Viking and Medieval Scandinavia

The geographical position of Denmark, a state occupying Jutland and several islands in the Baltic Sea, lies on the axes north-south and east-west. But as envisaged in Knýtlinga saga, a text covering Danish history from the tenth to the early thirteenth centuries and written down in the mid-thirteenth century, the entire space of Denmark appears to be rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise. Analysis of all the available source material leads to the conclusion that the world picture of the early North-Germanic peoples contained the idea of the Danish lands divided into southern areas (Jutland) and northern areas (Fyn, Zealand, and Skåne). In this paper the author discusses the theory of ‘Scandinavian shifted orientation’ and proposes a hypothetical explanation of how the picture of Denmark described above could have become embodied in Knýtlinga saga.

The possible presence of Scandinavians in the Carpathian Basin during the early Middle Ages is discussed in relation to pertinent literary sources, toponyms, and linguistic and archaeological evidence. On the basis of this evidence, the historical thesis current in Hungary, namely that the bodyguard of Grand Prince Géza and King Saint Stephen I consisted of Varangian-Rus’ mercenaries, is challenged. Although the settled presence of Vikings in early medieval Hungary is unattested, the sources hint at some contacts involving commercial and military co-operation between Scandinavians and Hungarians from as early as the ninth century.

This article investigates the nature of political life and conflict in medieval Denmark, focusing on the case of the rebellion against King Niels between 1131 and 1135. The article engages with previous scholarship that has identified the basis of the rebellion, and the governing feature of political life in the period, as the material interests of the competing kin-networks. Through an investigation of both the documentary and the narrative sources for the conflict, the reigns of King Niels and his successor Erik II Emune, the leader of the rebellion, this article argues that in fact political and religious principles were much more important. Building on this it argues that we need to pay much more attention to the stated principles of political actors as found in the contemporary sources and the way these enabled aristocrats and would-be kings to mobilize support.

In this article, a revised version of a lecture presented at the University of Iceland in May 2016, I discuss a number of recent books and articles about Njáls saga, setting their interpretations against those of earlier works by Einar Ólafur Sveinsson and myself. My conclusion is that although Einar Ólafur Sveinsson’s views need to be revised in some respects, they still are very much valid and his scholarly results are, to a large extent, likely to stand.

It is rather baffling that Archbishop Adalbert of Hamburg-Bremen should have wanted to alienate Sven Estridsen, on whose cooperation he depended entirely for the pursuance of his mission in Denmark, by forcing the king to divorce his queen on grounds of consanguinity. The story is known exclusively from Adam of Bremen and forms part of the story he made up about Sven Forkbeard and all the hardships he had to suffer for his patricide and apostacy. The story breaks down on many chronological facts, such as the age of Olof Skötkonung at the death of his father. This implies that we can no longer regard the Polish princess who married Sven Forkbeard and Sigrid the Haughty as the same person in two different traditions. Whether Adam concocted this story to depict Adalbert as an uncompromising champion of faith and morals in his diocese or for other reasons is hard to tell.

This article analyses the Old Norse term tafn. Several possible meanings for tafn have been proposed, including ‘carrion’, ‘corpse’, and ‘sacrifice’. This essay examines occurrences of tafn in pre-Christian skaldic verse, post-Conversion religious texts, and late medieval chivalric/heroic sagas, in order to elucidate the diachronic development of the term.

In this paper we utilize evolutionary theory, anthropological data, and historical sources to explore how marriage practices shaped social behaviours and attitudes towards gender in Viking-Age Scandinavia. We focus primarily on the normative practices of polygyny and concubinage, which have been shown by anthropological studies to legitimize behaviours that reinforce male power. Our survey found that many of these behaviours might have been prevalent among Viking-Age societies. These include competition among men seeking to gain access to the marriage market, female seclusion, and the bartering of women in marriage contracts. Inside the household, these practices may have precipitated an increased risk of domestic violence, the neglect of children, and the male domination of household decisions. However, we also identify a number of significant ways in which male power was contested and subverted by women’s agency, both within the home and in the context of wider society.

The toponym Útgarðr, used as a singular place name in Snorra Edda, is often applied to an outer region or peripheral realm inhabited by giants and other monstrous entities. This leads to a conception of Útgarðr as one side of an axiomatic binary opposition describing an Old Norse religious and cultural system of values. The article will present a brief overview of the most influential scholarly opinions on the use of the toponym Útgarðr as the basis of a system of values, discussing the problems attending such an interpretation of Útgarðr. The article goes on to take into consideration the Old Norse literary sources dealing with Útgarðr, so as to discuss the problem of such a superimposition of a toponym used in the diegesis of literary texts to a system of religious and cultural values, on the basis of the narratological use and function of Útgarðr in the text sources.