Vikings Across Boundaries: Viking-Age Transformations – Volume II

This volume explores the changes that occurred during the Viking Age, as Scandinavian societies fell in line with the larger forces that dominated the Insular world and Continental Europe, absorbing the powerful symbiosis of Christianity and monarchy, adapting to the idea of royal lineage and supremacy, and developing a buzzing urbanism coupled with large-scale trade networks. Presenting research on the grand context of the Viking Age alongside localised studies, it contributes to the furthering of collaborations between local and ‘outsider’ research on the Viking Age. Through a diversity of approaches on the Viking homelands and the wider world of the Vikings, it offers studies of a range of phenomena, including urban and rural settlements; continuity in the use of places as well as new types of places specific to the Viking Age; the social significance of change; the construction and maintenance of social identity both within the ‘homelands’ and across large territories; ethnicity; and ideas of identity and the creation and recreation of identity both at home and abroad. As such, it will appeal to historians and archaeologists with interests in Viking-Age studies, as well as scholars of Scandinavian studies.

Table of Contents:
1. Introducing Vikings Across Boundaries Marianne Moen Part I: Exchange and Travel: Connections Across the Viking World 2. Feasting, Friendship and Alliances: The Socio-political Use of Insular Vessels in Viking-Age Norway Aina Margrethe Heen-Pettersen 3. Viking-Age Landing Places: A Time for Reconsideration? Jens Ulriksen 4. Scandinavians on the Southern Baltic Coast Hauke Jöns and Anna Kowalska 5. Western Finland in the Viking World Ingrid Gustin and Anna Wessman 6. Pre-Viking-Age Ship Burials at Salme in Estonia: The First Eastern Vikings or Indications of a Shared Culture Milieu? Marika Mägi Part II: Communicating Identities: At Home and Abroad 7. Women as Bearers of Cultural Tradition in Viking-Age England Jane Kershaw 8. Urban Way of Life as Identity? A Case Study from Ribe’s Emporium Sarah Croix 9. Displaying and (re)Negotiating Identities: Migration and Funerary Rites in Viking-Age Northern Scotland Frida Espolin Norstein 10. 'Vikings' and the Formation of the New Identities and New Centres of Power in the Upper Volga Nikolaj Makarov 11. Sámi Vikings? Hege Skalleberg Gjerde and Jostein Bergstøl 12. Warrior Identities in Viking-Age Scandinavia Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson Part III: Dynamic Social Expressions in Life and Death 13. Socially Significant Viking-Age Housing Frands Herschend 14. The Martial Function of the Central Places in Viking-Age Scandinavia Torun Zachrisson 15. The Dead of the Viking-Age Towns in Scandinavia Sarah Croix 16. A Geography of Slavery: Ceramic Networks and Communities in the Lake Mälaren Valley, Sweden c. AD 950 to 1150 Mats Roslund 17. Warfare and Recruitment in Iron Age Central Norway Ingrid Ystgaard