I have devoted the months that passed from the last note on the blog to reflection on what is actually lacking in Viking age archaeology, and I came to some very disturbing conclusion.
1. Problems of gender archaeology are almost completly excluded form research. There are very few books that challenge essentialistic and heteronormative thinking of modern scholars. Even in The Viking world published in 2008 the chapter on gender is written from patriarchal perspective dealing only with role of women in politics of men. The books that describe the life of women in the Vikinge age are concerned mostly with the division of labour, presenting it as very clear categories that fit to the seldomly chalanged infield/outfield paradigm, which seems to be an outdated concept. In fact only in three books I've encountered a different approach to the topic of gender archaeology, one is Seid, written by Brit Soil, in which she exploits the idea of third shamanic gender. The two other books are I.M Beck Danielson's Masking moments and Lotte Hedagers's Iron age myth and materiality. In both books question of construction of the gender identity is risen. However, as I wrote in the begining, that kind of topics are completly excluded from popular publications, in which a simplified view on ancient societies is presented.
2. A topic corresponding with gender archaeology is related to the neglected aspect of stratification of viking societies. Of course all authors acknowledge that a hierarchy existed, always writing about the slaves, the free land owners and the jarls and kings but in the meantime they are not really interested in researching all the mentioned groups. Most attention is of course devoted to elites, as their members produced probably most evidence that survived to our time, concerning both the material, archaeological evidence and later writings, produced on demand of later medieval elite of Iceland. As it is reasonable on one level, on the other the alternative histories, concerned with the majority of viking society would be highly desired.
3. The elitaristic focus of research is also the cause of the neglect of some other subjects that seem to be less exciting than travel, riding, plundering, warfare, building of kingdoms, pagan cults and recently - long distance trade. Important aspect of daily lifes like agriculture, subsistence, pottery production and craftsmanship involved in production of simple tools are almost totally excluded from popular books on the subject of vikings (from my own experience: when I was buying Vikinger i vest, I was told that it is about boring farming Vikings, and other books are more exiting :). I must agree that it is true, but still it is the only book I've found that describes a viking age water mill, and even though it might not be as exiting as another book on viking rides it is much more useful).
4. The other problem that derives from the concentration of attention of scholars on the elites of viking society is the illusion of it's homogenity and shared culture. This view however begins to be recently challenged in publications like Decolonizing the viking age II. Death rituals in south east Scandinavia AD 800-1000 by F. Svanberg, or in S. Sindbaeks article The lands of Denemearce: cultural difference and social networks in South Scandinavia. Still the ideas developed in more specialized literature are not mentioned in books developed for broader public.
It seems that viking age archaeology and even to greater extent viking studies are seldomly a subject of reflection that reveals that it still uses in many ways outdated approach to matters concerning past societies. The archaeology itself sometimes appears as a past time activity invented by bored english gentelmen to study past life of other gentelmen that surely lived in ancient times. The man focused elitaristic approach, connected to emphasis on nationality and nation building and shared Panscandinavian culture in many ways resembles the victorian era colonial archaeology.
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