HIS2128/HIS4128: Perspectives on the Viking Age
Pensum SPRING 2020
Primary sources
Digital compendium (must log in to access)
Political culture
Hávamál, stanzas 1–77 (http://www.heathenhof.com/the-havamal-3-translations/)
Heimskringla II, Saga about Olav Tryggvason, ch. 80, 85, 88 (http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Heimskringla%20I%20revised.pdf)
Viking Ethnicities
Old English Orosius: Ohthere and Wulfstan’s accounts in the compendium
Power and religion
Eyrbyggja saga, ch. 1–4 (https://www.sagadb.org/eyrbyggja_saga.en);
Vita Ansgari, ch. 11, 12, 19 (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/anskar.asp )
Viking ships
Ibn Fadlan’ account, in James E. Montgomery, “Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 3 (2000), 1–25 (25 pp.).
Secondary literature
Books (available at the campus bookstore Akademika):
- Somerville, Angus A. and R. Andrew McDonald, The Vikings And Their Age. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013.
- Compendium for HIS2128/4128
Extra readings for HIS4128
- Sawyer, Peter H. 2013, The Wealth of Anglo-Saxon England, Based on the Ford Lectures Delivered in the University of Oxford in Hilary Term 1993. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Online articles (accessible through the UiO network):
Lesley Abrams, “Diaspora and Identity in the Viking Age,” Early Medieval Europe 20 (2012), 17–38 (22 pp.)
Anders Andrén, “The Significance of Places: the Christianization of Scandinavia from a Spatial Point of View,” World Archaeology, 45 (2013), 27–45 (19 pp.).
Steven P. Ashby, “What Really Caused the Viking Age? The Social Content of Raiding and Exploration,” Archaeological Dialogues 22 (2015), 89–106 (18 pp.).
Matthew J. Baker and Erwin H. Bulte, “Kings and Vikings: on the Dynamics of Competitive Agglomeration,” Economics of Governance 11 (2010), 207–27 (21 pp.).
Irene Baug and others, “The Beginning of the Viking Age in the West,” Journal of Maritime Archaeology 14 (2018), 43–80 (32 pp.).
Sarah Croix, “The Vikings, Victims of Their Own Success? A Selective View on Viking Research and Its Dissemination,” Danish Journal of Archaeology 4 (2015), 82–96 (15 pp.).
Andres Siegfried Dobat, “Viking Stranger-Kings: the Foreign as a Source of Power in Viking Age Scandinavia, or, Why There Was a Peacock in the Gokstad Ship Burial?” Early Medieval Europe 23 (2015), 161–201 (41 pp.).
Clare Downham, “Viking Ethnicities: A Historiographic Overview,” History Compass 10 (2012), 1–11 (11 pp.).
Paul Gazzoli, “Denemearc, Tanmark ala, and confinia Normannorum: The Annales regni Francorum and the Origins of Denmark,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 7 (2011), 29–43 (15 pp.).
Erin Goeres, “The Many Conversions of Hallfre?r Vandr??askáld,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 7 (2011), 45–62 (17 pp.).
Zanette Tsigaridas Gl?rstad, “Sign of the Times? The Transfer and Transformation of Penannular Brooches in Viking-Age Norway,” Norwegian Archaeological Review 45 (2012), 30–51 (20 pp.).
D. M. Hadley, “Viking and Native: Re-thinking Identity in the Danelaw,” in Early Medieval Europe 11 (2001), 45–70 (26 pp.).
Haki Antonsson, “Saints and Relics in Early Christian Scandinavia,” Mediaeval Scandinavia 15 (2005), 51-80 (30 pp.).
Mads Dengs? Jessen and others, “A Palisade Fit for a King: Ideal Architecture in King Harald Bluetooth’s Jelling,” Norwegian Archaeological Review, 47 (2014), 42–64 (23 pp.).
Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard and Gert Tinggaard Svendsen, “Rational Bandits: Plunder, Public Goods, and the Vikings,” Public Choice, 117 (2003), 255–72 (18 pp.).
John McKinnell, “The Making of Hávamál,” Journal of Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 3 (2007), 75-115 (41 pp.).
Montgomery, James E. 2000, “Ibn Fadlan and the Rusiyyah,” Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 3: 1–25 (25 pp.)
S?ren M. Sindb?k, “The Lands of Denemearce: Cultural Difference and Social Networks of the Viking Age in South Scandinavia,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 4 (2008), 169–200 (32 pp.).
Dagfinn Skre, “Towns and Markets, Kings and Central Places in South-western Scandinavia c. AD 800–950”, in Kaupang in Skiringssal, ed. by Dagfinn Skre (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2007), 445?–69 (25 pp.).
Ben Raffield, “Bands of Brothers: a Re-appraisal of the Viking Great Army and its Implications for the Scandinavian Colonization of England,” in Early Medieval Europe 24 (2016), 308–37 (30 pp.).
Thorir Jonsson Hraundal, “New Perspectives on Eastern Viking/Rus in Arabic Sources,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 10 (2014), 65–97 (33 pp.).
Maria Vretemark and Tony Axelsson, “The Varnhem Archaeological Research Project: A New Insight into the Christianization of V?sterg?tland,” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 4 (2008), 209–18 (10 pp.).
Nancy L. Wicker, “Christianization, Female Infanticide, and the Abundance of Female Burials at Viking Age Birka in Sweden,” Journal of the History of Sexuality 21 (2012), 245–62 (18 pp).
To be distributed in a pdf format:
Ildar Garipzanov, “Frontier Identities: Carolingian Frontier and the gens Danorum,” in Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identity and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed. Ildar H. Garipzanov and others (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), 113–42 (30 pp.).
Ildar Garipzanov, “Introduction: Networks of Conversion, Cultural Osmosis, and Identities in the Viking Age,” in Conversion and Identity in the Viking Age, ed. Ildar Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 1–19 (19 pp.)
Ildar Garipzanov, “Christian Identities, Social Status, and Gender in Viking-Age Scandinavia,” in Conversion and Identity in the Viking Age, ed. Ildar Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 139–65 (27 pp.)
Compendium
Lars L?nnroth, “The Vikings in History and Legends,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, ed. Peter Sawyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 225–49 (25 pp.)
Fredrik Svanberg, Decolonizing the Viking Age 1 (Stockholm, Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003), 36–99 (64 pp.).
Haki Antonsson, “The Conversion and Christianization of Scandinavia: A Critical Review of Recent Scholarly Writings,” in Conversion and Identity in the Viking Age, ed. Ildar Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 49–73 (25 pp.).
Jón Vi?ar Sigur?sson, “Conversion and Identity in the Viking-Age North: Some Afterthoughts, Conversion and Identity in the Viking Age,” in Conversion and Identity in the Viking Age, ed. Ildar Garipzanov (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014), 225–43 (19 pp).
Niels Bonde and A.E. Christensen, “Dendrochronological Dating of the Viking Age Ship Burials at Oseberg, Gokstad and Tune, Norway,” Antiquity 67 (1993), 575–83 (9 pp.).
Ohthere’s Voyages: A Late 9th-century Account of Voyages along the Coasts of Norway and Denmark and Its Cultural Context, ed. Janet Bately and Anton Englert (Roskilde, 2007), 18–65 (48 pp.).
Wulfstan’s Voyage: The Baltic Sea Region in the Early Viking Age as Seen from Shipboard, ed. Athena Trakadas and Anton Englert (Roskilde, 2009), 14–28 (15 pp.)
Jan Bill, “Ships and Seamanship,” in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, ed. Peter Sawyer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 182–201 (20 pp.).
Ole Crumlin Pedersen and Birgitte Munch Thye (eds.), The Ship as Symbol in Prehistoric and Medieval Scandinavia: Papers from an International Research Seminar at the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen, 5th–7th May 1994 (Copenhagen: The National Museum, 1995), 9–18, 41–48, 131–137, 139–47 (34 pp.).
Bj?rn Varenius, “Maritime Warfare as an Organizing Principle in Scandinavian Society 1000–1300 AD,” in Maritime Warfare in Northern Europe: Technology, Organisation, Logistics and Administration 500 BC–1500 AD, ed. Anne N?rg?rd J?rgensen (Copenhagen: National Museum, 2002), 249–56 (8 pp.).
Neil Price, “Dying and the Dead: Viking Age Mortuary Behaviour,” in The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink and Neil Price (London: Routledge, 2008), 257–73 (17 pp.).
Annals of St Bertin, trans. by Janet Nelson (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1991), 94–96 (3 pp.).