scholarly journals Forging History: Spade-Shaped Currency Bars, History and Identity in Central Norrland

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-221
Author(s):  
Marta Lindeberg
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Iron Technology

In central Norrland a large number of spade-shaped currency bars have been recovered. Currency bars have been produced since the introduction of iron technology in the late pre-Roman Iron Age, which roughly coincides with the introduction of agriculture. It is suggested that the shape of the bars is referential to the socketed axe, due to the importance of the latter during this period of change. The currency bars were therefore associated with a mythical history and local identity. The youngest 14C-date shows that the bars became part of narratives that remained relevant throughout much of the Iron Age, up until the Viking Age.

scholarly journals Burial Mounds, Ard Marks, and Memory: A Case Study from the Early Iron Age at Bamble, Telemark, Norway

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 207-226
Author(s):  
Christian Løchsen Rødsrud
Keyword(s):  
Social Norms ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
System Analysis ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Old Field ◽  
Field System ◽  
Burial Mounds ◽  
Point Of Departure

The point of departure for this article is the excavation of two burial mounds and a trackway system in Bamble, Telemark, Norway. One of the mounds overlay ard marks, which led to speculation as to whether the site was ritually ploughed or whether it contained the remains of an old field system. Analysis of the archaeometric data indicated that the first mound was related to a field system, while the second was constructed 500–600 years later. The first mound was probably built to demonstrate the presence of a kin and its social norms, while these norms were renegotiated when the second mound was raised in the Viking Age. This article emphasizes that the ritual and profane aspects were closely related: mound building can be a ritualized practice intended to legitimize ownership and status by the reuse of domestic sites in the landscape. Further examples from Scandinavia indicate that this is a common, but somewhat overlooked, practice.

scholarly journals AMAZONS IN VIKING AGE

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-84
Author(s):  
O. Ye. Fialko
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Demographic Expansion ◽  
Southern Sweden ◽  
Small Series ◽  
Age Range ◽  
The Military ◽  
Social Level

Amazons are usually associated with the period of the early Iron Age. However, a large number of graves of armed women of the early Middle Ages are known in the territory of Eurasia. In the Scandinavian countries, the period of the 9th — the first half of the 11th centuries was called the «Viking Age». This period is related to the military, commercial and demographic expansion of the Scandinavians. During the archaeological researches, burials of women with weapons were recorded in the cemeteries of Denmark, Norway and Southern Sweden. They constitute a small series of 16 funerary complexes. Typically, the female warriors were buried in individual graves, and only occasionally they were accompanied by a woman or a child. Only in two cases armed man and woman of equal social level were placed in one grave. In the necropolis, the graves of the Amazons are usually localized among the military graves. On the territory of Western Europe, both rites of burial of warriors — inhumation and cremation are registered. The age range of female warriors is quite wide — from 10 to 50—60 years, with the domination of young women. The material complex showed that women’s weapons were intended for both remote (bows and arrows, spears) and close combat (swords, knives, axes). And in this period preference was given to axes. Several graves of female warriors were accompanied by a horse or a set of horse ammunition. This means that women could also fight in the equestrian battles. Based on the range and the number of weapons, the Amazons of the Viking Age mainly were part of the lightly armed units. These women took up arms on a par with men in moments of acute necessity — periods of seizing of new territories or defending their lands from an external enemy.

scholarly journals The Odal and its Manifestation in the Landscape

1994 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 219-238
Author(s):  
Torun Zachrisson
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Wide Sense ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The Individual

The concept odal can be regarded in a narrow sense, i.e. as the inherited landed property of a family. But here it is argued that odal should be viewed in a wide sense - as a mentality that is of great importance to the understanding of Late Iron Age society in Sweden. The article focuses on the material expressions which belonging to a family and possessing a farm could take in the individual farmstead in the Mälar Valley. The Viking Age is interpreted as a time period in which there was a need to make the odal visible. The acts of burying dead relatives on top of the graves of early ancestors, erecting runestones, and possibly also erecting mounds are regarded as ways of guarding, marking, and confirming the possession of the odal in the odal man's own eyes and in his neighbours' and consequently also the odal man's position in society.

scholarly journals Sandtorg.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tor-Ketil Krokmyrdal
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Iron Age ◽  
Copper Alloys ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Metal Waste ◽  
Potential Market ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
The Middle Ages

In this paper, I discuss a potential market place for theexchange of goods at Sandtorg in Harstad municipality,Troms and Finnmark county during the Iron Age and theMiddle Ages. Recently, a total of 125 objects were uncoveredon a farm, previously only mentioned in written sources inthe mid-16th century. Finds of jewelry, silver, coins, weightand metal waste from the Viking Age suggest that exchangeof goods started at the site somewhere between AD 800 and 900. Further finds indicate that there were exchangegoods here throughout the Middle Ages and onwards to thehistorically documented trade. At the location, excavationshave uncovered a far larger amount of metalworking wastethan one would expect on an ordinary farm. This included lead, copper alloys, iron and silver. The finds indicate asmithy close to the Viking Age beach level and may suggestconstruction and repair of sea vessels at the site. AroundSandtorg there are no known Viking Age graves, indicatingthat Sandtorg did not have a large permanent population,and consequently was not a large marketplace. However,it is possible that the market function was combined withservices such as repairs or construction of seagoing vesselsand guesthouses for travelers. If so, the activity at Sandtorg may have been significant. 

Medieval Art in Scandinavia, 400-800

Art History ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy L. Wicker
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
High Status ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Medieval Art ◽  
Roman Art ◽  
Metal Artifacts ◽  
Migration Period ◽  
The Status ◽  
Social Uses

Art of the four-hundred-year period in Scandinavia spanning c. 400 to c. 800 ce begins with the close of the Roman Iron Age and extends into the early Viking Age. Archaeologically, this entire time span is considered part of the Iron Age, the final phase of European prehistory that follows the Stone and the Bronze Ages, with reference to the material used for cutting edges of weapons and tools. The art of an earlier phase, c. 400–550, is usually called the Migration Period in Norway and Sweden, while the later period, c. 550–800, is called the Vendel Period in Sweden, after a particular site there, but is referred to as the Merovingian Period in Norway. Using the terms “Migration Period” and “Merovingian Period” highlights contacts of Scandinavia with Germanic peoples on the Continent. In Denmark, the period c. 400–800 is referred to as the Germanic Iron Age, divided into earlier and later phases. In general, the terms “Migration Period” and “Vendel Period” will be used here. For all of Scandinavia, most scholars consider the second half of the 8th century a period of transition to the Viking Age. The art of these periods includes almost no painting, few examples of large-scale sculpture, and scarce remains of architecture revealed archaeologically. The surviving artistic evidence is skewed toward metal artifacts, especially weapons and articles of personal adornment, but also glass and pottery, found as grave goods in high-status burials. Undoubtedly large quantities of organic materials, including wood, textiles, and leather, as well as bone, ivory, and antler, have not survived well in the earth. Nearly all artistic finds have been recovered through archaeological investigations, and thus the fields of Scandinavian art and archaeology are closely interrelated. With the advent of metal detecting, the nature of the material is changing as more hoards and stray finds are discovered. Much of the art of the Migration and Vendel Periods consists of abstracted animal styles that contrast with the representational character of Roman art, yet the development of northern art was indebted to provincial Roman styles and techniques. The art of the period c. 400 through c. 800 is often referred to as pre-Viking art, since there is marked continuity in art styles through the fully developed Viking art (c. 800–1050). In the past, the study of this animal-style art was chiefly concerned with stylistic classification, but concerns about the status of artists and craftworkers, techniques of artistic production, and social uses of art have gained in significance.

A New Paradigm: The African Early Iron Age without Bantu Migrations

2000 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 287-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Robertson ◽  
Rebecca Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Population Decline ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Early Iron Age ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Hunter Gatherers ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Iron Technology ◽  
Sub Saharan

Between 1000 BC and AD 1000, or so the story goes, sub-Saharan Africa was the setting for one of the all-time great population movements of antiquity—the Bantu migrations. Sweeping to and fro across the continent in a kind of grand migrationary gavotte, absorbing or brushing aside the autochthonous hunter-gatherers, the ancestral Bantu speakers carried with them on their march the seeds of a settled life fueled by food production and iron technology. Their movements are represented by large arrows scything across big blank maps of the African interior. How good is the evidence that any of it ever happened?In this paper we shall examine some of the serious methodological and practical problems that bedevil the migrationary model. We shall also present an alternative model for the prehistory of sub-Saharan Africa: in brief, that the development of the Early Iron Age in Africa was a process rather than an event; that autochthonous populations gradually adopted the suite of traits that define the Early Iron Age, without any large-scale movement of peoples; and that increasing sedentarization actually led to a population decline which was only overcome after AD 500.The model constitutes a new paradigm that emphasizes continuity and takes into account a few observations that are awkward for the migrationary paradigm: that sub-Saharan Africa has a difficult topography that may put certain constraints on population movements, and that the continent was slowly filling up on its own when events starting in the sixteenth century turned the autochthonous peoples' lives upside down.

scholarly journals First Ladies

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-121
Author(s):  
Ingunn M. Røstad
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Basic Form ◽  
High Quality ◽  
First Ladies

From the fifth century to the Viking Age in present-day Norway, certain women belonging to the upper strata of society were buried with high-quality ornamental bow-brooches. Although adjusting to changing styles of decoration, the practical function and basic form of the brooches - rectangular headplate, bow and rhomboidal footplate – remained more or less the same throughout the centuries they were in use. By exploring burials which include these ornamental accessories, I argue that the brooches functioned as an important factor in reproducing and continuously negotiating identity shared by certain women within the Scandinavian Iron Age elite.

scholarly journals What Makes a Mound? Earth-Sourced Materials in Late Iron Age Burial Mounds

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Rebecca J.S. Cannell
Keyword(s):  
Iron Age ◽  
Viking Age ◽  
Archaeological Interpretation ◽  
Late Iron Age ◽  
Political Implications ◽  
The Social ◽  
Burial Mounds ◽  
Materials Used ◽  
Southern Norway

The interpretation of Late Iron Age burial mounds often focuses exclusively on the discovered contents, the social identity or role of the interred and the economic and political implications that can be extracted. This article considers the mound itself as a basis for archaeological interpretation, and attempts to place substantial late Iron Age burial mounds within the landscape they are made of. Within these burial mounds internal references to time, place and the transformations and imbued associations within the earth-sourced materials are purposeful and significant. This is illustrated via comparable examples from southern Norway, and to add contrast, cases from the Viking Age Isle of Man will be explored. This article will outline why the selected mounds should be seen as closely related to each other in the references they contain, and how the materials used can be seen as a purposeful link to the land itself.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document