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The Rich and the Brave: Burials, Weapons, and Warriors
The common association of highly furnished weapon burials containing a male skeleton with warriors is still a highly debated topic and one that has a profound impact on how we view Vikings. Much scholarly ink has been spilled discussing theories surrounding motivations behind grave good deposition and the relation between weapon burials and the deceased in Scandinavia, Britain, and with varying degrees of success. Choosing which theory to apply to a situation is complicated by a variety of factors not least of which is that historical, geographical and chronological context changes how one interprets a ritual depending on the time and place it was practised. Furthermore, there is usually no knowledge of who selected the objects to be deposited and thus no concrete idea why they did so. According to Heinrich Härke, textual sources are the best means with which to attempt to determine motivations but are rarely present for the space and time under review (Härke 2014, 53–54). While weapons are highly-visible in archaeological contexts, their use in burials only represents a small segment of the population within a social context that had many different high-status burial practices (Harrison 2015, 314). Secondly, poorly furnished burials are understudied with no definitive comments made about them (Harrison 2015, 314–15; 2008, 166–90). In addition, the relationship between perceived and actual status and the fact that no artefact has a fixed value or meaning but rather its meaning is imposed both complicate the issue further (Harrison 2015, 304). The perceived importance of an individual is heavily influenced by local burial tradition. For example, at Kilmainham/Islandbridge a large number of weapon burials with high-quality swords were discovered which reflects the importance of Dublin between the ninth and tenth centuries while the number of graves containing these high-quality swords may reflect the role competitive display played within Dublin society (Harrison 2015, 304; Harrison and Ó Floinn 2014, 75–93). However, the situation in the former Danelaw is very much the opposite with a general paucity of weapon burials east of the Pennines (Harrison 2015, 304; Graham-Campbell 1980, 379; Richards 2000, 142). Harrison argues that this may be a reflection of the higher value placed on weapons in the Danelaw than in Dublin or elsewhere along the western seaboard (Harrison 2015, 304). One last point to consider when examining burials and grave goods is that the choice of grave goods can reflect how the deceased or those burying them wished their identity to be portrayed can equally affect weapon burials. Moreover, grave goods can underline the hybridity of an individual’s identity. For example, the shield bosses of Kilmainham/Islandbridge combine elements of both Irish small bosses and Anglo-Saxon conical bosses to create a fusion shield boss type only found near Dublin reflecting the distinct local identity of its elites (Harrison 2015, 309; Harrison and Ó Floinn 2014, 122–25; Bøe 1940, 33, 38). So how can weapons in burials be used to potentially identify whether or not individuals were involved in military activities? In simple terms, there is no definitive way of correlating the two but by studying the graves within their historical and geographical context, it may be possible to make a case. One strong indicator that an individual may have been involved in military activities are any signs of trauma on the skeletons, such as those found at Repton, alongside the inclusion of weapons as grave-goods. References: Bøe, Johs. 1940. Viking Antiquities in Great Britain and Ireland, Part 3: Norse Antiquities in Ireland. Edited by Haakon Shetelig. Oslo: H. Aschehoug. Graham-Campbell, James. 1980. ‘The Scandinavian Viking-Age Burials of England: Some Problems of Interpretation’. In Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries, edited by Phillip Rahtz, Lorna Watts, and Tania Dickinson, 379–82. British Archaeological Reports British Series 82. Oxford: Archaeopress. Härke, Heinrich. 2014. ‘Grave Goods in Early Medieval Burials: Messages and Meanings’. Morality 19 (1): 41–60. Harrison, Stephen. 2008. ‘Furnished Insular Scandinavian Burial: Artefacts & Landscape in the Early Viking Age’. Dublin: Trinity College Dublin. Harrison, Stephen. 2015. ‘“Warrior Graves”? The Weapon Burial Rite in Viking Age Britain and Ireland’. In Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World, edited by James Barrett and Sarah Gibbon, 299–319. Society for Medieval Archaeology. Leeds: Maney Publishing. Harrison, Stephen, and Raghnall Ó Floinn. 2014. Viking Graves and Grave-Goods in Ireland. Dublin: National Museum of Ireland. Richards, Julian. 2000. Viking Age England. Stroud: Tempus.
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Winter Camps in the East Midlands: Commerce and Industry
Viking winter camps were more than just bases for the Great Army to live in during the winter or centres from which armed Viking bands could conduct military activities. From their inception winter camps established and maintained economic functions whether as centres for trade or industry. Both Repton and Torksey were placed in a location that allowed them to take advantage of the River Trent as a means of transportation of people and goods. Repton’s evidence for trading activities is not as abundant at Torksey but finds of lead weights as well as Anglo-Saxon and Frankish coins point towards commercial activities. Evidence of industrial activities at the site includes several ship nails, include slag, woodworking tools, the tip of a Viking axe head, an area for metal working, and another area with signs of butchering of animals (Jarman 2018a, 33–34; 2018b, 20–21; Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle 2001, 72). The nails and, perhaps, the woodworking tools could be taken as evidence for ship repair. It is also to keep in mind that the nature of extended occupation, the likelihood of camp followers, especially women, as well as the need for animals and supplies further evidences non-military activities and a larger occupation area than the fortified enclosure (Raffield 2016, 15, 21). Archaeological excavations of Torksey have uncovered quite a few pieces of bullion, including hacksilver and jewellery (Raffield 2016, 313, 319; Hadley and Richards 2016, 27; Blackburn, Williams, and Graham-Campbell 2007, 71–72; Williams 2007, 183; McLeod 2014, 122–23). The relatively high concentration of gold at Torksey suggests that it was being used in transactions and not just as a status symbol which may explain the presence of hack-gold, ingots, and gold plated copper coins (Hadley and Richards 2016, 47; Blackburn, Williams, and Graham-Campbell 2007, 75–77; Blackburn 2011, 233–34). A large abundance of lead weights were also found, which are associated with merchants, with 15 resembling Scandinavian/Islamic weights from Sweden (Hadley and Richards 2016, 48; McLeod 2014, 159). Over 350 coins were also found on the site including English silver pennies, stycas from Northumbria, an imitation Frankish solidi of Louis the Pious, and 124 Arab dirhams (Hadley and Richards 2016, 43; Blackburn 2011, 225). The Arabic coins further prove just how connected the site would have been to the wider Scandinavian trade network even during the army’s years of campaigning. A variety of overwintering activities would have occurred at Torksey. Alongside iron clench nails, a hoard of iron woodworking nails have been discovered making it likely that Torksey would have been ideal for the repair of ships (Hadley and Richards 2016, 53–54). Additionally, worn and damaged tools were located alongside fragments of iron vessels seemingly ready to be reworked (Hadley and Richards 2016, 53). Furthermore, the discovery of spindle whorls, needles, punches and awls suggest textile-working, a job generally undertaken by women and thus providing potential evidence for a female presence at the camp (Hadley and Richards 2016, 54). These finds also suggest that overwintering activities such as the repair of sails, tents and clothing took place. Along with trading goods plundered from their campaigns, the Great Army also employed craftsmen to manufacture pottery as a tradable commodity. Evidence of pottery production at Torksey was first ascertained by excavations south of the modern village in 1949 (Perry 2016, 74). The spread of so-called ‘Torksey ware’ was vast and it even became the major pottery type at York to the point where archaeologists first assumed that it was locally made (Perry 2016, 76). Biddle, Martin, and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle. ‘Repton and the “Great Heathen Army”, 873–4’. In Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress, edited by James Graham-Campbell, Richard Hall, Judith Jesch, and David Parsons, 45–96. (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2001). Graham-Campbell, James, and Gareth Williams. Silver economy in the Viking Age. (Walnut Creek, California: Left Coast Press, 2007). Hadley, Dawn M., and Julian D. Richards. "The winter camp of the Viking Great Army, AD 872–3, Torksey, Lincolnshire." The Antiquaries Journal 96 (2016): 23-67. Jarman, C. "Resolving Repton: has archaeology found the great Viking camp." British Archaeology (2018): 28-35. Jarman, Catrine L., Martin Biddle, Tom Higham, and Christopher Bronk Ramsey. "The Viking Great Army in England: new dates from the Repton charnel." antiquity 92, no. 361 (2018): 183-199. McLeod, Shane. The Beginning of Scandinavian Settlement in England The Viking'Great Army'and Early Settlers, c. 865-900. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Perry, Gareth J. "Pottery production in Anglo-Scandinavian Torksey (Lincolnshire): reconstructing and contextualising the chaîne opératoire." Medieval Archaeology 60, no. 1 (2016): 72-114. Raffield, Ben. "Bands of brothers: A re‐appraisal of the Viking Great Army and its implications for the Scandinavian colonization of England." Early Medieval Europe 24, no. 3 (2016): 308-337.
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Winter Camps in the East Midlands: Location and Layout
Our knowledge of the Viking Great Army's movments during its campaigns in England is provided by entries in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a compilation of annalistic entries that describe events in a particular year. Despite some drawbacks to using the chronicle as a source, it does provide a roadmap for where the Vikings stopped for the winter. In fact, these were termed wintersetl by the compilers of the chronicle otherwise known as winter camps. Two of the winter camps mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are under current investigation, Repton and Torksey. Both winter camps are located along a river which would have provided the Viking inhabitants with vital transportation links required in most raiding or trading activities. It would also seem likely that the waterways were selected in order to provide a natural defensive element to the settlement, usually alongside another natural feature such as a raised promontory or a marsh, or an easy means of escape if the settlement was overwhelmed. In addition, the winter camps seem to be placed in relation to recently captured territory which makes sense for force out on campaign. Viking invaders took Repton and immediately constructed a D-shaped wall using the pre-existing church as a gatehouse. The remnants of this wall were discovered in the 1970s and 1980s in the form of a V-shaped ditch, calculated to have been about 8m wide and 4m deep, cutting through the earlier Anglo-Saxon monastic burials (Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle 2001, 57, 59; Jarman 2018a, 29). The 1979 excavations revealed four successive ditches; the V-shaped ditch with a flat narrow bottom was the earliest and was backfilled shortly after being dug (Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle 2001, 58). The ditches have been dated to between the Group 2 Middle Anglo-Saxon and Group 3 Post-Viking burials, which fits with late ninth-century ‘Great Army’ occupation (Biddle and Kjølbye-Biddle 2001, 59). Unlike Repton, in Torksey Vikings only utilized natural defences, such as the river Trent and the wet marshy ground, which turned the settlement into an island (Hadley and Richards 2016, 32; Raffield 2016, 313). Despite not having any walls or ditches, it is likely that the ‘Great Army’ would have found the water and marsh defence sufficient in light of their recent peace with Mercia (Raffield 2016, 323). In terms of buildings there is a general lack of evidence for permanent structures at both Torksey and Repton. It is unclear whether this is due to poor preservation, need for more archaeological investigation, or that they truly did not exist. The use of Repton, Torksey, and the other wintersetl as army bases during campaigning probably explains the lack of permanent dwellings and workshops from their foundation but does not explain why none were built throughout the rest of their occupation when the army left. The lack of urban planning and systems of streets and plots likely has to do with either a lack of refinement in terms of the methodology and ideas behind settlement foundation which requires more experience over time, the motivations and needs surrounding the foundation of a settlement, or even a combination of both. As mentioned above, the wintersetl in England were created, primarily, to house a military force on campaign, which moved on very quickly after the settlement was established. Therefore, it would not make sense to spend time and resources developing a systematic layout nor to begin the time-consuming process of building permanent structures. References: Biddle, Martin, and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle. 2001. ‘Repton and the “Great Heathen Army”, 873–4’. In Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress, edited by James Graham-Campbell, Richard Hall, Judith Jesch, and David Parsons, 45–96. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Hadley, Dawn, and Julian Richards. 2016. ‘The Viking Winter Camp and Anglo-Scandinavian Town at Torksey, Lincolnshire – the Landscape Context’. The Antiquaries Journal, no. 96: 23–67. Raffield, Ben. 2016. ‘Bands of Brothers: A Re-Appraisal of the Viking Great Army and Its Implications for the Scandinavian Colonization of England’. Early Medieval Europe 24 (3): 308–37.
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Brooches, Pendants and Pins: Scandinavian Dress Accessories in England
Nowadays it is common to see people wearing various accoutrements such as earrings, necklaces, pendants, or rings. The Viking Age was no different and Scandinavian fashion, both female and male, commonly featured the use of dress accessories which served a practical purpose of fastening clothing but also as a way to display wealth and status. Below is a brief discussion on the use and place of Scandinavian brooches, pendants and pins in England. Brooches were a typical part of female dress. Scandinavian brooches came in a variety of sizes and shapes which included disc, trefoil, lozenge, equal-armed, and oval shapes. The different brooch types served a variety of functions in Scandinavian female dress with oval brooches typically being used as shoulder clasps for apron-type dresses and the rest being used to secure an outer garment to an inner shift. Anglo-Saxon brooches do not match this diversity of form with large disc brooches being typical of ninth-century dress styles with smaller ones becoming more popular in the later ninth and tenth centuries. However, since disc brooches were used by both Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian women they are distinguished by their morphology. Scandinavian brooches were typically domed with a hollow back while Anglo-Saxon brooches were usually flat. Moreover, Anglo-Saxon brooches were worn singly without accompanying accessories. With some exceptions, pendants were generally worn by women as an accessory to Scandinavian dress. Pendants were a popular dress accessory in Norway and Sweden and sometimes were worn with beads between a pair of oval brooches. However, in England, pendants did not have the same popularity among Anglo-Saxon inhabitants. An unique style of pendant the existence of which was likely influenced by crucifixes worn by Christian individuals was the Thor’s Hammer pendant. These may have been worn to show devotion to the god Thor, or to secure the god’s protection, although there is little evidence to support this interpretation. Pendants like this have been found made of lead, copper alloy, silver and gold, showing that many different strata of society could have worn them. Pins were another form of popular dress accessory, though tending to be more practical , and mostly used for fastening cloaks. Once such pin, the ringed pin, was a form of dress fastener which developed as a result of contact between artisans in the Celtic West and sub-Roman Britain. The type became very popular in Ireland, being ultimately adopted by the Hiberno-Norse during the Viking period. In form it comprised a pin with a ring inserted through a looped, perforated or pierced head. Another style of pin has a solid head, round or cuboid, with ring-and-dot pattern ornamentation. These were common in Ireland and the western British Isles, and spread further afield under Viking influence. Kershaw, Jane F. Viking Identities: Scandinavian jewellery in England. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 20-25
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Everyday Writing in Runes in Lincoln
Lincoln, in the first half of the tenth century: a time of intense political, social, and economic upheaval, with the English kings of Wessex battling to regain control of one of the last strongholds of Scandinavian power in eastern England. The late ninth century had seen the ‘Great Army’ of Vikings, which had arrived in England in 865, switch its energies from raiding to permanent settlement, the start of a process of colonisation that left a lasting imprint on the street-names of Lincoln and the place-names in the surrounding countryside. As the English gradually regained control of parts of the southern Danelaw in the early tenth century, drawing ever closer to Lincoln, the town’s Viking leaders looked to the North and the support of the powerful Norse dynasty established in York by Olaf Guthfrithson, who also ruled Dublin in the west. In the lower city, close to Brayford Pool and the River Witham, lie the halls and houses of the craftsmen and merchants who had followed in the wake of the first Scandinavian settlers, turning the town into an important and prosperous trading centre. In one of these houses, we might imagine a man, sitting next to the warm hearth, eating. Hungrily he strips all the flesh from the cattle ribs and, when finished, picks up his knife and starts cutting into the smooth, flat surface of one of the ribs, listening idly to the story that his brother is telling to the children, occasionally staring into the flames of the fire. As he listens, drinking ale from his leather cup, he fills the surface of the rib with the runic letters that had been taught to him by one of the men he’d worked alongside in Norway Less well known than the rune-inscribed comb-case also found in the city, this fragmentary inscription on a cattle rib – found in disturbed deposits in St Benedict’s Square, Lincoln – doesn’t contain a clear message that can be understood today. The rib is about 10 cm long and 3 cm wide at its maximum extent. It is fragmentary, missing its top half before the first word divider in the inscription, as well as the end of rib and possibly, therefore, the end of the inscription. The runes are inscribed from left to right along the length of the rib and say: (b) - - - - - l x h i t i r x s t i n x As can be seen from the photograph above, the tops of the first few runes are missing because the bone is broken there. The brackets around the first rune indicate that the rune is incomplete, but enough survives for it to be identifiable. The hyphens indicate runes of which traces survive and which can be counted, but which can no longer be identified. The two complete words, hitir and stin, could both be read in a number of different ways, as some runes represented more than one sound in the spoken language (the i-rune could also be used for e and ei, for example, while the b-rune might be used for words beginning with both b and p in Old Norse). hitir might therefore be read as the Old Norse verb heittir ‘heats’ or as heitir ‘is called’, and stin might be the noun steinn ‘stone’ or the personal name Steinn, but there are other possibilities, especially given our lack of knowledge of the kind of everyday language that might have been in use in Lincoln at the time. In casual inscriptions like this, names are often the most commonly found element, so perhaps the most likely interpretation is ‘[someone] is called Steinn-’, even if we don’t necessarily understand why this might have been carved onto a cow’s rib. However, we only have to think of the kinds of random doodles that we might make with a pen when, say, bored or only partly concentrating (while on the phone or watching TV, for example) to realise that not all written texts necessarily have to be in complete sentences or indeed make sense! Carved on a small piece of bone that would most likely have just been lying around after a meal, the rune carver may simply have been amusing themselves or practising or even absentt-mindedly carving words that were being spoken at the time. This inscription is nevertheless valuable to historians, because it reminds us about the kind of everyday uses of language and writing which – more often than not – simply disappear from the historical record. Much of what survives from the past has been deliberately preserved and so represents something that was important or unusual or particularly valued, for whatever reason. Before archaeological excavations started to uncover hundreds of casual inscriptions like this across Scandinavia, it was thought that the Vikings mainly used runes for carving into stones and monuments to commemorate their dead, but now we know that this was not the case. Then, as now, often everyday texts and objects are discarded because they are so very common, and therefore considered unimportant or not worthy of preservation – think, for example, of post-it notes, shopping lists, or even school-work. This rune-inscribed rib from Lincoln therefore provides us with valuable evidence of the everyday use of runes in this part of the Viking world and, like place-names, is another reminder of the distinctive culture that Scandinavians brought with them to the East Midlands.
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The Danelaw: a place or an idea?
The Danelaw: a place or an idea? This question was posed by Melvyn Bragg in a recent edition of In Our Time on Radio 4. The correct answer is ‘a bit of both’. But it’s a very good question and one worth a bit more exploration. As an area, the Danelaw is often thought to have been established in the treaty made at Wedmore between King Alfred and the Viking leader Guthrum in the 880s. While only recorded in later manuscripts, it is generally accepted as a true record of what was just one of several treaties between English rulers and Viking leaders at the time. The treaty is rather specific in being between ‘King Alfred and King Guthrum and the council of all the English nation and all the people which are in East Anglia’. It defines a boundary which goes ‘up the Thames, and then up the Lea, and along the Lea to its source, then straight to Bedford, then up the Ouse to Watling Street’. In this way the treaty delineates the area within which the provisions of the treaty apply but does not define who is in charge there. The provisions themselves are quite basic and are to do with the relationship between Danes and English, in cases of manslaughter, the purchase of men, horses or oxen, and recruitment to either army. In all the treaty is a practical, and limited, agreement which makes no assumptions about who occupies or holds the defined territory, which is in any case quite vague about how far north it might extend. There is also no suggestion in the treaty of any difference between ‘Danish’ and ‘English’ law, in fact the treaty takes pains to assess the compensation for the manslaughter of an English or a Danish man at the same amount. The idea that there are two legal jurisdictions, in which that of the Danes, or of Danish-held territory, is distinct from its English equivalent, does not become clear in documents until the early eleventh century. In these, lagu ‘law’, an Old Norse word introduced into Old English by Archbishop Wulfstan, collocates with the ethnonym Dena to express the idea of the ‘law of the Danes’, but the term is not yet a compound as in ‘Danelaw’. For example, in Æthelred’s law code (VI) of 1008, Wulfstan distinguishes between on Ængla lage 7 on Dena lage be þam þe heora lagu sy. This might be translated as ‘in the jurisdiction of the English and in the jurisdiction of the Danes according to what their legal practice might be’ and there are several similar uses of the term around this time. What this shows is that there is an idea of a Scandinavian (or Anglo-Scandinavian, as argued by Lesley Abrams) legal province within the English kingdom. This province is presumably territorially defined, though this is not actually indicated in the legal codes themselves. An earlier code of Æthelred (III, from around 1002, known as the Wantage code), does not use the Danelaw term but does mention the Five Boroughs and makes extensive use of Scandinavian legal language in legislating for that region. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, in a poetic entry for 942, makes a distinction between the Danes of the Five Boroughs (Derby, Leicester, Lincoln, Nottingham and Stamford) and the Norsemen who ruled north of them and from whose subjugation the Danes were freed by King Edmund. All this suggests that the Scandinavian legal province recognised in the law codes of the time reached only as far as the Humber, but that the legal distinctions between Danes and English were still important (and recognised) in the eleventh century, some 50-100 years after English rulers had conquered the Scandinavian-ruled areas during the tenth century. So, ‘Danelaw’ is not a term for the area defined in the treaty of Alfred and Guthrum. Also, as a legal concept it appears only to apply to an area south of the Humber, more specifically perhaps just the region of the Five Boroughs. However neither of these is how the term is most commonly used today. Despite its origin in the law codes of the early eleventh century, today the term is most frequently used in a more general way, without necessarily any reference to law, jurisdiction or even a well-defined area. Most commonly it is used to refer to that part of England which was, for want of a better word, ‘influenced’ by the activities of Scandinavians, whether they were the so-called ‘Great Heathen Army’ of the ninth century or peaceful settlers in the tenth. It is only after King Cnut became king of all England in the eleventh century that the distinction between ‘Danish’ and ‘English’ England becomes hard to sustain. The reign of Cnut and, briefly, his son Harthacnut brought new Scandinavian incomers to England, who often reached parts of England not otherwise thought of as falling within the ‘Danelaw’ and the overall picture is quite different. To use the term ‘Danelaw’ in this general sense is actually quite misleading. It implies that only Danes were involved in the Scandinavian impact on England, and that, whether idea or area, it is mostly about law and jurisdiction. But many scholars use the term in contexts where they are looking at the Scandinavians’ influence on settlement, culture both material and immaterial, and language, as well as their impact on church and society. Evidence for this influence and impact can be found in large parts of eastern and northern England, including regions far from the area described in the Treaty of Wedmore, or the Five Boroughs. Areas in the north-west, such as Cumbria, have plentiful evidence of Scandinavian influence in burials, metalwork, place-names, dialect, sculpture and runic inscriptions, yet there is almost no documentary evidence for how this Scandinavian influence came about. Is Cumbria part of the Danelaw? It was certainly part of the great Viking diaspora that affected much of England from the ninth to the eleventh (or even twelfth) century, yet the term ‘Danelaw’ does not seem entirely appropriate to describe that region in the tenth and eleventh centuries. Perhaps it is best to use the term ‘Scandinavian England’ (as in the title of an important collection of essays by F. T. Wainwright). Even better would be ‘Anglo-Scandinavian England’, since even the areas most heavily influenced by the Scandinavian incomers never completely lost their Anglo-Saxon inhabitants, material culture, customs or language. But although the term ‘Danelaw’ is inadequate, we should not completely forget it either. At the very least it reminds us that those supposedly lawless Vikings actually gave the English language its word for ‘law’, as still used today. References: Lesley Abrams, ‘Edward the Elder’s Danelaw’, in Edward the Elder 899-924, ed. N. J. Higham and D. H. Hill. London: Routledge, 2001, pp. 128-43. Lesley Abrams, ‘King Edgar and the men of the Danelaw’, in Edgar, King of the English 959-975, ed. Donald Scragg. Woodbridge: Boydell, 2008, pp. 171-91. Katherine Holman, ‘Defining the Danelaw’, in Vikings and the Danelaw, ed. James Graham-Campbell et al. Oxford: Oxbow, 2001, pp. 1-11. Sara M. Pons-Sanz, Norse-Derived Vocabulary in Late Old English Texts, Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2007, pp. 70-72. Simon Trafford, ‘The Alfred-Guthrum treaty’, in Cultures in Contact. Scandinavian settlement in England in the ninth and tenth centuries, ed. Dawn M. Hadley and Julian D. Richards. Turnhout: Brepols, 2000, pp. 43-64. F. T. Wainwright, Scandinavian England, London: Phillimore, 1975. Dorothy Whitelock, English Historical Documents I. c. 500-1042. London: Routledge, 1996 [2nd ed.]. Early English Laws http://www.earlyenglishlaws.ac.uk/
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The Culinary Habits of Viking Age England
Though today we are well aware that food can be a luxury, a treat, a lifestyle, even a touchstone for memory, archaeologists looking at past diets have often seen everyday food in largely nutritional terms (in contrast to the focus given to the food of ritual, feasting, and assembly). Our experience in the contemporary world, together with information from historical and ethnographic account, tells us that food is central to the production of identity, having symbolic qualities, and often acting as a kind of social glue. In contexts of social change - such as urbanisation, religious conversion, migration and culture contact - we might expect it to play a particularly important role. The Viking Age, then, looks like a particularly promising context for a study of such phenomena. How did cooking and eating work to bring together the household? What were its social qualities in contexts of feasting and exchange? Perhaps most interestingly of all, what was the role of cuisine in the context of diaspora? What might the stubbornness or mutability of ethnically derived habits of cooking and eating tell us about relationships between natives and newcomers, or between migrants and their homelands? Such questions have proven difficult to answer using traditional archaeological approaches. The study of animal bones can tell us which animals were being eaten, how they were husbanded, butchered, and provisioned, but generally fall short of revealing much about the fine detail of food preparation or consumption. Fruits, vegetables, grain, nuts, seeds and spices are recovered from archaeological sites where preservation conditions allow, but their relationship with animal products is unclear. The sequences excavated in medieval towns rarely provide us with the undisturbed 'culinary contexts' that would allow us to reconstruct an individual meal. These environmental data thus provide us with information that is fundamental to answering the kinds of questions we are interested in, but are insufficient in isolation. We need a more high-resolution, interdisciplinary approach, that draws not only on this information, but also on inference drawn from a range of documentary sources, and from new insights that might be delivered through natural scientific approaches. In particular, there is considerable potential to explore the relationship between food and the material culture used to store, prepare, and present it, and how these phenomena varied in time and space. This is the task of Melting Pot: Food and Identity in the Age of Vikings. This AHRC-funded project has applied leading-edge scientific techniques to characterise the mode of use of different forms of pottery (patterns of sooting and burning can tell us about styles of cooking), and to analyse the contents of the pots (microscopic examination of burnt-on food crusts can reveal the presence of plant remains, fish scales and the like, while chemical analysis of the fabric of a pot can help us to identify the presence of now invisible fats, oils and waxes). Together, we are able to build something like a biography of a pot: what use was it intended for, how did it sit in the hearth, what was cooked in it, and how? We have undertaken the largest scientific survey of Viking-Age pottery to date; by analysing hundreds of identifiable sherds from well-dated contexts across England, we will be able to paint a picture of how the people of Viking-Age England were preparing and eating their food. How different were cooking habits in the commercial centres of towns like York from what we see on their peripheries? How does this urban picture compare with the situation in the rural hinterlands? To what degree is there a common urban diet in the towns of the Danelaw? How much does this differ from what we see in Saxon London? Is there evidence of change over time, and can these be related to patterns of migration, local politics, long-range economics, or urban development? How does the situation in England differ from what we see from contemporary sites across Scandinavia? Our lab work is complete, and we are now starting to find answers to these questions. A key element of the project is communicating its findings and significance with a range of audiences, and with this in mind, we have put together two exhibitions. The first, undertaken in collaboration with the York Archaeological Trust and A-level students from York College, is based on experimental cooking and biomolecular analyses undertaken by the students, opened at DIG, York on 1st February. The aim is to showcase the potential of science to answer archaeological questions. Later this month will see the launch of a parallel exhibit at The Collection, Lincoln, which will introduce the public to material from excavations in the city that has rarely been displayed, and discuss what these artefacts and ecofacts can tell us about Viking-Age cuisine. We have talks and workshops planned at both venues, starting with sessions at York's Viking Festival. In addition, we have put together a range of teaching resources for Key Stage 2 History, which we will soon be releasing. For more details on these, and all other aspects of the project, please visit our website: www.meltingpot.site, or follow us on Twitter: @foodAD1000.
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Unlocking the Meaning of Keys in the Viking Age
Most keys that have been found are from graves, and were deliberately buried with individuals. The fact that only some people were buried with keys shows that keys had both practical and symbolic functions in the Viking Age. The practical function of keys was to lock locks, as is to be expected. They secured items against access or theft, and their presence indicates that the owner of the key actually had valuables worth locking up. Viking Age keys, padlocks and locks have all been found by archaeologists. The locks and padlocks probably belonged to chests and were used to secure a person’s most important belongings. Chests were used as storage at home and as travelling luggage by sailors going abroad. The chest provided a secure place to keep personal belongings, and was also used as a seat for the rowers. Keys could be decorated, like one from Gjerdal in Norway, which had been decorated with stylized animal heads and geometric ornamentation that dates it to the Viking Age. Keys are found as a part of burial paraphernalia in Scandinavia from the Migration Period through the Viking Age, and were usually made of iron or copper alloy. Although often viewed as primarily grave goods, in reality they have also been found on settlement sites throughout Scandinavia, and as single finds. Received wisdom states that they are most commonly found in women’s graves, and occasionally in men’s graves. However, they are not a common find overall. Only a small number of keys have been found compared to the large number of excavations undertaken. Most importantly, this applies to graves, where Berg (2015, 130) notes that of 6000-8000 graves excavated in south-east Norway only 117 contained keys. She also shows that keys are not a predominantly female accessory, as is usually stated. The Museum of Cultural History in Oslo notes that approximately 75 copper alloy keys and 170 iron keys of Viking Age date have been found in south-east Norway alone. The copper alloy keys are all different, showing that they were not mass-produced, but rather cast individually. Moulds for keys and smiths’ tools have been found during the excavations at Kaupang in Norway, providing the key to understanding how keys were made. Keys had symbolic value which has most often been taken to indicate the social function of the bearer. As items that provided access and closed it off, they indicated that the bearer had these powers too. This symbolic value has been most associated with women, largely because medieval law codes such as Borgartingslova (the Borgarthing Law) which dates from the twelfth or thirteenth century, identify keys 'as a signifier for the key-bearer, sometimes described as a woman or housewife' (Berg. 2015, 127). In the Eddic poem Þrymskviða Thor must dress up as Freyja. Part of his disguise is a set of keys hanging from his belt leading to the suggestion that Freyja may have been particularly associated with keys as a symbol of her domain. This image of powerful women controlling access to the house has led to an enduring image of the Viking Age matriarch wearing keys on her belt or hanging from a brooch to show that she was the gatekeeper in the household. However, this raises the question of what keys are doing in men’s graves, as in the case of Grave 541 at Repton, Derbyshire. Norse laws from the medieval period demonstrate that keys symbolised control over the household, a female area of power, and reinforce this idea. Given that keys symbolized power, ownership and control of access, it is likely that keys in men’s graves are indicators of their status as owners too. They may not have carried them in life, but keys as grave goods symbolise their power after death. Beyond simple interpretations of keys indicating ownership, Pantmann (2014, 52) suggests that keys had a cultic role in pagan Scandinavia. The concept of the ‘kloge kone’ or ‘wise woman’ may have been symbolised by keys, because keys have a universal symbolic value indicating knowledge, power, and insight. In this role, they are associated with Freyja and thus childbirth, the afterlife (Freyja receives half of those slain in battle into her hall Sessrúmnir), and female leadership, a role that is closely associated with the role of matriarch of a household. Berg (2015, 127) notes that the connection between keys and childbirth is that the keys symbolically unlock the womb or loins to ensure a successful birth. Keys are also associated with Christianity. The triquetra found on some keys may be associated with the Holy Trinity, but may also be a pre-Christian symbol of fertility and motherhood (Berg, 128). The focus on keys as symbols of women’s power is not supported by the archaeological evidence, so it is likely that keys are not symbolic of the housewife alone. However, it is noteworthy that decorated bronze keys are almost exclusively linked to women while iron keys are not (Aannestad. 2004, 80). The fact that keys were buried with certain people is a clear indicator of symbolic significance; the dead are buried with items that are important to them or to those that buried them. Those items gain significance by being chosen to be included as grave goods. Thus keys had symbolic significance, and it may have been related to power and access. This is supported by their rarity as finds, indicating that they belonged to the few, not to the many, and it is likely that those few were the ones who had wealth or treasures that needed locking away. Keys are symbols of wealth and access to power, and perhaps symbolise the ability to affect one’s environment through ritual action (Berg. 2015, 132), but their use as symbols is nuanced and may represent different things at different points in the Viking Age, and in different places within the Viking diaspora. As a result, unlocking the meaning of keys in the Viking Age is not simple. Further Reading: Aannestad, Hanne Lovise. 2004. “En nøkkel til kunnskap – Om kvinneroller i vikingtid”. Viking. Berg, H. L. 2015. “'Truth' and reproduction of knowledge. Critical thoughts on the interpretation and understanding of Iron-Age Keys”. In Marianne Hem Eriksen, Unn Pedersen, Bernt Rundberget, Irmelin Axelsen and Heidi Lund Berg (eds). Viking Worlds: Things, spaces and movement. Oxbow Books: Oxford. Pantmann, Pernille. 2014. “Nøglekvinderne” in Kvinner i vikingtid. Ed. by Nancy Coleman and Nanna Løkka. Scandinavian Academic Press: Oslo. Pp 39-56.
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A Silk Headscarf from Lincoln
In the archaeology stores of The Collection in Lincoln is a very rare Viking silk headscarf found in the early 1970s. There was an excavation in advance of a development at Saltergate in Lincoln that uncovered a previously unknown Roman gateway as well as a Roman house, part of an Anglo-Saxon graveyard and in a pit, a silk headscarf about 20 centimetres wide and 60 centimetres long. The pit was found under a council office that was being demolished and the brick-lined cellar created the perfect conditions for this fragile item to survive. The pit has been dated to the tenth century, so roughly when Lincoln was an important Viking trading settlement. The name Saltergate means the street of the salt-makers or traders, gata being the Old Norse word for street. The earliest reference to Saltergate is in the thirteenth century, although the street later became Corporation Lane, and the name Saltergate was only reintroduced in 1831. Occasionally silk headscarves have survived on sites in Sweden and the Netherlands, but most have been found in the Viking towns of the British Isles (four from Dublin, three from York and this one from Lincoln). The secret of making silk was jealously guarded in the medieval period and the Byzantine Empire was the only place outside China where it was made. The weave from this scarf matches Byzantine silk suggesting it came from the eastern Mediterranean and amazingly it is so similar to one found in Coppergate in York that we think the two examples came from the same larger piece of material. Of course archaeologists from York think it was cut up there while I have a certain Lincolnshire bias, so think Lincoln imported the material and then smaller scarves were made from it and some re-exported north to Jorvik! The material is very expensive and exotic, so whoever wore it must have paid a good price for it. How the headscarf was worn is a matter of debate. Most reconstructions of such scarves have the material laid across the head with the two long seams at the back sewn together so it covers the rear of the head (and hair). There is a reconstruction on display in the Posterngate that has the silk headscarf merely as a strip of material worn sideways across the head with ties attached to the bottom front corners to keep it on the head. The original is in conservation and too fragile to put on display. How Viking women wore their hair is a matter of debate. The only written evidence is from much later Old Norse sagas that give a few clues which are hard to interpret. Representations of Viking women in stone carvings or metal figures are also tricky to understand. The figures in such carvings are often small so it is not easy to know what is a scarf, a cap or a braid of hair. We also don't know why women wore such scarves; perhaps women were expected to cover their hair for religious or cultural reasons in Viking towns. Perhaps the scarf was there as a fashion statement, to show off the wearer's wealth or maybe just a way of keeping her hair neat. The reconstruction can be seen as part of the Posterngate tours to see the Roman gateway. They only occur a few times a year, in 2019 it will probably be 1st March, 1st June and 1st of November (but it is worth checking The Collection's website prior to making a trip in case those dates or prices change) and costs approximately £2 per head to visit.
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Viking Board Games
Jarl Rögnvaldr Kali Kolsson of Orkney composed a poem describing his nine skills in the first half of the twelfth century. These were all the skills that a member of the aristocracy in medieval Orkney and Scandinavia would have been expected to know, to be considered cultured and socially adept. Among these skills, he included board games (Old Norse tafl). It is possible that he meant chess, because chess was becoming fashionable in the courts of Europe at this time. However, Rögnvaldr could have been referring to any number of board games: Old Norse tafl refers to board games in general, rather than to one specific one. It is related to the Latin word tabula and the modern English word 'table'. In its most general sense it refers to a flat surface, hence the board of a board game. The Old Norse word tafl is occasionally compounded with other words to specify more closely which game is meant; for example, Old Norse skáktafl means chess. Rögnvaldr lived shortly after the end of the Viking Age, but it is highly likely that the Vikings considered knowledge of these games to be an important part of a man’s social skills, as is suggested by episodes where they are depicted playing board games in the sagas, and the cultural context in which board games were played as recreation remained substantially the same from the Viking Age into the medieval period. Hnefatafl (often called 'King’s Table' in English) is the board game most commonly associated with the Viking Age by modern people. It can be traced back to games played in Imperial Rome from at least the first century AD under the name Ludus latrunculorum (the game of the little thieves). These games were made popular throughout Europe under the Roman Empire. They were only replaced when chess arrived in Europe from India. Hnefatafl is an asymmetric game where the defender has to try to move their king off the board while the attacker has to capture the king. Moves are made orthogonally in the same manner as a rook in chess. There are many variants of this game, using different sized grids but all have an odd number of rows so that the king may be placed in the central square. There are no detailed descriptions in Scandinavian sources that permit reconstruction of the rules. Instead the rules used now have been developed from the rules for Tablut which Carl Linnaeus wrote down in Latin in 1732. Linnaeus’ description of the game was based on his observations of how it was played among the Sámi. It is fortunate that he chose to visit the Sámi when he did, because Tablut was becoming less popular at that time; the younger people preferred card games to board games. There are gaps in the rules that Linnaeus recorded, and modern rules have been adapted to fill those gaps, and to balance the game. This has resulted in a number of variants of hnefatafl in use today. Hnefatafl is attested in written sources that are supported by archaeological evidence. Ragnars saga loðbrókar mentions that Sigurðr and Hvítserkr played it, and in Morkinskinna, one of the histories of the Norwegian kings, Sigurðr Jerusalem-farer, king of Norway from 1103-1130, boasts how much stronger he is than other men, but his brother Eysteinn immediately puts him down by saying “Yes, but I’m better at hnefatafl than you!” Gull-Þóris saga mentions that two women played hnefatafl, so it was obviously socially acceptable for women to play too. Of course, while hnefatafl was a pastime, it did not always end well. Þorbjörn Hook was playing halatafl, a variant of hnefatafl that used pieces with pegs in the base that could then be inserted into holes in the board, thus making it a perfect travel game. His stepmother thought this was not a good use of his time, so she grabbed one of the pieces and threw it in his face, gouging his eye out in the process so that it hung down on his cheek. There is ample physical evidence for these games. Game boards of a type that Rögnvaldr would have known have been found in Viking Age boat burials like the Gokstad ship (c. 900) where a double-sided board was found. On one side it has a grid that may have been for hnefatafl while on the other is a grid for Nine Men’s Morris, another ancient game that was probably popularised throughout Europe under the Roman Empire. A fifteen by fifteen gridded board was found in the Coppergate excavations in Viking Age York, pointing to a variant of hnefatafl being played there. The Ballinderry gaming board with its drilled peg holes may be a board for a halatafl variant. The literary evidence also suggests that the defender's pieces were usually red, while the attackers were white, although archaeological finds suggest a broader range of colours. Dozens of playing pieces from Viking board games have been found on archaeological sites, including the Viking camps at Repton and Torksey in England, where invading Vikings presumably whiled away their time playing these board games. Some of these were on display in the Danelaw Saga exhibition at the University of Nottingham. The Portable Antiquities Scheme has also recorded a broad spread of gaming pieces throughout the Danelaw. These pieces are usually roughly conical in shape and could have been cast very quickly and easily in simple moulds. Gaming pieces could be made of glass, like some found at Birka in Sweden, amber, liked those from the Skamby ship burial, or of horn or antler. Some of the Lewis chess pieces may actually have served double function as tafl pieces too. Analysis of gaming pieces and their deposition in graves suggests that each person was not buried with enough gaming pieces to provide both sides in a tafl game. Instead, they could provide a force for the attacker on an 11x11 board, on average, or the defender on a board as large as 15x15 squares. This suggests that Vikings brought their own force to the table rather than one person providing both sides. One final piece of evidence for board gaming is the depiction of two people playing a game and drinking horns of ale on a runestone (Gs 19) at Ockelbo in Sweden. The original stone has been destroyed but a replica stands on the spot now and shows clearly that the game board had the centre and the four corners marked to show where the hnefi or king stood at the start and where he had to escape to. Sore losers So, how did these games go down at parties? Óláfs saga helga (Chapters 152-53) in Heimskringla (pdf link) relates the tale of how one game played out at a feast at Roskilde in Denmark. Knútr the Great, king of England and Denmark, and he who tried to turn back the waves, was asked by his brother-in-law if he would like to play a board game. Knútr accepted but played badly. He was in a foul mood anyway, and got into a worse mood when Úlfr checked one of his pieces. He took his piece back, saying that he would make a different move instead. Úlfr got angry and tipped the board over, before storming out after they exchanged insults. The next morning, Knútr was getting dressed when he told his servant boy to go and kill Úlfr. The boy returned saying that Úlfr was in the church so he could not do it. Next Knútr told a Norwegian called Ívarr to kill Úlfr. Ivarr went into the church and ran Úlfr through with his sword. He returned to Knútr and told him the news. Heimskringla tells us that Knútr said to Ívarr “You have done well” but I prefer to imagine Knútr saying instead, “Checkmate!” If you are interested in trying hnefatafl cheaply, Cyningstan has a number of print-and-play hnefatafl variants.
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Vypovziv: A Viking Age outpost in Ukraine
In July 2018 a group of University of Nottingham students from the School of English went on an archaeological expedition to Vypovziv, Ukraine. The group was led by Dr Cat Jarman from the University of Bristol whose work on Viking camps at Repton has yielded spectacular results. As a result, Dr Jarman’s work with the Repton winter camp is particularly relevant to the project and allows sites such as Vypovziv to be compared more easily with its English counterparts. The village of Vypovziv is located two hours north of Chernihiv and is the site of a Viking Age Rus outpost. The outpost served as a control point along the Desna river route as well as a toll/re-supply station for travellers and merchants coming along the river to or from Kyiv during the later 9th through to the late 10th century. The Viking outpost is located on top of a tall ridge that stands out in the low marshy landscape and would have bisected the Desna River. The site included a fortified area with a palisade and a surrounding open settlement. The site included a fortified area with a palisade and a surrounding open settlement. Vypovziv, and sites like it, shares many similarities such as layout, location, and types of artefacts to winter camps in England such as Torksey and Repton, where Dr Cat Jarman is currently conducting archaeological fieldwork. Vypovziv, Repton, and Torksey all had some form of defence to protect them, were located in naturally strategic positions near rivers which provided easy access by boat, and at one stage in their lifespan became administrative and/or commercial centres. All three sites had a mixture of inhabitants, including women and children, and were specifically created by Scandinavian immigrants. The main difference between them is the initial motivation for their founding, Vypovziv was established as a point of control along a trade route while sites such as Repton and Torksey began life as a base for the Great Viking Army invading England. The Nottingham team were given a previously unexcavated section within the boundaries of what would have been the settlement area of the outpost just down the ridge from the fortified area. The artefacts found ranged in date from the late 9th century to the 12th century and included tools such as needles and awls, imported and local glass beads, imported jewellery, and various pieces of pottery, one making its way from the Byzantine Empire. The last day produced perhaps the most interesting finds, two ovens demarcating two separate dwellings. The team looks forward to returning next July to continue their exciting work. The expedition was made possible by funding secured by William Pidzamecky through the Cascade Grants Programme. The group joined the archaeological team from the University of Chernihiv, led by Dr Vyacheslav Skorohod, which has been excavating at the site for over a decade.