Since the 19th century archaeologists have found different types om amulet rings on various dig sites around Scandinavia with the biggest concentration in the Mälardal area. It is an object connect to old Viking age and Vendel period societies found from time to time during archaeological excavations. The problem with the amulet rings is, that the scientists don’t know how to fully interpret these artefacts. The common belief is that amulet rings are object connected to religious practice and the pagan cult. The purpose of this essay is to give the amulet rings a larger meaning and try to put new light on them, to widen the understanding of the object and to point out that more than religion can be interpreted around the artefacts and the context they are preserved in. This will put the rings in a more social sphere and widen the meaning and use of the object and the understanding of the Viking people. This essay is written with an intention to give a broader image surrounding the social role of the amulet rings in Viking age societies. This will be done through a descriptive and investigative mapping of the micro contexts of the amulet rings. The archaeological sites that will be used to do so are Lilla Ullevi and Kalvshälla in Uppland with a contextual approach as a theoretical perspective. In this essay, it has been shown that the sites have used the amulet rings to find religious connections in the Viking age and Vendel period complexes by schematically interpreting the rings as religious objects instead of seeing the possibilities in the material. Even if religion seems to be present the distribution of the rings indicates a larger scale of social use and not only religious actions. The result is that the ring is more flexible and complex then previously thought and more in-depth research into amulet rings is needed to fully understand the object and to use them in bigger archaeological interpretations.

Birka is Sweden’s first urban settlement during the Viking period and its growth is mainly because of the settlement’s extensive trade. The area has many graves and the female graves in Birka are a good source for interpretation of the Viking woman and the variety of roles and work she had. Archaeologists are assessing graves and interpreters them from the material remains found, such as jewelry, weapons, and gifts. Researchers often have a predetermined interpretation on certain items that are considered feminine or masculine and the gender is determined from this. After the gender is decided it is commonly that the individuals are categorized into groups, and women tend be grouped together into one, regardless that the archaeological data and material shows that they have different attributes, and should be categorized as such. Men on the other hand have a variety of activities and jobs from which they can be determined by, whilst women’s work tends to be highlighted as chores, rather than work, as their doings usually are in the private sphere. To put women together as one simply because they are women is not only problematic regarding what the material shows, but it is also preventing the development in research of women. There will be a gap in the narrative due to the lack of female activities which occurred but are either ignored or reduced. During the last few decades, there has been an increase in research regarding women in all fields of research and a development of several theories on how to interpret various factors. One of them is intersectional theory, which will be used in this paper. A selection of female Viking graves from Birka are used with this theory to develop a greater picture of what women were doing, rather than just being women, and what needs to be considered to do so.

Thesis advisor: Robin Fleming / This dissertation charts the movement of slaves from Western Europe, through Scandinavia, and into the frontiers of the Caliphate, a movement which took shape in the early 700s and flourished into the late 800s. The victims of this movement are well attested in texts from either end of their journey, and the movement of everyday things allows us to trace the itineraries they followed. Necklace beads—produced in the east, carried to the north, and worn in the west—serve as proxies for human traffic that traveled the same routes in opposite directions. Attention to this traffic overcomes four impasses—between regional particularism and interregional connectivity; between attention to exchange and focus on production; between privileging textual or material evidence; and between definitions of slavery that obscure practices of enslavement. The introduction outlines problems of studying medieval slavery with regard to transregional approaches to the Middle Ages, the transition to serfdom, and the use of material evidence. Chapter One gathers narrative texts previously dealt with anecdotally to establish patterns for the Viking-Age slave trade, with eastward traffic thriving by the late 800s. Chapter Two confirms these patterns by graphically comparing viking violence to reports of captive taking in the annals and archival documents of Ireland, Francia, and Anglo-Saxon England. Chapter Three investigates how viking captive taking impacted Western societies and the creation of written records in Carolingian Europe. Chapter Four turns to the material record, using beads to trace the intensity and flow of human traffic that fed from early viking violence. Chapter Five establishes a corresponding demand for slaves in the ʿAbbāsid Caliphate through Arabic archival, legal, historical, and geographic texts. The conclusion places this research in the context of global history. By spanning periods, regions, and disciplines, this dissertation brings to focus people who crossed boundaries unwillingly, but whose movements contributed to epochal change. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2019. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History.

Archaeology and art history are two disciplines that have a lot in common, especially in the pre-historic field where both disciplines rely on the same material – artifacts. Interdisciplinary methods have become increasingly more common the last few years and are very beneficial as it allows for more insight and variables into the study of the human pasts. This thesis aims to develop two methods from art history into methods fitting for archaeological material to investigate what type of information this can produce. The methods used are material analysis and spatial analysis. Spatial analysis studies human movement within an urban space, but this work considerer the placement of the individual within the grave instead as well as the grave goods. The method investigates how the placement of the grave goods relates and interacts with each other and the individual. The analysis can give clues and insight on who the buried individual was, their identity, and social role as well as giving indicators about the contemporary society the person lived in. When a spatial analysis is made it is favorable to carry out a material analysis as well. This is done to understand what type of materials the grave contains and what the material can tell. This will give depth and possibilities to understand the objects in the grave, their use, and the relationships they had to the individual. The material analysis in this paper is conducted with the help of an analysis scheme which is a tool that helps collect the same type of information from all the studied objects. The material that will be used are two ship burials from Valsgärde, 12 and 15, also known as the twin-graves as they are the only contemporary ship burials out of the grave field’s total of 15 ship burials. During the Viking age, it was common practice amongst the elite families to bury their dead in ship burials that included lavish gifts. Valsgärde in Uppland, Sweden, is an example of such a grave field with a long history. Graves from the Viking age, however, show the change that was present in the region, and traces of trade to the east can be found. Graves 12 and 15 are from the mid-10th century and some of the grave goods show influences from the east, both clothes, and items. The graves are the only of their kind at Valsgärde and even though they show the foreign impact they still follow the established grave traditions that Valsgärde have carried since the 6th century. The result from ship burials 12 and 15 are compared to Birka’s graves Bj 581 and Bj 944 who is similar in content, time and richness. The hope for this paper is to show how useful interdisciplinary methods can be, in this case, spatial analysis and material analysis with analysis scheme, to bring new aspects to graves and grave goods.

Previous research on the funerary practices of the Viking Age has found evidence to suggest that people were sometimes executed for the purpose of following others into death. There are several well-known examples of this practice from around Scandinavia, including graves from Birka, Bollstanäs, and Gerdrup, where men appear to have been executed using brutal methods. Written sources such as Ibn Fadlān's travelogue and Sigurdskvädet, however, often place an emphasis on the killing of women during funerary rites – a practice that is inconsistent with the archaeological evidence. Where women have been suggested to have been executed as part of a funerary ritual, their skeletons often show no evidence for violence. This study was therefore conceived in order to critically compare the archaeological and textual evidence with a view to establishing the potential reasons for this discrepancy. By applying a theoretical framework that focused on the funeral as a ‘mortuary drama,’ the study has identified different potential causes for the absence of skeletal injuries on female individuals. It is possible, for example, that while women were killed they were often subjected to other types of fatal violence that do not leave injuries on the bone. It is also possible that women who were executed were more often cremated, rather than buried. Finally, it is possible that both men and women could be killed as part of these rites, and that the identity and the gender of the victim was of less symbolic importance than the act itself. The study shows that although the graves are scattered over vast geographical areas, they appear to have some certain commonalities, nevertheless the graves are interpreted differently. Variations, when comparing graves and the historical sources, appear natural, as Viking culture as well as their graves carry great variations. This study has shown that the types of fatal violence described in historical sources differ from the archaeological evidence presented in modern excavations.

Research about viking age swords is nothing new but for a long time the main focus have been different aspects of typologies which have evolved since early 20th century. During the last 30 years the still growing communities of Viking reenactment have shed new light upon the fighting skills of pre Christian Nordic societies. With developing knowledge of ancient metallurgy and understanding of swordsmithing we might have new ways to interpret the swords found originating in the 8th to 11th centuries. In this paper the author will be making an attempt to assess and analyze swords on Gotland to uncover whether they were made as practical fighting weapons or merely symbols of social status and power, or both.The main source of information regarding the swords found on Gotland comes from the extensive catalogues Die Wikingerzeit Gotlands I-II by Lena Thunmark-Nylén 1996, 1998 and Viking Swords by Fedir Androshchuk 2014. For a deeper understanding of the materials used in sword- and weaponsmithing, information from metalurgically examined specimens presented by Lena Thålin Bergman will be used as cross reference.

I have statistically worked up a material from 228 graves from the late Iron Age in the area of Mälardalen. In my material I have gathered the incidence of combs, knifes, beads, weapons whetstones and torshammarsrings. I have found that beads are overrepresented in graves of women and whetstones in graves of men. I only found weapons in graves from male. I found no indication from my statistic hypothesis (Z-test) that a grave that contains more than three beads should define the grave of a woman. A grave that contains a lot of beads, more than 20, consider I as a female gender. Combs, knifes and torshammarsring are considered as gender neutral.

yes / Precise chronologies underpin all aspects of archaeological interpretation and, in addition to improvements in scientific dating methods themselves, one of the most exciting recent developments has been the use of Bayesian statistical analysis to reinterpret existing information. Such approaches allow the integration of scientific dates, stratigraphy and typological data to provide chronologies with improved precision. Settlement period sites in Iceland offer excellent opportunities to explore this approach, as many benefit from dated tephra layers and AMS radiocarbon dates. Whilst tephrochronology is widely used and can provide excellent chronological control, this method has limitations; the time span between tephra layers can be large and they are not always present. In order to investigate the improved precision available by integrating the scientific dates with the associated archaeological stratigraphy within a Bayesian framework, this research reanalyses the dating evidence from three recent large scale excavations of key Viking Age and medieval sites in Iceland; Aðalstræti, Hofstaðir and Sveigakot. The approach provides improved chronological precision for the dating of significant events within these sites, allowing a more nuanced understanding of occupation and abandonment. It also demonstrates the potential of incorporating dated typologies into chronological models and the use of models to propose sequences of activities where stratigraphic relationships are missing. Such outcomes have considerable potential in interpreting the archaeology of Iceland and can be applied more widely to sites with similar chronological constraints. / British Academy (MD120020) awarded to C. Batt. Rannís PhD funding for M.Schmid. / The full text was made available at the end of the publisher's embargo.

Vapengravar associeras vanligtvis med att de innehåller vuxna män, möjligen en krigare. Detta gör barn i vapengravar till ett undantag från denna norm och något problematiskt i denna gravkontext, ett hinder för arkeologer att handskas med då gravarna ifrågasätter tidigare normer och tolkningar av vapengravar. Syftet med denna uppsats är att studera och jämföra tre vikingatida vapengravar innehållande anmärkningsvärt unga individer, barn enligt modernt synsätt. Uppsatsen tar hänsyn till motiven för en grav, hur man tolkar vapengravar och den sociala konstruktionen av barndomen. Med detta i åtanke jämförs tolkningar av tre olika vapengravar med särskilt unga individer med varandra genom en litteraturstudie baserad på arkeologiska vetenskapliga texter. De tre huvudsakliga texterna är ”En ryttargrav på Ihrefältet” av Stenberger (1942), ”A Princely Child in Birka” av Gräslund (1998), samt ”A Viking Burial at Balnakeil, Sutherland” av Batey och Paterson (2012). Tolkningar av forskare jämförs med varandra för att synliggöra mönster, avvikelser och det obemärkta inom denna mycket sällsynta kategori av gravar. / Weapon graves are typically associated with containing adult males, perhaps a warrior. Which makes children in weapon graves an exception to this norm and somewhat problematic in this grave context, an obstacle for archeologists to deal with as the graves challenge previous norms and interpretations of weapon graves. The purpose of this thesis is to study and compare three Viking Age weapon graves containing distinguishable young individuals, children in the modern view. The essay considers the motifs of a grave, how to interpret weapon graves and the social construction of childhood. With this in mind, interpretations of three different weapon graves with particularly young individuals are compared to each other through a literature study based on archeological scientific texts. The three main texts are ”En ryttargrav på Ihrefältet” by Stenberger (1942), ”A Princely Child in Birka” by Gräslund (1998), and ”A Viking Burial at Balnakeil, Sutherland” by Batey and Paterson (2012). Interpretations of researchers are compared with each other in order to reveal patterns, deviations and things unnoticed within this very rare category of graves.

no / Identifying people of exotic origins with isotopes depends upon finding isotopic attributes that are inconsistent with the indigenous population. This task is seldom straightforward and may vary with physical geography, through time, and with cultural practices. Isotopes and trace elements were measured in four Viking Age (8th to 10th centuries A.D.) skeletons from Dublin, Ireland, and three from Westness, Orkney. These were compared with other data from these locations and contemporaneous skeletons from Britain. We conclude that the male skeletons from Dublin have disparate origins, two originating beyond the shores of Ireland, and that the female and two male skeletons from Westness are not indigenous to Orkney. However, the homeland of the female, in contrast to the males, is unlikely to be in Scandinavia.