Towns and Commerce in Viking-Age Scandinavia

Towns and Commerce in Viking-Age Scandinavia
Author: Sven Kalmring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2023-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1009298046

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The Viking Age, from c.750 to 1050 CE, was an era of major social change in Scandinavia. By the end of this period of sweeping transformation, Scandinavia, once a pagan periphery, had been firmly integrated into occidental Europe. Archaeological remains offer evidence of this process, which included and intertwined with Christianisation, state formation, and the dawn of urbanisation in Scandinavia. In this volume, Sven Kalmring offers an interdisciplinary and geographically wide-ranging approach to understanding the emergence of towns and commerce in Viking-age Scandinavia and their eventual demise by the end of the period. Using the towns of Hedeby, Birka, Kaupang, and Ribe as case studies, he also tracks the diverging characteristics of these urban communities against the background of traditional social structures in the Viking world. Instead of tracing the results of Viking Age urbanisation, or mapping that process by establishing economic networks, Kalmring focusses on the very reasons behind the emergence of towns, and their eventual decline.

Towns and Commerce in Viking-Age Scandinavia

Towns and Commerce in Viking-Age Scandinavia
Author: Sven Kalmring
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2023-11-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1009298054

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This volume offers an interdisciplinary and geographically wide-ranging approach to understanding the emergence of towns and commerce in Viking-age Scandinavia and their eventual demise by the end of the period. It tracks the diverging characteristics of urban communities against the background of traditional social structures in the Viking world.

Towns in the Viking Age

Towns in the Viking Age
Author: Helen Clarke
Publisher: Burns & Oates
Total Pages: 232
Release: 1991
Genre: History
ISBN:

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Viking-Age Transformations

Viking-Age Transformations
Author: Zanette T. Glørstad
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 543
Release: 2017-05-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317001893

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The Viking Age was a period of profound change in Scandinavia. As kingdoms were established, Christianity became the encompassing ideological and cosmological framework and towns were formed. This book examines a central backdrop to these changes: the economic transformation of West Scandinavia. With a focus on the development of intensive and organized use of woodlands and alpine regions and domestic raw materials, together with the increasing standardization of products intended for long-distance trade, the volume sheds light on the emergence of a strong interconnectedness between remote rural areas and central markets. Viking-Age Transformations explores the connection between legal and economic practice, as the rural economy and monetary system developed in conjunction with nascent state power and the legal system. Thematically, the book is organized into sections addressing the nature and extent of trade in both marginal and centralized areas; production and the social, legal and economic aspects of exploiting natural resources and distributing products; and the various markets and sites of trade and consumption. A theoretically informed and empirically grounded collection that reveals the manner in which relationships of production and consumption transformed Scandinavian society with their influence on the legal and fiscal division of the landscape, this volume will appeal to scholars of archaeology, the history of trade and Viking studies.

Things from the Town

Things from the Town
Author: Dagfinn Skre
Publisher: Aarhus Universitetsforlag
Total Pages: 483
Release: 2011-12-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 877124431X

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In this third volume deriving from the 2000-2003 excavations of the Viking town of Kaupang, a range of artefacts is presented along with a discussion of the town's inhabitants: their origins, activities, and trading connections. The main categories of artefact are metal jewellery and ornaments, gemstones, vessel glass, pottery, finds of soapstone, whetstones, and textile-production equipment. The artefacts are described and dated, and their areas of origin discussed. The volume is lavishly illustrated. An exceptional wealth and diversity of artefacts distinguishes sites such as Kaupang from all other types of site in the Viking World. Above all, they reflect the fact that a large population of some 400-600 people lived closely together in the town, engaged in a comprehensive range of production and trade. The stratigraphically distinct layers from the first half of the 9th century allow us to put precise dates to the finds, and to the buildings and evidence of activities associated with them. The finds and structural remains make it possible to identify the activities that took place within the six buildings excavated. We can distinguish between some buildings that were only temporarily in use and others that were permanently occupied. Several of the temporary buildings were used by a variety of craftsmen while those under permanent occupation were houses, and only to a secondary degree, workshops. Throughout the life of the town from c. AD 800-930, trade links with southern Scandinavia, the Baltic, and the Irish Sea would appear to have been strong. In the earliest phases of the town there was considerable trade with the Frisian regions, probably with Dorestad, but this link faded markedly in the second half of the 9th century, probably because of the abandonment of Dorestad. Within what is now Norway, Kaupang seems to have been supplied with goods from the interior of eastern Norway. Goods from around the western coasts of Norway, however, are practically invisible. Finds of personal equipment show that the inhabitants of the town were of diverse origins. Many of them were from southern and western Scandinavia, but there were also Frisians there. One house can be identified as that of a Frisian household engaged in trade. There were also Slavs in Kaupang, although it is not clear whether they were long-term residents.

Crafts and Social Networks in Viking Towns

Crafts and Social Networks in Viking Towns
Author: Stephen P. Ashby
Publisher: Oxbow Books
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2020-02-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 178925163X

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Crafting Communities explores the interface between craft, communication networks, and urbanization in Viking-age Northern Europe. Viking-period towns were the hubs of cross-cultural communication of their age, and innovations in specialized crafts provide archaeologists with some of the best evidence for studying this communication. The integrated results presented in these papers have been made possible through the sustained collaboration of a group of experts with complementary insights into individual crafts. Results emerge from recent scholarly advances in the study of artifacts and production: first, the application of new analytical techniques in artifact studies (e.g. metallographic, isotopic, and biomolecular techniques) and second, the shifted in interpretative focus of medieval artifact studies from a concern with object function to considerations of processes of production, and of the social agency of technology. Furthermore, the introduction of social network theory and actor-network theory has redirected attention toward the process of communication, and highlighted the significance of material culture in the learning and transmission of cultural knowledge, including technology. The volume brings together leading UK and Scandinavian archaeological specialists to explore crafted products and workshop-assemblages from these towns, in order to clarify how such long-range communication worked in pre-modern Northern Europe. Contributors assess the implications for our understanding of early towns and the long-term societal change catalysed by them, including the initial steps towards commercial economies. Results are analyzed in relation to social network theory, social and economic history, and models of communication, setting an agenda for further research. Crafting Communities provides a landmark statement on our knowledge of Viking-Age craft and communication

Vikings and Goths

Vikings and Goths
Author: Gary Dean Peterson
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 323
Release: 2016-06-21
Genre: History
ISBN: 1476624348

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The Vikings descended upon Europe at the close of the 8th century, invading the continent's western seas and river systems, trading, raiding and spreading terror. In the north, they settled Iceland and Greenland and reached North America. In the east, Swedish Varangians established a river road to the Orient. With the collapse of the Viking commercial empire, Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries struggled to survive, their hardships exacerbated by internal strife, foreign domination and the Black Death. This book details the development of Scandinavia--Sweden in particular--from the end of the Ice Age, through a series of prehistoric cultures, the Bronze and Iron ages, to the Viking period and late Middle Ages. Recent research suggests a Swedish origin of the Goths, who helped dismember the Roman Empire, and evidence of Swedish participation in the western Viking expeditions. Special attention is given to Eastern Europe, where Sweden dominated commerce through the conquest of trade towns and the river systems of Russia.

Viking Trade and Settlement in Continental Western Europe

Viking Trade and Settlement in Continental Western Europe
Author: Iben Skibsted Klæsøe
Publisher: Museum Tusculanum Press
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2010
Genre: Art, Viking
ISBN: 8763505312

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The European coastal areas and the lands around the rivers had great importance for the Vikings, who settled in strategic areas and defended themselves - often against other intruding Vikings. This book is a collection of articles focusing on the Vikings and their presence on the western European continent.

Scandinavia in the Age of Vikings

Scandinavia in the Age of Vikings
Author: Jon Vidar Sigurdsson
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2022-03-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501760491

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In Scandinavia in the Age of Vikings, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson returns to the Viking homeland, Scandinavia, highlighting such key aspects of Viking life as power and politics, social and kinship networks, gifts and feasting, religious beliefs, women's roles, social classes, and the Viking economy, which included farming, iron mining and metalworking, and trade. Drawing of the latest archeological research and on literary sources, namely the sagas, Sigurðsson depicts a complex and surprisingly peaceful society that belies the popular image of Norsemen as bloodthirsty barbarians. Instead, Vikings often acted out power struggles symbolically, with local chieftains competing with each other through displays of wealth in the form of great feasts and gifts, rather than arms. At home, conspicuous consumption was a Viking leader's most important virtue; the brutality associated with them was largely wreaked abroad. Sigurðsson's engaging history of the Vikings at home begins by highlighting political developments in the region, detailing how Danish kings assumed ascendency over the region and the ways in which Viking friendship reinforced regional peace. Scandinavia in the Age of Vikings then discusses the importance of religion, first pagan and (beginning around 1000 A.D.) Christianity; the central role that women played in politics and war; and how the enormous wealth brought back to Scandinavia affected the social fabric—shedding new light on Viking society.

Viking-Age Trade

Viking-Age Trade
Author: Jacek Gruszczyński
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2020-10-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 135186615X

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That there was an influx of silver dirhams from the Muslim world into eastern and northern Europe in the ninth and tenth centuries is well known, as is the fact that the largest concentration of hoards is on the Baltic island of Gotland. Recent discoveries have shown that dirhams were reaching the British Isles, too. What brought the dirhams to northern Europe in such large numbers? The fur trade has been proposed as one driver for transactions, but the slave trade offers another – complementary – explanation. This volume does not offer a comprehensive delineation of the hoard finds, or a full answer to the question of what brought the silver north. But it highlights the trade in slaves as driving exchanges on a trans-continental scale. By their very nature, the nexuses were complex, mutable and unclear even to contemporaries, and they have eluded modern scholarship. Contributions to this volume shed light on processes and key places: the mints of Central Asia; the chronology of the inflows of dirhams to Rus and northern Europe; the reasons why silver was deposited in the ground and why so much ended up on Gotland; the functioning of networks – perhaps comparable to the twenty-first-century drug trade; slave-trading in the British Isles; and the stimulus and additional networks that the Vikings brought into play. This combination of general surveys, presentations of fresh evidence and regional case studies sets Gotland and the early medieval slave trade in a firmer framework than has been available before.