Children of Ash and Elm

by Neil Price;

  The Hårby and Revninge figures have only been preliminarily published as Mogens Bo Henriksen and Peter Vang Petersen, ‘Valkyriefund’, Skalk 2013/2: 3–10 and Claus Feveile, ‘Revninge-figurens gåder’, Skalk 2015/1: 3–8. For Viking-Age clothing, see Inga Hägg, Kvinnodräkten i Birka (Uppsala University, Uppsala, 1974) and Textilien und Tracht in Haithabu und Schleswig (Wachholtz, Kiel, 2015); good colour images can be found as noted above in Kurt Schietzel, Spurensuche Haithabu (4th edn., Wachholtz, Neumünster, 2018). I am indebted to costume designer Linda Muir for observations on the potential sensual qualities of Viking clothing, the fruit of several enjoyable discussions.

  The literature on jewellery and craftwork (including in metals) is enormous, and only a selection can be given here. The standard work on oval brooches is Ingmar Jansson, Ovala spännbucklor (University of Uppsala, Uppsala, 1985) while its equivalent for beads is Johan Callmer, Trade Beads and Bead Trade in Scandinavia ca. 800–1000 AD (Lund University, Lund, 1977). Major studies of metalworking, with their respective regional focus but wider referencing, can be found in the work of Gustaf Trotzig, Craftsmanship and Function (Statens Historiska Museum, Stockholm, 1991) and Unn Pedersen, I smeltedigeln: finsmedene i vikingtidsbyen Kaupang (University of Oslo, Oslo, 2010). Pendant figurines are discussed by Michaela Helmbrecht, Wirkmächtige Kommunikationsmedien: Menschenbilder der Vendel- und Wikingerzeit und ihre Kontexte (Lund University, Lund, 2011). The unique material culture of the Gotlanders is collected by Lena Thunmark-Nylén, Die Wikingerzeit Gotlands (4 vols., Royal Academy of Letters, Stockholm, 1995–2006), with reference to her own work on jewellery and that of Anders Carlsson.

  Sources for agrarian practices and history have been noted above. The complete equipment of a smith has been published by Greta Arwidsson and Gösta Berg, The Mästermyr Find: A Viking Age Tool Chest from Gotland (Royal Academy of Letters, Stockholm, 1983). Textile work has been referenced above, but see also Marianne Vedeler, Silk for the Vikings (Oxbow, Oxford, 2014). The notion of pictorial textile weaving as a domain of female power is explored by Lena Norrman in her book Viking Women: The Narrative Voice in Woven Tapestries (Cambria Press, Amherst, 2008).

  For artistic traditions, the latest synthesis, excellent and well-illustrated, is James Graham-Campbell’s Viking Art (Thames & Hudson, London & New York, 2013). As one of the world’s leading art-historical archaeologists of the Viking Age, James has also addressed aesthetics, and their economics, in many other general works (listed in the introduction to this section) and specialist regional studies, especially of Scotland; these are noted in the appropriate sections that follow. See also David M. Wilson, Vikingatidens konst (Signum, Lund, 1995).

  CHAPTER 4: THE PURSUIT OF LIBERTY

  Possible Bronze Age Scandinavian precedents on slaving are treated by Johan Ling, Elevated Rock Art: Towards a Maritime Understanding of Bronze Age Rock Art in Northern Bohuslän, Sweden (University of Gothenberg, Gothenberg, 2008).

  Foote and Wilson’s The Viking Achievement (1970), noted above, was the first major work of synthesis to discuss slavery in early Scandinavia; it is still sound, and I have drawn on it in several places here (they are also the authors of the line about the enslaved owning and leaving nothing). More recently, slavery in the Viking Age has been discussed by Ruth Karras, Slavery and Society in Medieval Scandinavia (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1988); in the Swedish-language collection edited by Thomas Lindkvist and Janken Myrdal, Trälar: ofria i agrarsamhället från vikingatid till medeltid (Nordic Museum, Stockholm, 2003); and in Stefan Brink’s Vikingarnas slavar: den nordiska träldomen under yngre järnålder och äldsta medeltid (Atlantis, Stockholm, 2012). The wider context to the west is provided by David Wyatt, Slaves and Warriors in Medieval Britain and Ireland, 800–1200 (Brill, Leiden, 2009). A new field of research on Viking-Age slavery is being opened up by Ben Raffield, ‘The slave markets of the Viking world: Comparative perspectives on an “invisible archaeology”’, Slavery and Abolition 40 (2019): 682–705.

  For the names of the enslaved from the List of Ríg, I have used translations of the Poetic Edda by Carolyne Larrington (1996) and Ursula Dronke (1997), with some minor amendments of my own. The runestones preserving the voices of the enslaved are U 11 from Hovgården in Swedish Uppland and DR 58 from Hørning in Denmark. Viking shackles have been studied by Ny Björn Gustafsson, ‘För folk och fä: Vikingatida fjättrar och deras användning’, Fornvännen 104 (2009): 89–96. The Weston stone is illustrated in Else Roesdahl et al. (eds.), The Vikings in England (Anglo-Danish Viking Project, London, 1981: 61). The burnt ‘tomb of the thralls’ at Tranders is published by Lise Harvig, J. Kveinborg, and Niels Lynnerup, ‘Death in flames: Human remains from a domestic house fire from Early Iron Age, Denmark’, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology 25 (2015): 701–710.

  The Ballateare burial is published by Gerhard Bersu and David M. Wilson, Three Viking Graves on the Isle of Man (Society for Medieval Archaeology, King’s Lynn, 1966: 35–62). The research on the diet of the enslaved is by Elise Naumann, Maja Krzewińska, Anders Götherström, and Gunilla Eriksson, ‘Slaves as burial gifts in Viking Age Norway? Evidence from stable isotope and Ancient DNA analyses’, Journal of Archaeological Science 41 (2013): 533–540. The study relating slavery to dental modification is by Anna Kjellström, ‘Spatial and temporal trends in new cases of men with modified teeth from Sweden (AD 750–1100)’, European Journal of Archaeology 17:1 (2014): 45–59.

  CHAPTER 5: BORDER CROSSINGS

  Studies of gender in the Viking Age have only recently begun to seriously branch out beyond binary discussions, most of which have emphasised studies of women. Major works include Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (Boydell, Woodbridge, 1991); Jenny Jochens, Women in Old Norse Society (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1995); Eva-Marie Göransson, Bilder av kvinnor och kvinnlighet: Genus och kroppspråk under övergången till kristendomen (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 1999); Nancy Coleman and Nanna Løkka (eds.), Kvinner i vikingtid (Scandinavian Academic Press, Oslo, 2014); and Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, Valkyrie: the Women of the Viking World (Bloomsbury, London, 2020). Works mainly focussing on Old Norse literature include Jenny Jochens, Old Norse Images of Women (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1996); Rudolf Simek and Wilhelm Helzmann (eds.), Mythological Women (Fassbaender, Vienna, 2002); Sarah Anderson and Karen Swenson (eds.), Cold Counsel: Women in Old Norse Literature and Mythology (Routledge, London & New York, 2002); and Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir, Women in Old Norse Literature: Bodies, Words and Power (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2013). Most of these works also take up the more specific themes that follow.

  More general studies include Tove Hjørungdal, Det skjulte kjønn: patrialkal tradisjon og feministisk visjon i arkeologien belyst med fokus på en jernalderskontekst (University of Lund, Lund, 1991); Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh, Genuskonstruktioner i nordisk vikingatid (Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, 1998); and Henric Bagerius, ‘I genusstrukturens spänningsfält: Om kön, genus och sexualitet i saga och samhälle’, Arkiv för Nordisk Filologi 2001: 21–63; see also Katherine Hauptmann, ‘Slaget om vikingatiden—en ojämn kamp mot forna stereotyper’, in Katherine Hauptmann and Kerstin Näversköld (eds.), Genusförbart: inspiration, erfarenheter och metoder för mångfald i museiarbete (Nordic Academic Press, Lund, 2014: 61–71).

  The runestone from Fläckebo in Västmanland is Vs 24. The ‘single-sex’ model is from Carol Clover’s influential paper, ‘Regardless of sex: Men, women, and power in early Northern Europe’ Speculum 68:2 (1993): 1–28. The best work on shared traits, with the burial study mentioned in the text, has been undertaken by Marianne Moen, Challenging Gender: A Reconsideration of Gender in the Viking Age Using the Mortuary Landscape (University of Oslo, Oslo, 2019), building on her earlier book The Gendered Landscape: A Discussion on Gender, Status and Power in the Norwegian Viking Age Landscape (BAR, Oxford, 2011) and also explored in her paper ‘Gender and archaeology: Where are we now?’, Archaeologies 15/2 (2019): 206–226. Excellent
wider studies that adopt a fruitful, integrated approach to gender include Michèle Hayeur Smith, Draupnir’s Sweat and Mardöll’s Tears: An Archaeology of Jewellery, Gender and Identity in Viking Age Iceland (BAR, Oxford, 2004) and Marianne Hem Eriksen, Architecture, Society, and Ritual in Viking Age Scandinavia (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2019).

  For childhood in the Viking Age, see Else Mundal, ‘Forholdet mellom børn og foreldre i det norrøne kjeldmaterialet’, Collegium Medievale 1 (1988): 9–26; M. Lindqvist, ‘Barn på vikingatiden’, Gotländsk Arkiv 76 (2004): 74–77; Chris Callow, ‘First steps towards an archaeology of children in Iceland’, Archaeologia Islandica 5 (2006): 55–96; Lotte Mejsholm, Gränsland: konstruktion av tidig barndom och begravningsritual vid tiden för kristnandet i Skandinavien (Uppsala University, Uppsala, 2009); Marianne Hem Eriksen, ‘Don’t all mothers love their children? Deposited infants as animate objects in the Scandinavian Iron Age’, World Archaeology 49:3 (2017): 338–356; Dawn M. Hadley, ‘Children and migration’, in Sally Crawford, Dawn M. Hadley, and Gillian Shepherd (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Childhood (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2018: 404–428); and Ben Raffield, ‘Playing Vikings: Militarism, hegemonic masculinities and childhood enculturation in Viking-Age Scandinavia’, Current Anthropology 60 (2019): 813–835.

  Differential malnutrition in childhood is analysed by Anna Kjellström, ‘People in transition: Life in the Mälaren Valley from an osteological perspective’, in Val Turner, Olwyn Owen, and Doreen Waugh (eds.), Shetland and the Viking World (Shetland Heritage Publications, Lerwick, 2016: 197–202); there are other possible interpretations of the cribra orbitalia data—for example, that the condition was caused by high infection pressure—but this should exhibit an even distribution in the population rather than one skewed by sex; I am grateful to the author and to Marianne Hem Eriksen for discussion here. On infanticide, see the above and also papers by Nancy Wicker, ‘Selective female infanticide as partial explanation for the dearth of women in Viking Age Scandinavia’, in Guy Halsall (ed.), Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West (Boydell, Woodbridge, 1998: 205–221) and ‘Christianization, female infanticide, and the abundance of female burials at Viking Age Birka in Sweden’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 21 (2012): 245–262.

  The study comparing male and female burials in Scotland and Norway is by Frida Espolin Norstein, Migration and the Creation of Identity in the Viking Diaspora: A Comparative Study of Viking Age Funerary Rites from Northern Scotland and Møre og Romsdal (unpublished MA thesis in archaeology, University of Oslo, Oslo, 2014).

  On Viking-Age sexuality, see Jenny Jochens, ‘The illicit love visit: An archaeology of Old Norse sexuality’, Journal of the History of Sexuality 1 (1991): 357–392; Neil Price, ‘Anstößige Körper? Sexualität in der Eisenzeit Nordeuropas’, in Villem van Vilsteren and Rainer-Maria Weiss (eds.), 100.000 jahre sex: über Liebe, Wollust und Fruchtbarkeit (Helms Museum, Hamburg, 2004: 54–63) and ‘Sexualität’, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 28 (2004): 244–257. The lines from Loki’s Quarrel and Sayings of the High One are from Ursula Dronke’s translation.

  The much-discussed caliphal mission to the Vikings is treated by Sara Pons-Sanz, ‘Whom did al-Ghazāl meet? An exchange of embassies between the Arabs from al-Andalus and the Vikings’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research 28 (2012): 5–28, with extensive references. Sexual magic, the Rällinge figure, the Danevirke phallus, and burials of male-bodied individuals with normatively feminine accessories are all discussed by Neil Price, The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Oxbow, Oxford, 2019: 172–183). The Maeshowe runes are discussed and translated by Michael Barnes, The Runic Inscriptions of Maeshowe, Orkney (Uppsala University, Uppsala, 1994); the quoted inscriptions are numbered as Farrer VIII, XXIII, and IX respectively. The Onslunda runestone is U 1043.

  Sexual crime and legal strictures are discussed by Ben Raffield, Neil Price, and Mark Collard, ‘Polygyny, concubinage and the social lives of women in Viking-Age Scandinavia’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 13 (2018): 165–209; see also Fredrik Charpentier Ljungqvist, ‘Rape in the Icelandic sagas: An insight in the perceptions about sexual assaults on women in the Old Norse world’, Journal of Family History 40 (2015): 431–447. The Grágás codes are translated in two volumes as Laws of Early Iceland by Andrew Dennis, Peter Foote, and Richard Perkins (University of Manitoba Press, Winnipeg, 1980 & 2000).

  The Danish scholar with The Idea of the Good in Late Iron Age Society is Frands Herschend (Uppsala University, Uppsala, 1998). The cross-dressing woman comes from chapter 35 of the Saga of the People of Laxardal, and the images on the picture-stones (numbers I and IV from Lärbro Tängelgårda) are discussed by Eva-Marie Göransson, prior.

  Homophobia and the nid complex are discussed by Preben Meulengracht Sørensen, The Unmanly Man: Concepts of Sexual Defamation in Early Northern Society (Odense University Press, Odense, 1983), still the primary work on this, from which I quote here. For Norse insults, see Bo Almquist, Norrön niddiktning (2 vols., Almqvist & Wiksell, Stockholm, 1965 & 1974). The homophobic runic inscription mentioning the Cross Church carving is translated by James Knirk (with a small amendment), reproduced in ‘Nið and the sacred’ by Preben Meulengracht Sørensen in Artikler, the Norrønt Forum edited collection in his honour (Norrønt Forum, Aarhus, 2000: 78–88).

  Analyses of magic making interesting use of queer theory include work by the Norwegian scholar mentioned in the text, Brit Solli: ‘Odin—the queer? Om det skeive i norrøn mytologi’, in Ingrid Fuglestvedt, Terje Gansum, and Arnfrid Opedal (eds.), Et hus med mange rom: vennebok til Bjørn Myhre på 60-årsdagen (Stavanger Archaeological Museum, Stavanger, 1999: 393–427) and Seid: Myter, Sjamanisme og Kjønn i Vikingenes Tid (Pax, Oslo, 2002); see also Neil Price, The Viking Way, as above, which includes a study of the Story of Völsi. A major, if controversial, work envisioning a queered Iron Age is Ing-Marie Back Danielsson, Masking Moments: The Transitions of Bodies and Beings in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2007).

  The Vivallen grave is discussed in my book The Viking Way, p. 222ff. References to the debate on female Viking warriors and the so-called shield-maidens can be found in the following for chapter 11; see also the 2019 paper ‘Gender and archaeology’ by Marianne Moen, noted prior. All these works include extensive references on the complex gendering of graves.

  On Viking-Age (dis)ability, see Lois Bragg, ‘From the mute god to the lesser god: Disability in medieval Celtic and Old Norse literature’, Disability and Society 12 (1997): 165–177 and Oedipus Borealis: The Aberrant Body in Old Icelandic Myth and Saga (Fairleigh Dickenson University Press, Madison, 2008); Annette Lassen, Øjet og blindheden i norrøn mytologi og litteratur (Museum Tusculanum, Copenhagen, 2003); Elisabeth Arwill-Nordbladh, ‘Ability and disability: On bodily variations and bodily possibilities in Viking Age myth and image’, in Ing-Marie Back Danielsson and Susanne Thedéen (eds.), To Tender Gender: The Pasts and Futures of Gender Research in Archaeology (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2012: 33–60); and Christopher Crocker, ‘Disability and dreams in the medieval Icelandic sagas’, Saga-Book of the Viking Society for Northern Research XLIII (2019): 37–58. (Dis)ability studies are a relatively new feature of Viking research, and I would like to acknowledge the pioneering and important work done here for the contemporary English and Germanic cultures by Christina Lee and her colleagues.

  CHAPTER 6: THE PERFORMANCE OF POWER

  For extensive discussions of assemblies, law, and justice, see Olwyn Owen (ed.), Things in the Viking World (Shetland Amenity Trust, Lerwick, 2012) and especially Alexandra Sanmark, Viking Law and Order: Places and Rituals of Assembly in the Medieval North (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2017). Two important papers by Marie Ødegaard are ‘Thing sites, cult, churches, games and markets in Viking and medieval south-east Norway, AD c.800–1600’, World Archaeology 50 (2018): 150–164 and ‘Tinginstitusjonens alder i Skandinavia belyst ved arkeologi og
stedsnavnsgransking—samsvar eller ikke?’, Viking 2018: 89–116. Frode Iversen discusses the Norwegian courtyard sites in ‘Emerging kingship in the 8th century? New datings of three courtyard sites in Rogaland’, in Dagfinn Skre (ed.), Avaldsnes—A Sea-Kings’ Manor in First-Millennium Western Scandinavia (De Gruyter, Berlin, 2018: 721–746). Literature on feuding can be found in the following in connection with chapter 17 and the sociopolitics of Iceland.

  Inheritance rights are discussed in many of the general works listed above, but a number of specialist studies address the relationships between land and family and the ways in which this was manifested in the landscape—for example, through ritual depositions and other activities along boundaries. Torun Zachrisson’s Gård, gräns, gravfält (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 1998) is excellent, and later developments and challenges to the allodium system are addressed by Johan Runer, Från hav till land, eller Kristus och odalen (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2006). The inheritance dimensions of runic inscriptions are discussed in detail by the late Birgit Sawyer, The Viking-Age Rune-Stones: Custom and Commemoration in Early Medieval Scandinavia (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000: chs. 3–4), where the Hillersjö text from U 29 and its complex family tree are discussed on pp. 49–50; the inscription is given here in Sawyer’s elegant translation. The three other quoted inheritance inscriptions are respectively from runestones Sö 302, Bergaholm, Södermanland; G 111, Ardre, Gotland; and G 112, Ardre, Gotland.