Children of Ash and Elm

by Neil Price;

  The funeral ship as a metaphor for the hall is discussed by Frands Herschend, Livet i hallen (Uppsala University, Uppsala, 1997). The ‘unfinished’ burial mound at Oseberg was discovered in the archives by Terje Gansum and published in his book Hauger som konstruksjoner—arkeologiske forventninger gjennom 200 år (University of Gothenburg, 2004). On ‘grave robbing’, see Jan Bill and Aoife Daly, ‘The plundering of the ship graves from Oseberg and Gokstad: An example of power politics?’, Antiquity 86 (2012): 808–824 and Alison Klevnäs, ‘Abandon ship! Digging out the dead from Vendel boat-graves’, Norwegian Archaeological Review 48 (2015): 1–20 and her paper in the ‘Mortuary Citations’ volume listed above. An active relationship to the past in a funerary context is explored by Eva Thäte, Monuments and Minds: Monument Re-use in Scandinavia in the Second Half of the First Millennium AD (University of Lund, Lund, 2007) and Ann-Mari Hållans Stenholm, Fornminnen: det förflutnas roll i det förkristna och kristna Mälardalen (Nordic Academic Press, Lund, 2012).

  Rituals against the returning dead are discussed in the works on deviant burial above. For notable literary episodes, see especially the Saga of the People of Eyri (which includes the door court, forbidding access to the dead) and Grettir’s Saga.

  For a discussion of silver hoards as a form of banking for the afterlife, see Jacek Gruszczyński, Viking Silver, Hoards and Containers (Routledge, London & New York, 2019). The einherjar in Valhöll are discussed by Andreas Nordberg, Krigarna i Odins sal: dödsföreställningar och krigarkult i fornnordisk religion (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2003). For afterlife beliefs in general, see Hilda Ellis, The Road to Hel, referenced at the start of this section. The line about the afterlife of slaves is from strophe 24 of Harbard’s Song.

  CHAPTER 9: INROADS

  The reference to wælwulfas comes from the Old English poem known as The Battle of Maldon, ed. and trans. Bill Griffiths (Anglo-Saxon Books, Pinner, 1991). Egil’s own battle poem comes from chapter 48 in his eponymous saga. The Old Norse text is quoted here after Bjarni Einarsson’s edition (Viking Society for Northern Research, London, 2003); the translation is by Christine Fell (Dent, London, 1975), with my minor amendments.

  The Salme boat graves are not yet fully published, but an overview can be found in Jüri Peets, ‘Salme ship burials’, Current World Archaeology 58 (2013): 18–24; the latest technical reports are Jüri Peets et al., ‘Research results of the Salme ship burials in 2011–2012’, Archaeological Fieldwork in Estonia 2012 (2013): 1–18 and Marge Konsa, ‘Two Vendel era ship burials at Salme on the island of Saaremaa’, Estonian Cultural Heritage. Preservation and Conservation 1 (2013): 152–154. The isotopic studies suggesting that the buried men came from central Sweden are published by T. Douglas Price et al., ‘Isotopic provenancing of the Salme ship burials in Pre-Viking Age Estonia’, Antiquity 90 (2016): 1022–1037. The DNA studies of the Salme men, with their kinship relations, can be found in Ashot Margoyan et al., ‘Population genomics of the Viking world’, Nature 2020, in review.

  There is also a slightly different reading of the Salme ships given by Marika Mägi in her book, In Austrvegr: The Role of the Eastern Baltic in Viking Age Communication Across the Baltic Sea (Brill, Leiden, 2018: 232–241). She sees the collective rituals of the first boat, in particular, as reminiscent of similar communal burials found elsewhere on the island and argues this might suggest the Salme graves were made by local people rather than Scandinavians. I disagree, as not only the ship burial rite itself, but also details of the rituals (such as shooting arrows into the boat), are precisely paralleled at Ultuna in Sweden, the same site that has exact parallels to the Salme sword harness; this is, therefore, not necessarily a Saaremaa rite at all but fits perfectly with the Salme men’s home ground. The quoted prose and verse about Yngvar’s death are from Ynglingasaga, chapter 32, the first part of Snorri’s Heimskringla.

  Basic narrative histories of the early raids in the British Isles and Frankia can be found in any of the general works listed in the first section above, which also lists translations of the regional primary records written by their victims. For the Lindisfarne attack, Alcuin’s key texts can be found in Colin Chase (ed.), Two Alcuin Letter-Books (Centre for Medieval Studies, Toronto, 1975). The important implications of his fixation with Viking haircuts were first raised by John Hines in 1984 in his thesis on earlier contacts across the North Sea, The Scandinavian Character of Anglian England in the Pre-Viking Period (BAR, Oxford). Recent work on Scandinavian familiarity before Lindisfarne can be found in Aina Margrethe Heen-Pettersen, ‘The earliest wave of Viking activity? The Norwegian evidence revisited’, European Journal of Archaeology 22 (2019): 523–541.

  The historical research going beyond the well-thumbed pages of the Chronicle, in the process revolutionising our understanding of the first raids, derives primarily from the groundbreaking studies of Clare Downham, on which I rely here. Her major work of revisionism has been published as ‘The earliest Viking activity in England’, English Historical Review 132 (2017): 1–12. She is also the historian who suggests that the Wessex takeover of Mercia may have had Viking assistance. The equally important idea of the ‘southern route’ for the first raiders into the Irish Sea was put forward by David Griffiths, ‘Rethinking the early Viking Age in the West’, Antiquity 93 (2019): 468–477.

  CHAPTER 10: MARITORIA

  The hunting of the North Atlantic right whale has been discussed by Andreas Hennius et al., ‘Whalebone gaming pieces: Aspects of marine mammal exploitation in Vendel and Viking Age Scandinavia’, European Journal of Archaeology, 21 (2018): 612–631.

  The revolution in understanding the trading emporia of the north-west European coasts largely began in 1982 with Richard Hodges’s Dark Age Economics: The Origins of Towns and Trade AD 600–1000 (Duckworth, London; updated in 2012 and subtitled A New Audit); the same author collaborated with David Whitehouse, in 1983, on Mohammed, Charlemagne and the Origins of Europe (Duckworth, London), with inspiration for both books derived from the works of Henri Pirenne. For later overviews, with references to excavations in the English and Frankish emporia, see Michael McCormick, Origins of the European Economy: Communications and Commerce AD 300–900 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001); Tim Pestell and Katharina Ulmschneider (eds.), Markets in Early Medieval Europe: Trading and ‘Productive’ Sites, 650–850 (Windgather Press, Oxford, 2003); and Chris Wickham, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400–800 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2005). For discussion on the nature of early Viking-Age markets and proto-urbanism, I am grateful to the URBS research cluster at Uppsala University, especially Anton Bonnier, Joakim Kjellberg, and Filmo Verhagen.

  The Dutch archaeologist working on Frisia is Nelleke IJsennagger, with her book, Central Because Liminal: Frisia in a Viking Age North Sea World (Groningen University, Groningen, 2017); this also includes references to the extensive excavations at Dorestad.

  The Ribe emporium is summarised by Claus Feveile, Viking Ribe: Trade, Power and Faith (Sydvestjyske Museer, Ribe, 2013); for Hedeby, see Kurt Schietzel, Spurensuche Haithabu (Wachholz, Neumünster, 2018); an overview of Birka can be found in Bente Magnus and Ingrid Gustin, Birka och Hovgården (Riksantikvarieämbetet, Stockholm, 2009) and in Jim Hanson et al., Birkas skepp: vikingatid på östersjön (Medströms, Stockholm, 2018).

  Søren Sindbæk is the primary specialist in nodes and trading networks, with several important publications. These include Ruter og rutinisering: Vikingetidens fjernhandel i Nordeuropa (Multivers, Copenhagen, 2005); ‘The small world of the Vikings: Networks in early medieval communication and exchange’, Norwegian Archaeological Review 40 (2007): 59–74; ‘Close ties and long-range relations: The emporia network in early Viking-Age exchange’, in John Sheehan and Donnchadh Ó Corráin (eds.), The Viking Age: Ireland and the West (Four Courts, Dublin, 2010: 430–440); ‘Silver economies and social ties: Long-term interaction, long-term investments—and why the Viking Age happened’, in James Graham-Campbell and Søren Sindbæk (e
ds.), Silver Economies, Monetisation and Society in Scandinavia, AD 800–1100 (Aarhus University Press, Aarhus, 2011: 41–66); ‘Northern emporia and maritime networks: Modelling past communication using archaeological network analysis’, in J. Preiser-Kapeller and F. Daim (eds.), Harbours and Maritime Networks as Complex Adaptive Systems (Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseum, Mainz, 2015: 105–118); and ‘Crafting networks in Viking towns’, Medieval and Modern Matters 4 (2016): 119–132. For a specifically western perspective, see Zanette T. Glørstad and Kjetil Loftsgarden (eds.), Viking-Age Transformations: Trade, Craft and Resources in Western Scandinavia (Routledge, London & New York, 2017).

  The Gotland harbours have been researched by Dan Carlsson, Vikingahamnar: ett hotat kulturarv (Arkeodok, Visby, 1998). Gotland’s special culture in the Viking Age is summarised in Gun Westholm (ed.), Gotland Vikingaön (Gotland Museum, Visby, 2004); see also Ny Björn Gustavsson, Casting Identities in Central Seclusion: Aspects of Non-Ferrous Metalworking and Society on Gotland in the Early Medieval Period (University of Stockholm, Stockholm, 2013).

  For observations on the Birka bird hunting, I thank Per Ericsson of the Natural History Museum in Stockholm. Studies of mobility among the Birka population can be found in Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, ‘Foreigner and local: Identities and cultural expression among the urban people of Birka’, in Val Turner, Olwyn Owen, and Doreen Waugh (eds.), Shetland and the Viking World (Shetland Heritage Publications, Lerwick, 2016: 189–196) and T. Douglas et al., ‘Isotopes and human burials at Viking Age Birka and the Mälaren region, east central Sweden’, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 49 (2018): 19–38.

  Useful collections on Viking-Age Baltic interactions include Birgitta Hårdh and Bozena Werbart (eds.), Contacts Across the Baltic Sea During the Late Iron Age (University of Lund, Lund, 1992); Ingmar Jansson (ed.), Archaeology East and West of the Baltic (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 1995); and Johan Callmer, Ingrid Gustin, and Mats Roslund (eds.), Identity Formation and Diversity in the Early Medieval Baltic and Beyond (Brill, Leiden, 2017); see also two books by Marika Mägi, In Austrvegr: The Role of the Eastern Baltic in Viking Age Communication Across the Baltic Sea (Brill, Leiden, 2018) and The Viking Eastern Baltic (Arc Humanities Press, Amsterdam, 2019). Two important collections also summarise the eastern littoral: Joonas Ahola and Frog with Clive Tolley (eds.), Fibula, Fabula, Fact: The Viking Age in Finland (Finnish Literature Society, Helsinki, 2014) and Joonas Ahola, Frog, and Jenni Lucenius (eds.), The Viking Age in Åland (Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, Helsinki, 2014).

  Ladoga has been extensively published in Russian, but useful summaries can be found in Simon Franklin and Jonathan Shepard, The Emergence of Rus 750–1200 (Longman, London, 1996: 3–49); Wladyslaw Duczko, Viking Rus (Brill, Leiden, 2004: 60–95); and Fedir Androshchuk, Vikings in the East (Uppsala University, Uppsala, 2013: 16–20). The meditations on the economic structures of settlements like this are based on the work of Anders Ögren, which is set to revolutionise the field of Viking economics; I thank him for permission to discuss his ideas here, and for many enjoyable years of conversations.

  Two key early texts, marking a real paradigm shift in the archaeology of Viking-Age Norway (and, like all such, massively controversial at the time), are by the late Bjørn Myhre: ‘The beginning of the Viking Age—some current archaeological problems’, in Anthony Faulkes and Richard Perkins (eds.), Viking Revaluations (Viking Society, London, 1993: 182–204) and ‘The archaeology of the early Viking Age in Norway’, in Howard Clarke et al. (eds.), Ireland and Scandinavia in the Early Viking Age (Four Courts, Dublin, 1998: 3–36). I attended both the conferences from which these books derive, and am so glad that Bjørn lived to see the vindication of his ideas two decades later.

  The work on Snorri’s Midlands, and especially at Avaldsnes, has proceeded for many years under the direction of Dagfinn Skre; I have drawn heavily on his work for this chapter, with thanks and acknowledgements for many years of discussions. His detailed meditations on the power of the sea-kings have emerged through numerous publications culminating in his two monumental edited volumes, Avaldsnes—A Sea-Kings’ Manor in First-Millennium Western Scandinavia and Rulership in 1st to 14th Century Scandinavia (De Gruyter, Berlin, 2018 and 2020), which contains extensive references to his previous work; it also includes Frode Iversen’s important work on the assembly sites. Alongside the essays by Dagfinn and others in that collection, for specific reference to the whetstone trade see also Irene Baug, Dagfinn Skre, Tom Heldal, and Øystein Jansen, ‘The beginning of the Viking Age in the West’, Journal of Maritime Archaeology 14 (2018): 43–80. The crucial collection of sea-king names can be found in Björn Sigfússon, ‘Names of sea-kings (heiti sækonunga)’, Modern Philology 32:2 (1934): 125–142.

  Previous attempts at untangling the menu of determinism often put forward to explain the raids include two important papers by James Barrett: ‘What caused the Viking Age?’, Antiquity 82 (2008): 671–685 and ‘Rounding up the usual suspects: Causation and the Viking Age diaspora’, in Atholl Anderson et al. (eds.), The Global Origins and Development of Seafaring (McDonald Institute, Cambridge, 2010, 289–302).

  CHAPTER 11: WARRIORHOODS

  The comment on the ideological benefits of raiding is by Steve Ashby in ‘What really caused the Viking Age? The social content of raiding and exploration’, Archaeological Dialogues 22:1 (2015): 89–106.

  Military ideologies and their material manifestations are discussed by Mattias Jakobsson, Krigarideologi och vikingatida svärdstypologi (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 1992); Anne Nørgård Jørgensen, Waffen und Gräber. Typologische und chronologische Studien zu skandinavischen Waffengräbern 520/30 bis 900 n.Chr. (Royal Society of Northern Antiquaries, Copenhagen, 1999); Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson, The Birka Warrior: The Material Culture of a Martial Society (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2006); Lena Holmquist Olausson and Michael Olausson (eds.), The Martial Society: Aspects of Warriors, Fortifications and Social Change in Scandinavia (Stockholm University, Stockholm, 2009); and Anne Pedersen, Dead Warriors in Living Memory: A Study of Weapon and Equestrian Burials in Viking-Age Denmark, AD 800–1000 (National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, 2014).

  The three runestones from Hällestad in Skåne are DR 295–297. The Högby runestone is Ög 81, and the Karlevi stone is Öl 1. The Sjörup runestone is DR 279, and the Aarhus stone is DR 66. Judith Jesch’s Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse (Boydell & Brewer, Woodbridge, 2001) also contains much of interest in this context.

  On the lið and the social organisation of Viking raiders, see Ben Raffield, Claire Greenlow, Neil Price, and Mark Collard, ‘Ingroup identification, identity fusion and the formation of Viking warbands’, World Archaeology 48:1 (2015): 35–50 and Ben Raffield’s important paper, ‘Bands of brothers: A re-appraisal of the Viking Great Army and its implications for the Scandinavian colonization of England’, Early Medieval Europe 24 (2016): 308–337. Jón Viðar Sigurðsson’s observations on Viking ‘friendship’ have been referenced for chapter 3, above, as has the background data on the practice of polygyny. For the social impact the practice may have had in the context of maritime violence, see Ben Raffield, Neil Price, and Mark Collard, ‘Male-biased operational sex ratios and the Viking phenomenon: An evolutionary anthropological perspective on late Iron Age Scandinavian raiding’, Evolution and Human Behavior 38:3 (2017): 315–324.

  The best overview of military material culture is by Gareth Williams, Weapons of the Viking Warrior (Osprey, Oxford, 2019). Notker’s description of the Frankish emperor bending swords comes from book 2, chapter 18, in David Ganz’s translation, Einhard and Notker the Stammerer: Two Lives of Charlemagne (Penguin, London, 2008).

  The many sources on the berserkers are summarised in Neil Price, ‘The Lewis “berserkers”: Identification and analogy in the shield-biting warriors’, in David Caldwell and Mark Hall (eds.), The Lewis Chessmen: New Perspectives (National Museums Scotland, Edinburgh, 2014: 29–44).
See also Roderick Dale’s comprehensive treatment, Berserkir: A Re-examination of the Phenomenon in Literature and Life (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, 2014), which contains his observations on what he rather wonderfully calls the “berserker strut”. The runestone with the floppy-eared ‘berserker’ is Vg 56 from Källby in Västergötland, Sweden. The Istaby runestone is DR 359. The Byzantine account is from John Skylitzes, referenced in the general section above.

  Birka chamber grave Bj.581 is discussed by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson et al., ‘The first female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics’, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 164:4 (2017): 853–860 and by Neil Price et al., ‘Viking warrior women? Reassessing Birka chamber grave Bj.581’, Antiquity 93 (2019): 181–198—both articles with online supplementary materials. The second paper debates the controversies, and they both include extensive references. To this should be added Agneta Ney, Drottningar och sköldmör. Gränsöverskridande kvinnor i medeltida myt och verklighet ca 400–1400 (Gidlunds, Södertälje, 2004); Lydia Klos, ‘Wanderer zwischen den Welten: Die Kriegerinnen der Eisenzeit’, in Edith Marold and Ulrich Müller (eds.), Beretning fra femogtyvende tværfaglige vikingesymposium (Aarhus University, Aarhus, 2006: 25–43); Leszek Gardeła, ‘Warrior-women in Viking-Age Scandinavia: A preliminary archaeological study’, Analecta Archaeologica Ressoviensia 8 (2013): 273–340; and Luke John Murphy, Herjans dísir: valkyrjur, Supernatural Femininities, and Elite Warrior Culture in the Late Pre-Christian Iron Age (unpublished MA thesis in Old Norse religion, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, 2013).