Unearthing Scotland's Nordic Troves

Carolingian lidded vessel, part of the trove. - ITV.com

"Found in the Galloway area, of the Dumfries and Galloway region in south-west Scotland in September 2014, the assemblage is believed to be of ninth or tenth century Viking culture. The principal finds in the Viking treasure comprise of a decorative gold bird pin, a silver Carolingian pot, a solid gold ring, and a solid silver cross with gold inlay and enamel decorations, over twenty solid gold and silver ingots and dozens of solid silver arm bands decorated with saltire*-type designs."

Read the full article at Coin Week.

How to build a Viking hut

How one man built a Viking style hut on his property, in six days, with step-by-step instructions. See it at Offgrid Quest.

Fibula, Fabula, Fact - The Viking Age in Finland

"The chapters of Fibula, Fabula, Fact – The Viking Age in Finland are intended to provide essential foundations for approaching the important topic of the Viking Age in Finland. These chapters are oriented to provide introductions to the sources, methods and perspectives of diverse disciplines so that these resources and the history of discourse from which they emerge are accessible to specialists from other fields, specialists from outside Finland, and also to non-specialist readers and students who may be more generally interested in the topic. Rather than detailed case studies of specific aspects of the Viking Age in Finland, the contributors have sought to negotiate definitions of the Viking Age as a historical period in the cultural areas associated with modern-day Finland, and in areas associated with Finns, Karelians and other North Finnic linguistic-cultural groups more generally. Within the incredible diversity of data and disciplines represented here, attention tends to center on the identification of the Viking Age through differentiating it from earlier and later periods, and on contextualizing it geographically in an era long before the construction of modern nations with their fenced and guarded borders. Most significantly, the contributions lay emphasis on contextualizing the Viking Age within the complexities of defining cultural identities in the past through traces of cultural, linguistic or genetic features."

The full preface for this peer reviewed publication from the Finnish Literatue Society of Helsinki, edited by Joonas Ahola and Frog with Clive Tolley, may be read and also downloaded at Academia.edu.

Swedes set up 'ultimate Viking movie'

Thanks to Eric for finding this:

"After years of ridicule and misrepresentation, the Vikings are on their way home. Plans are well under way for what the Swedish company Fladenfilm is calling "the ultimate Viking movie". The $30m version of Frans G Bengtsson's bloody Nordic saga The Long Ships (which is due to shoot in 2013) will comprise two feature films and a television series. What is different about this project is that it is being made by Viking nations – the Swedes in combination with their neighbours."

The complete article may be found at the Independent.

Searching for the Vikings on the Isle of Man

From Medievalists.net:
"The Vikings were not just the wanton marauders of popular portrayal, says a Longwood University medieval scholar who recently conducted archaeological research on the Isle of Man.

Dr. Larissa “Kat” Tracy examines a Viking-age stone monument on the Isle of Man.
“The exclusive image of rape, pillage and burning by the Vikings is probably inaccurate,” said Dr. Larissa “Kat” Tracy, associate professor of English.

Tracy spent a week photographing inscriptions on Viking-age stone monuments on the island between Great Britain and Ireland as part of a German-based research project on the ancient runic alphabet. What she found is that the Vikings, who raided and settled throughout Europe from the late eighth century through the 11th century, were perhaps more interested in winning the hearts and minds of the people they encountered than is often thought."

The full article may be read here.

Inside the Viking Mind: Cosmology, the After-life, and the Self

“My research is essentially concerned with the human condition,” wrote Price from his home in Uppsala, Sweden, where he lives and holds a second appointment at the university, “the familiar age-old questions about life and its meaning that we all ask ourselves at some point – but placing this in a specific historical context and trying to recapture the Vikings’ own perspective on mortality. Every culture seeks its own answers to the eternal questions, including matters of morality, and I think we can always learn from reflecting on others’ attitudes to these same things that we still puzzle over today.”
The full text of this interview by Bill Chaisson of Prof. Neil Price of the department of archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland can be read at Ithaca.com.

Wikipedia: Rus' Khaganate

Kälvesten Runestone 

"The Rus' Khaganate was a polity that flourished during a poorly documented period in the history of Eastern Europe, roughly the late 8th and early-to-mid-9th centuries AD. A predecessor to the Rurik Dynasty and the Kievan Rus', the Rus' Khaganate was a state, or a cluster of city-states, set up by a people called Rus', who might have been Norsemen in what is today northern Russia. The region's population at that time was composed of Baltic, Slavic, Finnic, Turkic and Norse peoples. The region was also a place of operations for Varangians, eastern Scandinavian adventurers, merchants and pirates."
Read the full Wikipedia article.

Sliasthorp, Fabled Viking Military Town, Possibly Unearthed In Germany

"In what may be one of the biggest digs of the 21st century, a team of Danish archeologists believe they have uncovered a once thriving center of Viking activity, Sliasthorp, the fabled military base occupied by the earliest Scandinavian kings.

Since excavations began in 2010, roughly 200 buildings, along with weapons, precious jewelry, glass beads, and silver coins have been unearthed at Füsing, near the Danish border, National Geographic reports, findings that they say offer valuable insights into the military organization and town planning of what is thought to be the earliest Viking settlement in the historical record."

Read the full article at the Huffington Post.

What Vikings really looked like

Thanks to Hex Magazine for finding this:
"There’s no shortage of myths about the appearance of our notorious Viking ancestors....
We have picked out five myths from the resulting debate and asked researchers to help us confirm or bust these myths." Read the full article Science Nordic.

The Scandinavian impact on Irish seafaring technology

Courtesy Medievalists.net:
"In the Middle Ages mariners from both Ireland and Scandinavia sailed the North Atlantic, but in different types of ships and for very different reasons. The Irish sailors appear to have favoured skin-covered ships called curraghs as the means by which they sought out remote islands on which to establish monastic retreats. The Norsemen, however, travelled the northern seas in clinker-built wooden vessels seeking plunder, land and trade. When at the end of the eighth century the Vikings invaded Ireland, these two distinct seafaring traditions came into contact with one another. This thesis is an analysis of the impact that the arrival of Scandinavian seafaring technology had upon that of the indigenous Irish." The full text of this 1984 Master's Thesis by Garth Stewart Wilson may be read in PDF format at the University of British Columbia's website.

Viking mice marauders swept across northern Europe

"They didn't rape and pillage or wear horned helmets*, but Norwegian mice accidentally stowing away on Viking ships swept through almost as many countries as the fearsome humans whose ships they boarded.

That's the conclusion from an analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from modern house mice (Mus musculus domesticus) living on Iceland and Greenland, which was compared with mtDNA extracted from mouse skeletons on the islands dating to the Viking heyday, 1000 to 1200 years ago. The sequences were also compared with mtDNA sequences from Viking mice in Norway and the UK."
Read the full article at the New Scientist.

*Blog owner: The Vikings didn't wear horned helmets, either, thank you!

Linnaeus’s Game of Tablut and its Relationship to the Ancient Viking Game Hnefatafl

Modern tafl board reconstruction. Wikimedia Commons

Courtesy of Aluric and Medievalists.net:

"This paper concerns Linnaeus’s 1732 work Iter Lapponicum and his important (though inadvertent) contributions to the field of Viking age archaeology. A journal entry from his publication contains a description of a Lapp board game called Tablut (also called Swedes & Muscovites), which later scholars realized was related to the Viking game of Hnefatafl. ..."

"... The British game historian H. J. R. Murray was the first to identify the importance of Linnaeus's description of the rules of a Lapp game called Tablut.  This game, he argued, was related to, and possibly identical with, an ancient Viking game called Hnefatafl, which the Icelandic sagas frequently reference ..."

The full article by John C. Ashton may be read at Heroic Age. A fair introduction to Tafl and its variations may be found at Wikipedia.

Vikings – the Rus – Varangians

Courtesy Medievalists.net:
"The Viking age in Scandinavia is usually dated from the end of the eighth century to the mid-11th century. Those who came from Scandinavia were called Rus and Varangians by peoples in Eastern Europe. French and Anglo-Saxon chroniclers sometimes divide the Vikings into ‘Danes’, ‘Swedes’ (Svear) and ‘Norsemen’ (Norwegians). In their turn, Arab scribes distinguished between Scandinavians, inhabiting Western Eurorpe, calling them ‘magus’ or al-urmania, and peoples in the east, which they called al-rus." A PDF of the full article, originally published in Historiska nyheter (2004), may be accessed at Academia.edu.

Viking Women: A Reinterpretation of the Bones

"According to a new journal article by Shane McLeod in Early Medieval Europe, the concept of the male Norse invaders migrating across England in the 9th and 10th centuries CE is potentially biased. He argues that based on burial evidence, females were equal in number if not outnumbering the males, leading to a new interpretation of the Norse migration. Textual evidence of the Norse invasion into Britain notes the presence of women and children in some of the invading groups, but primarily they focus on the high number of male warriors. McLeod argues that there were more women than previously thought based skeletal analysis, and this requires a reinterpretation of the Norse invasion."
Read the full article at Bones Don't Lie.

Viking Ethnicities: A Historiographic Overview

Courtesy of Medievalists.net:
"The ‘Viking Age’ is well established in popular perception as a period of dramatic change in European history. The range of viking activities from North America to the Middle East has excited the interest of many commentators. Vikings are variously regarded as blood thirsty barbarians or civilised entrepreneurs; founders of nations or anarchic enemies. But how cohesive was the identity of the ‘Vikings’ and how did they see themselves? In recent years the answer to this question has been evaluated from a range of perspectives. Established paradigms (often situated within a nationalist framework of thought) have come under greater scrutiny and new ideas have entered the debate. This paper will review some trends in the historiography of viking ethnicities and cultural identities in the period 800–1000 AD. This overview also highlights the value of comparative analysis of human migrations to the field of Viking Studies." The full article by Clare Downham of the University of Liverpool, originally published in History Compass, Volume 10, Issue 1, may be read in PDF format at the Wiley Online Library.

Researchers collect DNA from men with possible links to York’s Viking past

(Thanks to Christy for finding this.)

"Men with Viking surnames filled the meeting room of New Earswick Folk Hall and queued to help research into the ethnic origins of the British people.

Academics were collecting DNA from men with Viking names to see if they are directly descended from the Scandanavian traders and seaman who once ruled York and Yorkshire."

Read the full article at the York Press.

Viking mass grave linked to elite killers of the medieval world

"A crew of Viking mercenaries – some of the fiercest and most feared killers in the medieval world – could be the occupants of a mysterious mass grave in the south of England, according to a new theory.
The intriguing hypothesis is being put forward in a documentary, Viking Apocalypse, which will premiere on National Geographic UK on Wednesday, 25 January, and attempts to piece together the identities of a group of men who were apparently the victims of a horrific mass execution around the turn of the 11th century." Read the full article at PhysOrg.com.

Swedes set up 'ultimate Viking movie'

"After years of ridicule and misrepresentation, the Vikings are on their way home. Plans are well under way for what the Swedish company Fladenfilm is calling "the ultimate Viking movie". The $30m version of Frans G Bengtsson's bloody Nordic saga The Long Ships (which is due to shoot in 2013) will comprise two feature films and a television series. What is different about this project is that it is being made by Viking nations – the Swedes in combination with their neighbours." Read the full story at the Independent.

Viking remains reveal warriors filed their teeth to appear more ferocious to enemies

"An axe-swinging 'rape and pillage' fighter found in a Viking burial pit had filed his teeth to look more ferocious in battle.
The pain without anaesthetic would have been excruciating - but it would have proved his status as a great warrior, archaeologists said.
The warrior, found in Weymouth, Dorset, had grooves filed into his two front teeth."

Read the full article at the Daily Mail.

The Kensington Runestone

This has recently come up as a topic of discussion on The Troth's forum list, and so I decided to post some links for those unfamiliar with this artifact and the controversy surrounding it. The Wikipedia article takes a more or less neutral stance while noting that most authorities believe the stone to be a hoax. The Runestone Story site seems to take the view that the stone is genuine.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article: "The Kensington Runestone is a 200-pound slab of greywacke covered in runes on its face and side which, if genuine, would suggest that Scandinavian explorers reached the middle of North America in the 14th century. It was found in 1898 in the largely rural township of Solem, Douglas County, Minnesota, and named after the nearest settlement, Kensington. Almost all Runologists and experts in Scandinavian linguistics consider the runestone to be a hoax. ... The runestone has been analyzed and dismissed repeatedly without local effect. ... The community of Kensington is solidly behind the runestone, which has transcended its original cultural purposes and has "taken on a life of its own".

"Translation: Eight Götalanders and 22 Northmen on (this?) acquisition journey from Vinland far to the west. We had a camp by two (shelters?) one day's journey north from this stone. We were fishing one day. After we came home, found 10 men red from blood and dead. Ave Maria save from evil. There are 10 men by the inland sea to look after our ships fourteen days journey from this peninsula (or island). Year 1362
When the original text is transcribed to the Latin script, the message becomes quite easy to read for any modern Scandinavian. This fact is one of the main arguments against the authenticity of the stone. The language of the inscription bears much closer resemblance to 19th century than 14th century Swedish.
The AVM is historically consistent since any Scandinavian explorers would have been Catholic at that time."

Wm. P. Holman's site on the Kensington Runestone may be found here. Bear in mind that while the site claims several pieces of evidence to support the authenticity of the stone, such as stonecut moorings for boats such as were used by Vikings, it does not cite any sources for this information. The stone is currently housed in its own museum in Alexandria, Minnesota, whose site may be found here.