Books by Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide
ARC Humanities Press, Past Imperfect, 2019
This book presents a fresh overview of the Vikings from both a conceptual and material point of v... more This book presents a fresh overview of the Vikings from both a conceptual and material point of view. The prevailing image of a Viking is usually that of a fierce male, associated with military expansion and a distinctive material culture. In an engaging survey that provides many new insights, Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide and Kevin J. Edwards analyse Viking religion, economic life and material culture in general, both in their Scandinavian homelands and beyond. For Scandinavia, the Viking Age covers the period from ca. AD 800 to 1050. The Vikings beyond their Scandinavian homelands are usually associated with hit-and-run attacks traditionally starting with the raid on the Abbey of Lindisfarne in AD 797. Yet Scandinavian military expeditions started earlier than AD 797 and were directed eastwards towards the Baltic coast, while migrants were involved in trade and, in part, peaceful settlement.
Contents
1. The Vikings
2. Traditional Views, New Discoveries and Consequences for Interpretation
3. Viking Settlements and Economy
4. Viking Style and Religion
5. The End of the Viking Era
Studies in the Early Middle Ages (SEM 11), Jun 28, 2013
New interdisciplinary research methods and new models have been developed by the contributors to ... more New interdisciplinary research methods and new models have been developed by the contributors to present new vistas of sacrality in the Scandinavian and the Baltic landscape. To open up these case studies, a selection of over sixty images and maps accompanies this cutting-edge research, allowing the reader to explore sacralization and the Christianization process within its medieval setting. "
Overview of material and methods from excavations in medieval towns in Norway.
Småskriftserien Nr. 5, 1992
"...de beste bønder i Kiøbstæden..." En funksjons- og aktivitetsanalyse basert på gjenstandsmateriale., 1989
1988, with Christophersen, A, Jondell, E., Marstein, O., Reed, I.W. : Utgravning, kronologi og bebyggelsesutvikling. Fortiden i Trondheim bygrunn: Folkebibliotekstomten. Meddelelser nr. 13, del 1.
Articles / Book sections by Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide
Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 2020
R. Berge and M.M.Henriksen (eds): Arkeologi og kulturhistorie fra norskekysten til Østersjøen. Festsrkift til B. Berglundfra kulturhistorie fra VITARK 11, 2011
A number of settlements on the coast west of Bergen, Trondheim and Sarpsborg are dated roughly to... more A number of settlements on the coast west of Bergen, Trondheim and Sarpsborg are dated roughly to the first millennium AD, but the activity was particularly concentrated in the Viking Age. The settlements disappeared by the start of the second millennium. The disappearance coincides in time with the urbanisation in the respective regions. The activity at all sites is interpreted as seasonal, consisting of fishing and hunting of marine resources, and primarily run by men. The date of these particular coastal houses coincidence in time with Vikings’ robbing of salt in France, which made it possible to preserve fish and meat in the south of Norway. The potential for fish export to Christian parts of Europe was just as relevant in the Viking Age as in the Middle Ages. The settlements in southern and central parts of Norway discussed in this article are interpreted as forerunners for activities later associated with trade networks concentrating on fish, such as the Hanseatic League. The Hanseatic League was established due to the Christians’ need for fish during Lent. The activity in the Viking Age was probably similarly organised by an aristocracy. When the towns as well as this activity expanded and became more important, the minor, early fishing sites encountered competition from the large and probably much cheaper quantities of fish brought in from Lofoten, where cod could be dried without using salt. This may explain why activities outside Bergen, Trondheim and Sarpsborg ceased.
"The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there". These are Leslie Pole Hartley'... more "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there". These are Leslie Pole Hartley's famous words. Traces of bygone cultures appear to us in landscape and objects, and reveals not only cultures very different from our own, but also big differences between contemporary cultures in the past as demonstrated in material culture. In this paper I discuss cultural variation observed in archaeological sources as visualisation of identity, with particular focus on religious cult in Romsdal in Norway.
R. Flechner, M. Ní Mhaonaigh (eds.): The Introduction of Christianity into the Early Medieval Insular World , 2016
According to Life of Ansgar by Rimbert, there were attempts to convert people in Scandinavia, bot... more According to Life of Ansgar by Rimbert, there were attempts to convert people in Scandinavia, both in Denmark and in central Sweden, already in the ninth century. Scandinavia was the province of the missionary archdiocese of Hamburg from 831 which united with Bremen to form the archdiocese of Hamburg-Bremen in 845. It was not until 1104, when an archdiocese was established in Lund (then in Denmark, now in Sweden), that Scandinavia finally had an archdiocese that would oversee the entire region. In Norway, the Nidaros archdiocese was established in Trondheim in 1152-53, and in Sweden the Uppsala archdiocese was established in 1164. Christian Church organization was thus formally established in Scandinavia between 1104 and 1164, but it is still not clear how widespread Christianity was in the region at that time. Indeed, the majority of Sami people in the north were not converted before the period c. 1550-1750, notwithstanding the few who might have converted earlier.
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Books by Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide
Contents
1. The Vikings
2. Traditional Views, New Discoveries and Consequences for Interpretation
3. Viking Settlements and Economy
4. Viking Style and Religion
5. The End of the Viking Era
Articles / Book sections by Sæbjørg Walaker Nordeide
Contents
1. The Vikings
2. Traditional Views, New Discoveries and Consequences for Interpretation
3. Viking Settlements and Economy
4. Viking Style and Religion
5. The End of the Viking Era
The most famous ship burials in Norway are found at Oseberg and Gokstad. Beside the magnificent ships, the rich grave goods of all kinds have made these burials important sources to increase knowledge and adventure the Viking period. A boat is frequently part of the equipment of a burial in late Iron Age in Norway, even if not everywhere and in the same way. There are however various opinions among scholars on the reason for putting a boat in the grave.
The boat or ship is often forming some sort of a coffin for the body, and the place for the burial has been carefully arranged. In the case of Oseberg the funeral including preparations and closing rituals took months. But how should we interpret the boat finds that obvious were part of a ritual, but lack a body and other characteristics of a funeral?
Viking Age art is dominated by animal motifs. In particular, the so-called ‘gripping-beasts’ spread from the end of the eighth century. This article discusses a couple of examples of motifs on archaeological objects in which people and animals are combined, namely from Oseberg and Lærdal. On the basis of the examples, the mythological meaning of the gripping-beast style is discussed.
By combining archaeological and written sources, it is suggested that the animal style may well be inspired by foreign impulses, for instance religious, Christian art, but the particular Scandinavian development of the gripping-beast style fits well with the assumed cosmology in late Iron Age Scandinavia. Several aspects indicate that the gripping-beasts’ significance may be anticipated to be associated with religious ideas in what we roughly may call Old Norse religion, and the art applied may have contributed to the spread and maintenance of myths and important events as well as social ideology accordingly
In this article some general characteristics of fortifications in Norway are presented. Fortifications were in general very modest in medieval Norway compared to countries further south, concerning both their number and size. Strongholds and stone constructions were almost with no exceptions only built by the king and the church in medieval Norway. Early medieval strongholds and aristocratic residences are presented rather than the greater royal and ecclesiastical castles, however, as perhaps more likely models to Snorri’s Reykholt.
Archaeological evidence from fortifications before Snorri’s time is scarce, however, and the earliest fortifications in Norway mentioned in written sources are archbishop Øystein’s wooden stronghold and King Sverre’s strongholds and palisade surrounding the waterfront, both located in Trondheim late in the 12th century. Albeit sources are rare and not thoroughly investigated, it looks like aristocratic residences are rarely fortified. Fortifications from this period in Norway are mostly rather simple, like earthwork, moats, palisades and minor strongholds. The use of stone as construction material, as well as the type of site, for instance an island, could further add to the impression of a residence as fortified. Attention should also be paid to the significant authority represented by material culture and aristocratic culture in general.
In this multidisciplinary project, evolutionary dynamics of ecosystems were studied and two main data components were constructed: an archaeological and a pollen database that could be correlated through a similar chronological framework. Time was given in calibrated years BP, enabling us to compare the two very different countries of Norway and the Czech Republic. Archaeological data was systemised through activities which potentially made an impact on the environment, in a radius of 2000 m surrounding each pollen site. Pollen data was collected from bogs and lakes, as well as from archaeological sites.
On a Norwegian scale, we have compiled the data into time intervals of 500 years and made local vegetation reconstructions using the program LOVE within the Landscape Reconstruction Algorithm (Sugita 2007). The resulting vegetation cover has been analysed in relation to archaeological data using gradient analyses.
Methods applied in this project could be interesting for others, and we would be interested in discussing our approach. In this paper, we will present our methods with a few examples of our results, based on cases from Norway.
Literature:
Sugita, S. 2007. Theory of quantitative reconstruction of vegetation II: all you need is LOVE. The Holocene 17 (2): 243–257.
It is clear that the Christianization process in Norway happened at different times in different parts of the country. It has been interpreted as a gradual process (peaceful?) or abrupt (forced, top-down?). However, it is clear that people of various religions lived side by side for a period, and a more interesting question is how these groups co-existed. An exploration of relevant sites in relation to each other and to the landscape may reveal new information about how the process actually was going on.
NNS welcomes contributions to scholarship relating to all aspects of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, including but not limited to: literary and textual culture; mythology, folklore, and history of religions; archaeology and material culture; language, linguistics, philology, and runology; medieval history; and comparative literary studies.
NNS does not solicit or publish reviews of individual books. Review essays concerning larger trends, topics, and bodies of scholarship are welcome.
NNS welcomes contributions to scholarship relating to all aspects of Old Norse-Icelandic literature, including but not limited to: literary and textual culture; mythology, folklore, and history of religions; archaeology and material culture; language, linguistics, philology, and runology; medieval history; and comparative literary studies.
NNS does not solicit or publish reviews of individual books. Review essays concerning larger trends, topics, and bodies of scholarship will be considered.