I went to meet the vikings exhibition and it was bad...

Recently one of my favorite museums - the National Museum in Copenhagen had rearranged its Viking age exhibition. Unfortunately the result is really just designed to entertain tourists and is reinforcing the wrong stereotypes about the Viking age.

Starting with the name witch quite lose use the word “Vikings” without any thought put into who they are showcasing ending with the selection of items on display this four room gallery is a disaster from a point of view of an archaeologist. Visually stunning but devoid of any true meaning photos dominate the gallery, accompanied by short texts in which curators try to smuggle some knowledge but are clearly loosing to do so. The disappointment is greater since the same museum at the time houses a genuinely more informative and educational exhibition about 20th c. Mongolia than it manages to pull off trying to present the last period of Danish prehistory. The fact that the museum arranged the start of the exhibition with the premier of quite frankly quite bad show “Vikings” is really just adding an insult to injury, as the show had in my opinion pushed the public awareness and research scope of new project at least 15 years back.



Starting with the world “Vikings” – it is a term without the meaning, it does not describe an ethnicity or the occupation. Material culture of Scandinavia, as well as burial rituals clearly point to large regional differences. It is a blanket term used to grab attention.

Then on the way in you see a large photo of a seer – reconstructed on a basis of the content of a grave with presumable staff for sorcery. These graves are highly problematic in my opinion – in short, their content does not match to the Icelandic sources describing semi nomadic life style of the presumable seeress, housing a large number of tools for domestic craft activates, items related to elite aristocratic spheres, not to mention their usually quite prominent position in the cemeteries. I am not going to write about the bersekers in horned helmets who are also there.



Than we can progress into more rooms filled with gold and inaccuracy quite well described by S.Sindbeak (https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/A40E54491325BC2E3951F975F6452708/S0003598X19000012a.pdf/meet_the_vikingsor_meet_halfway_the_new_viking_display_at_the_national_museum_of_denmark_in_copenhagen.pdf). Reinforcing the focus on the Vikings as the warrior aristocracy, which is just one facet of the quite diverse and dynamic society. There is no chronological progression, no description of processes taking place during this quite turbulent times.Artifacts and photos of artifacts from different places are just mixed to provide the most impact on audience. It is just a fan service for reenactors and Viking fanatics, however it resonates well with what dominates the current research agenda, that focuses on sensational, sacrificing the necessary ground work that should go into reanalysis of older excavations and towards developing more source critical approaches to the work with material culture. 



I am sure that these very fake images will sale very well but the damaged they do is probably not possible to fix. For years there were many attempts towards produce more nuanced picture of the Late Iron Age that are now in my opinion in serious trouble – from one side “sabotaged” by such a flashy uninformative exhibition, from other thwarted by the very sensationalist research that currently seems to have it center in universities in Central Sweden – what is surprising, taking into consideration the very moderate and highly theoretical approach that was characterizing the Swedish archaeology in late 90’ and early 00’. I hope that the strong reaction of scientific community will be enough to save the studies of the Late Iron Age in Scandinavia because right now we are catering to the lowest ideas of public imagination instead of trying to present new content in responsible and more "scientific" way. We should not try to create a "Viking" Disneyland which seems to be the idea behind the majority of recent viking themed exhibitions.

Finally, an article published.

I managed to finally published an article -  Pyre-Related Material in Inhumation Graves: Investigating Traces of Viking Age Biritualism in South-Western Scania. Here is the abstract:

The article discusses and briefly describes the inclusion of cremated remains in the inhumation burials dating to the Viking Age discovered in six locations in south-western Scania. Previous interpretations, linking the material to human funerary sacrifice and the cult of Odin, are discussed. A new perspective is proposed, focusing on the transformative nature of the burial and on its role in establishing the identities of the mourners, with special attention directed towards New Kinship studies. Ideas for further research are presented.

If you are interested in the subject, just pick up Lund Archaeological Review 22 (2016) or follow this link https://www.academia.edu/35785549/Pyre-Related_Material_in_Inhumation_Graves_Investigating_Traces_of_Viking_Age_Biritualism_in_South-Western_Scania

some comments on: A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics

After a long break of not publishing new content I think I should return to share my thoughts about the recent results of DNA analysis of the skeleton form the grave 581 from Birka. I am disregarding the part of the discussion related to fact that there seem to be a bit of the mess with the bones bags, as I am quite sure that no one would publish an article if they would not have been 100% sure that they have the right bones.

I am quite thrilled by the results and I am hopeful that they will have a positive impact on the field of viking age mortuary studies but I am quite far from reaching the conclusions presented in the paper A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics. 

To quickly present my views about it I have to say that its hard scientific part seems to be ok, with the description of methods and good presentation of the results with assorted graphs and tables as well as comprehensive additional materials that provide even more detail. 

The part that is in my opinion surprisingly weak, taking in to account that Neil Price, Torun Zachrisson and Charlotte Hedenstierna - Jonson are the co-authors, is the social archaeological part. Prof. Hedenstierna - Jonson is an expert on Birka and on weapon graves and for some people prof. Price might be considered a leading authority on viking age burial customs, what is a source of my confusion regarding following:

1. WHY ON EARTH EVERYONE ASSUMES THAT BURIAL GOODS ARE THE PROPERTY OF THE DECEASED? In 2017?? :D To elaborate a bit, what is found in the grave is always a selection of items that organisers of the funeral seem fit for some reason to be included in the burial and also sometimes tools required for the success of the ritual. They might not be related to the occupation of the dead Person. For example, in eastern Denmark there is not many graves with weapons, but as archaeologist we don’t assume that there were not many warriors there. There seem to be quite a lot of weapons in burials around Birka, and they seem to play important part of local burial ritual, it is still really impossible to say that all of that people were warriors. I am not employing a double standard here, I am against connecting straightforwardly weapon graves to warrior graves in cases of every sex. There is a lot of research about weapon graves in Anglo Saxon England and sometimes individuals to young to fight are buried with weapons. I think that possibly taken the whole early medieval Europe into perspective weapons should be viewed more as a status symbol - they were after all quite expensive.
2. Why gaming pieces mean proficiency in strategy and point to being a high ranking officer, if again, they might not belong to the poor buried person and also really what is the connection to playing games and being an officer and how it is visible in archaeological record, because this is really far beyond my reasoning?
3. Why there is no plan of the burial, just reconstructions, when the same plan is used as the argument to claim that there was only one skeleton in the grave? This is simply not fair :) I don’t know if I am a researcher anymore at this point, but probably people who are would appreciate a plan on which the position of the burial goods is visible, because maybe, the of the items meaning is in some way connected to where they were found in the grave. In the case of Kilnta grave or graves from Kaupang described on this blog the position of weapons might point to conclusion that they are not directly associated with the deceased individuals. In Birka some spears were found plunged into the burial chamber walls, suggesting their performative use during funerals. Some horses skulls were smashed, also pointing towards a dynamic ceremony that involves a sacrifice making a horse more of a ritual tool than an item. How without a description where what was found can we reach any interpretation on our own?
4. If there would be no weapons in the grave would the isotope analysis end up interpreted as a result of marriage with a non local man? I mean that how people usually look at female mobility in the Viking age :)
5. No information how is the burial dated, what happened at that time in the general area and how that events might have played a role in the burial and the choice of burial furnishings.
6. Two horses seems like a big deal, but horses are found in female burials in central Sweden (please don’t force me to go and search my bookshelf for references)

Probably the things that I am now making a bit fun of will be rectified in another article in a journal devoted more to archaeology. Both science and archaeological interpretation are equally important and require space and time to reach a good outcome, here archaeology got too neglected. I think that when the space is to little to discus in detail a controversial idea, it might be smarter to stick to publishing the Genomic and Osteological results, without going to far in to their social consequences. 

Maybe the conclusion should be that two hypothesis are possible: a) This is a female warrior buried with weapons or b) because it is a woman buried with weapons, possibly having a sword in a grave does not signify a warrior (ekhem - lack of physical trauma in weapon graves around the site mentioned in the article - ekhem).

However the positive side of the article is that it challenges the popular believe of very mainstream and modern division of labour between sexes and maybe will force people to think about the sex in the past in more constructivist terms. I would like to point out the fact that in some cultures it is ok for example for only daughter to perform social duties of a son. Maybe if we like to think about “vikings” (whatever they are) as forefathers of at least a part of european population, it is not necessary to think that their ideas of sex and kinship had to be exactly same as ours. Generally I believe that the article provides valuable data that can be used to reach much better conclusions in the future, if more factors are taken into account. I am quite sure that there will be a much bigger positive outcome from this publication, than just a media hype that it was causing couple of weeks ago.

Literature:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajpa.23308/full

The trauma of popular science continues

Couple of weeks ago news story was published on popular scientific website:

http://sciencenordic.com/vikings-abused-and-beheaded-their-slaves

An interesting study of an interesting subject where bioarchaeology had proven not to show the expected results.  The research question probably was: does the individual interpreted as slaves present evidence of non local origin and mistreatment and/or peri mortem trauma? The answer is mostly not. :) Does it challenge the interpretation of burials as funerary sacrifice of a slave? Not really since according to the researchers slaves might be local and just shoved a little bit :). The problem of funerary sacrifices is more complex as it is connected to pretty much most of the controversial subjects in Viking age research. Here are some of the subjects that are not so obvious as presented in the article:

1.        We don’t know if we should treat Rus’ as phenomenon purely “Viking” and as such use ibn Fadalan and others as text to which we later find archaeological illustrations in Scandinavian material. The idea that the group consisted of people of different background is thought provoking and has been presented many times (among others: Hedenstierna – Jonson 2006; Urbańczyk 2014) and perhaps this should be mentioned in the short press release as…

1.       Accounts of Arab travellers form the majority of the written sources we have for the phenomena human funerary sacrifice (also mentioning wives and lovers as people who die during the funeral) and there a problem of translation of term Jaria arises, which can mean a young girl or a slave girl and it is both used in Ibn Fadalan’s account to describe the position of the sacrificed girl as well as the women who was performing the sacrifice (Petrukhin 2007). This creates a bit of a problem for interpreting their social position, even more since…

1.       We should not expect burials to mirror the social standing of the buried individual. Some people had this idea before, it didn’t worked out well, possibly we should start thinking in this way in Viking studies – we will have less witches, warriors and sacrificed slaves, possibly as well as blacksmiths but maybe we will have some  more interesting theoretical perspectives and present some thoughts that are more valid. To remind everyone once again, burial context is a result of a group effort of establishing and fixing the social identities of both the deceased and the participants (Oestigaard 2000; Ekengren & Nilsson Stutz 2009; Williams 2006; Graham 2009) – the identities are changed because of the event. And what complicates thing even more…

1.        According to some researchers we should not trust the narrative in Rigsthula (Simek 2006) – it is a late description and possibly not entirely applicable. The Viking age societies should be viewed as more complex with many other forms of dependency other than slavery.

1.        There are no criteria of how to recognize a slave in the grave presented in the text – this is just sad – since the text is about the burials with a slave. No clear definition makes the reasoning hard to understand. For my research minimal conditions for considering burial context as a result of funerary sacrifice is presence of remains of more than one individual, deposited as a result of primary rite in which one of them bears the traces of intentional violence that might have lead to his or hers demise. This is still not enough to make a solid claim but at least it is starting point.

1.             And the whole Scandinavia is treated as a homogenic area in which – if the sacrifices occur – they are all of the people of the same social standing and in similar context as in the ibn Fadalan narrative from the steeps by the Volga river. With the highly diversified burial customs across the peninsula, and with the recognition of the more local character of the pagan “religions” this seem highly unlikely.

Sadly this study seems to write itself in to the new narrative that claims that Viking age was presented as too gentle time period, a narrative that is in my opinion a reactionary approach to the critical studies that recognized the roots of the Viking age related scholarship in national romanticism and took adequate approach to modernise the subject and tried in some aspect to bring it up to date. In this research  stand a substantial effort is taken to prove the mistreatment of slaves and it is based at speculations at best. An example can be found here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/12/151228-vikings-slaves-thralls-norse-scandinavia-archaeology/  or  http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/09/140926-vikings-norse-raiding-berserkers-scandinavia-winroth/ . This work is unfortunately plagued with source critical errors which were I hope the result of journalist writing something hip and short and not archaeologist looking for hype subject. I would never claim that people in medieval Scandinavia did not beaten their slaves or not mistreated them as they were not considered as persons in understanding of possessing an identity of a group member, but I at this date there is no evidence for any of the situations described in the popular scientific texts. Good research would rather look for the root of the problem – why the double burials discovered in Scandinavia so often are presented as the result of human sacrifice? What is the relation between the archaeologist, material sources and ancient text? When compared to other parts of Iron Age can we claim that Viking age was specially brutal?

In conclusion someone was beheaded and abused but we don't know if it was a slave or not, further we can't really tell with the currently aviable sources.

Literature

Ekengren, F. & Nilsson Stutz, L. 2009. I tillvarons gränsland. In: Ekengren, F. & NilssonStutz, L. (eds.). I tillvarons gränsland: perspektiv på kroppen mellan liv och död. Lund

Oestigaard, T. 2000. Sacrifices of raw, cooked and burnt humans. Norwegian Archaeological Review vol. 33 (1), 41–58

Graham, E-J..2009. Becoming person, becoming ancestors. Personhood, memory and the corpse in Roman rituals of social remembrance, Archaeological Dialogues vol 16(1), 51-74

Hedenstierna – Jonson Ch.  2006 Birka Warrior, Stockholm

Petrukhin, V. 2007 Viking Woman in Rus’: Wives, Slaves or ‘Valkyries’? In: Fransson, U., Svedin, M., Bergerbrant, S. Androshchuk, F. (eds.) Cultural interaction between east and west. Archaeology, artefacts and human contacts in northern Europe, Stockholm, 66 - 69

Urbańczyk, P. 2014 Bliskie spotkania wikingów, Wodzisław śląski

Williams, H. 2006. Death and memory in early medieval Britain. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press

Vikings Beyond Boundaries - Conference in Oslo – an overview from subjective perspective

In a couple of past days I was extremely lucky to attend a conference held at University in Oslo, dealing with the Viking influence outside the area perceived at their traditional homelands. I am very glad that I could participate in such a well organised event that brought together many top names in the “Viking” studies.

I am finally feeling that the way in which the “Vikings” are studied is changing in the directions that I find congruent with the ethical and theoretical approaches I try to keep in my research. I am quite sure that these ideas had been present in the academia for much longer period that I have probably initially expected and they are now taking the stage after a generational change. Here I would like to humbly present my opinions about the change I can see taking place in the research agenda

I agree  to some extent with views expressed by Dagfinn Skre in his presentation when he urged for more abandonment of the ideas of uniqueness of the “Vikings” and called for placing them in wider reference frames. I can observe that quite often research about the “Vikings” exist in a certain form of “bubble” in which only few processes are compared to similar developments taking place on a global sphere. I agree also that “Vikings” form now a part of a wider pop culture. The consequence is profound as this popular image that is formed on a base of research influenced by the idea of uniqueness and certain essentialistic qualities through mass media, makes its way to the mind of the people, from which some become later archaeologist and further strengthen “the mental boundaries” of the Viking age. This can be only challenged by certain self-awareness of the historical conditions in which the subject emerged and the present conditions in which it is currently analysed.

On a more general level I can see that there is a visible rise in the subjects connected to archaeology of identities. This is extremely pleasing as in my opinion social archaeology forms one of the most fascinating branches of research. Interesting concept was introduced by Neil Price, as he somewhat separated the pirates from the farmers, maybe placing the term “Viking” finally in its proper context. However, I must say it is very hard to evaluate his observations, due to the fact that detailed perspective is hard to present in short 20 minutes presentation, and large part of his concepts is based on interpretations of several sites which might be more problematic than could be presented. Another positive development is the turn towards observing the importance of the process of the burial rituals in the construction of the society and recognition of the “artificial” nature of genealogies. I am sure that this points to the necessity of new studies of the concepts of the old Norse idea of Kinship, possibly looking for its more “social” than “biological” aspects and its role in establishing social networks. A view that places family “blood” relations in a larger reference framework of other social bonds, not necessarily drawing a sharp distinction between those two categories seem now to be a paper we all need.

Clearly an interesting development is integrating the phenomena happening in the East with those happening in the West, since it was rather problematic in the past. Now the situation is more balanced and allows for more global observation and for tracing connections between the process taking place on both of the areas, that are just divided probably only by our contemporary mental boundaries. The only concerning observation is the small amount of papers about the Western side of the Southern Baltic, but this is probably due to the difficult research situation in the region, facing the language barrier and research tradition boundaries (also mental in their essence). However, as Hauke Jöns and Anna Kowalska presented they can be overcome, resulting with extremely interesting research.

To sum up, the whole event has left a very positive impression on me. Only two problems that I would like to see addressed did not appear: the class restricted nature of the most of the evidence from the Viking age period that results in certain predominance of descriptions small elite was not mentioned, as well as the applicability of the term “Viking” as a taxon that seems not to correspond with the situation in the past societies. However this subjects might not be regarded as falling into the scope of the conference, and as so, their omission cannot really be considered as problematic.

Repeat and Reheat - discussing the origins of the Viking age — once again from the British perspective.

It seems that year 2015 is the year in which British early medieval archaeologists decided to finally adres ideas put forward by Barnett (2008). I have to say, it is about time to wave good bye to the based on circumstantial evidence ideas of shortage of wives as a cause of Viking age rides. However I am concerned still concerned about how does the other British researchers question that concept.

A newest example is What really caused the Viking Age? The social content of raiding and exploration by the co-author of previously discussed article - S.P Ashby (2015). He discusses the powers of forgein objects in the process of creation of elite social identity and a mean of gaining status as a proof of bravery related to raiding and traveling activities. Utilizing a fashionable turn towards object agency (which is a very problematic issue in archaeology since it is very rarely defined in anyway in articles that utilize it) and object biographies in my view he recycle the concept that the Viking age was mainly caused by the need of young generation of warriors to prove themselves and gain status. It is not a new idea by any means but what had to be said, it is nicely repacked in some theoretical concepts. A lack of theory (except the topics of urbanization and emergence of states) is what plagues the Viking age research and introducing concepts well known in prehistory seems to be a good way forward.

What I find very much necessary to point out is that forgein exotic objects (but also transformed practices) made their way to Scandinavia before the Viking age, often ending up in burials. They attest that elites were well connected to their insular and continental counterparts. Inhabitants of the peninsula were not a band of savages that waited until 793 to pop up and introduced themselves to the civilized world. The key question is the scale of those contacts before the final decades of the 8th c. In my opinion the answer to that question does not lie in the Births Isles, but it is buried in archaeological store houses in Scandinavia, were results of many years of excavation awaits a careful examination. A key issue is identification of the fragmented glass material from so-called Central Places of south Scandinavia. Another important area in which origins of the Viking age, inexplicably defined as time of riding and extensive traveling could be sought are the southern and eastern coast of Baltic that seem to be witnesses to earliest example of different expeditions, both peaceful or warlike.

Ashby seems to finally recognize the elitaristic focus of viking age research, writing about warrior elite and their means of producing their social status. In my opinion the whole research that is connected to the viking age is biased towards the members of social elite. The definition of Viking Age as period of rides and trade expedition further places the focus on the prominent members of the population, that were able to afford an expense of going abroad and on the members of the costal urban communities that usually were the target of those travels. With this developments taking place the Viking age studies will further exclude the majority of the population. In my studies of rural burial grounds of South Western Scania - one of the most populated regions in early medieval Denmark, I have found out that there is no change in the burial customs during the transition from Late Vendel to the Viking age. What is even more puzzling - there aren’t much finds that might have derived from riding activities in western Europe. This would suggest a limited impact of the social changes brought by the Viking expeditions. This stands in strong contrast to areas of western Norway, most often discussed in research. The true changes starts to take place in South Western Scania in the 10th c. due to the creation of the Danish state by the Jelling dynasty - and then the Insular connections become more prominent, however still not on the cemeteries. Also the older central places, with a pre-Viking age continuity are abandoned and new centers rise to power. Viking age, defined as a time of raids and travels, with a strict chronological boundaries, have a very limited applicability in archaeology.

A source critical concern of mine is also the fact that author utilized mainly english or written in english literature. Also worrying is the time depth of the article, operating around the well established as the beginning of the Viking age, final decades of 8th that in my opinion seriously limits the potential for new discoveries.

literature: 

Ashby S.P 2015. What really caused the Viking Age? The social content of raiding and exploration, Archaeological dialogues 22 (1)

Barnett J. 2008. What caused the Viking Age?, Antiquity 82

Moving the non-existing brackets – comments on the reception of “Urban Networks and Arctic Outlands”

I have stated in the introduction to my master thesis that appeal to public is a very strong trait of the Viking age research. This can be an advantage but it sometimes contributes to clouding of judgement and over emphasizing the unimportant over the truly interesting in the eye of experienced researcher. I personally believe that it is the case with the public reception of STEVEN P. ASHBY’s, ASHLEY N. COUTU’s and SØREN M. SINDBÆK’s  article.

The paper presents the results of analysis of horn and bone material from three Danish sites of Ribe, Aarhus and Aggersborg. I cannot comment on the scientific part of the paper and discuss the issues of using the mass spectronomy, since I simply lack of knowledge to do so. I can however comment on how results are presented to the public and what seems to be over emphasised in the interpretation. Further I can question the sense of discussing certain issues.

The results of mass spectronomy had revealed that among other raw materials, the reindeer antler, non-local to the area of Southern Jutland was used in comb production in the early phases of the settlement at Ribe. This points towards the fact that the material had to be imported probably from Norway. The authors rightfully stress the importance of the discovery towards a shift of looking at the Viking age urban sites and their relation with the hinterland, pointing that it might have been less important than the longer connections (although I have to say that the reindeer related material seems not to form the majority of the materials used). It is also important that Ribe’s importance as a trading site is attested not only on the local but also non-local level. This discovery could point towards the discussion about the organisation of the supply chain and collection of the raw material in the comb production (partially touched upon in the conclusion), the status of the craftsmen (attached or independent?) or the level of the specialisation (although a lot of other data would be needed). Instead what we get is a discussion about the beginning of the Viking age and what was the impulse for it. Immediately the attention is shifted towards maritime travel and gathering the experience and expertise in it before the famous Viking expedition known from the historical sources. The pop cultural image takes over a relevant subject leading towards web headlines like here:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-05/uoy-st050715.php (“TRADE STARTED THE VIKING AGE!”)

http://sciencenordic.com/viking-age-began-denmark (My personal favourite: “VIKING AGE BEGAN IN DENMARK!”)

The big news suddenly is that now the Viking Age begins around 725. It is very problematic to present this kind of statement as a relevant discovery. First problem is that Viking Age is not an event – it is a modern category, quite frankly, it will begin whenever we decide to put it and will be triggered by whatever factor a person will chose. There are no objectively defined traits of the period, it all depends on how far into the past tracking origins of certain process we wish to go.  Here, authors point towards establishment of long over regional networks as probably decisive factor. I don’t see any reason why to focus on these particular craft remains as the proof that people were able to make long distance voyages by sea – Authors themselves point toward earlier Iron Age context, such as bog weapon offerings of non-local origin as a prove that people were able to move around. Researchers dealing with older parts of Iron Age point to the fact that Scandinavia was not isolated from the developments taking place in the continent, as people served as mercenaries within Roman legions and came into contact with the Huns. Ulf Näsman had argued for a regional and long term perspective on studying the Viking age already 15 years ago (2000). Sadly, most of his reservations still holds. Mhyre had argued (among other more controversial things) that petty kingdoms, existing before the Viking age were well integrated into continental political and trade system, pointing out that trade was conducted not only with luxury items, but also commodities (2000). Placing the historical narrations in opposition to archaeological remains to prove the earlier start of the Viking age seems to be unnecessary, as anyone interested in the subject probably already is aware of the discovery of the boat grave of Scandinavian origin at Salme in Estonia, that was dated to the beginning of 8^th c. (Allmäe 2011). Additional, there is early evidence of establishing of trading places in the eastern Europe with a substantial influence people of Scandinavian origin (Lind 2011; Lind 2012). The whole debate centres in the west, ignoring evidence from the other side of the Baltic.

This is a result of kind of Anglo-centric view which Scandinavian researchers must shed away, in which Viking age begins when the raids on the British Isle become possible or important. It is puzzling how easy we forget about the imports that pre-date the Viking age from that area, such as  claw beakers (Ljungkvist 2009) or ignore possible Scandinavian connections visible for example in Sutton Hoo burial (Woolf 2014). Additionally bigger control should be exercised over what do the journalists publish. There is a lot of evidence for mobility of people before the end of the 8^th century and probably it is necessary to place Ribe in a larger network of so called Wics (Näsman 2000) and also acknowledge that Franks, Anglo Saxons and Frisians were able to sail in good enough way to maintain connections between those sites already in the earlier period of the iron Age.

Literature:

Most important of all:

Ashby, S., Coutu, A., Sindbӕk, S. 2015 Urban Networks and Arctic Outlands: Craft Specialists and Reindeer Antler in Viking Towns, European Journal of Archaeology (online early access)

And:

Allmäe,  R. 2011. Human bones in Salme boat-grave I, the Island of Saaremaa: Estonia, Papers on Antrophology XX

Lind, J. 2012. “Vikinger”, vikingetid og  vikingeromantik, Kuml 2012

Lind, J. 2011. «Vikings» and the Viking Age, In: Gvozdetskaja, N., Konovalova, I., Melnikova, E., Podossinov, A. (eds) Stanzas of friendship: Studies in Honour of Tatjana N. Jackson

Ljungkvist, J. 2009. Continetal imports to Scandinavia: Patterns and changes between 400-800 AD, In: Quast, D. (eds) Foreigners in Early Medieval Europe: Thirteen International Studies on Early Medieval Mobility

Mhyre, B. 2000. The early Viking age in Norway, Acta Archaeologica 71

Näsman, U. 2000. Rides, Migrations and Kingdoms - The Danish Case, Acta Archaeologica 71

Woolf, A. 2014. Sutton Hoo and Sweden revisited. In: Gnasso, A., Intagliata, E., MacMaster, T., Morris, B. The Long Seventh century: continuity and discontinuity in the age of transition.