game of the cat ‘Black Peter’.

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“…A story of an event can live on almost unchanged through approximately 200 years and on occasion up to 500 years (Hedeager 2011; Schmidt 1990; Vansina 1985, 82–91; see also Andrén 1997, for a critical discussion of the relationship between oral history and archaeology). Burial rituals of the Viking Age indicated that aspects of the Old Norse mythology were acted out as part of the mortuary rituals in a manner which has been interpreted as a funerary drama, underlining the performative aspect of the burials (Andrén 1992; Price 2008; 2010; 2014; for a full discussion of the changes in studies of Viking Age graves, see Lund & Sindbæk 2021, with references). Aspects of Late Iron Age myths have been documented to live on through a similarly long time.…”