The conversion in the Viking Age and the High Middle Agea in Scandinavia and how this affected women is discussed. Did women get a better life when the people had converted to Christianity or not. Our written sources are later than the conversion to Christianity. Instead the material culture, graves, grave goods and runic stones, can help us understand the life of women. Nordic mythology presents a contrast between faith in the Viking Age and Christianity.

In this essay I want to investigate how the Viking aristocratic warrior elite in Scandinavia used religious mythology for the construction of their identity. The essay also takes up the concept of honor, which was important for the warriors. Honor was central to all people during Viking age and for the warriors it was absolute. In the religious myths, the aristocratic warriors justify their position in society and legitimate their acts of war. Religion continues to have importance to the warrior elite even after the arrival of Christianity. The myths and the concept of honor made it impossible to question war and violence.

<p>In this essay I want to investigate how the Viking aristocratic warrior elite in Scandinavia used religious mythology for the construction of their identity. The essay also takes up the concept of honor, which was important for the warriors. Honor was central to all people during Viking age and for the warriors it was absolute. In the religious myths, the aristocratic warriors justify their position in society and legitimate their acts of war. Religion continues to have importance to the warrior elite even after the arrival of Christianity. The myths and the concept of honor made it impossible to question war and violence.</p>

This paper deals with rights of women and their social role during the Viking Age. The method is to compare things and written material. In the written material, three cases of rape have been identified. How each of these cases where looked upon differs; legally the punishment for rape was exile. Violence against wives implied their right to divorce, whereby they were entitled to take with them a great part of the family´s capital, namely their dowry and morning gift. A husband and wife did not inherit each other but a widow could inherit from her children if they died without offspring. Women buried in boat graves indicate that they had a function or were closely involved in the cult. From two graves, the Aska Grave and the Oseberg Grave, the findings can be interpreted as indicating a change in the social behaviour. I propose this was a way of breaking with the past and sabotaging the right to remember earlier cultural habits.

The Viking Age (800–1050 A.D.) is also called the “Silver Age”. Despite the fact that no silver mines were in use in Sweden at that time, most of the landowners for one reason or another had a lot of precious metal stored in their homes. Alone the Island of Gotland has found over 700 different hoards of which around 400 of these hoards have been excavated over the last 100 years. Archeologists are debating whether all this precious metal had been brought to the island by traders from the east, or if it came from the Viking raids in the west. Besides the coins, thousands of pieces of silver have been recorded. The intention of this essay is to attempt to clarify if it is possible to find differentiating factors between the hoards and to classify categories of these precious metal deposits. I indeed, such classifications and categorizations are achievable in the research findings in this paper.

The purpose of this paper was to identify the elements and the alloys that five objects found in Birka consist of and to examine whether there are any significant differences between the presumably imported and domestic objects. The material was analyzed using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) which was equipped with an energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDS) in order to identify the elements that are present and the alloys that the objects are made of. Then the SEM results were compared with the results of previous analyzes that have been performed on finds from Birka in order to investigate how the objects differ in elemental composition and to find out if there are any significant differences between them. The results showed that the objects’ content of the elements analyzed varies as the copper alloys the objects are made of. Only a few objects are made of the same type of copper alloy. A sword chape included in the material and a bridle mount that was analyzed in 2006 are both made of lead bronze. Two oriental mounts included in the material and a sword chape which was analyzed in 2006 are all made of lead bronze in which zinc has been added. There are no significant differences in composition between the presumably imported and domestic objects, but overall lead seems to be a metal that was used more in the domestic production.

The aim of this thesis is to examine female Viking burials during the Iron Age. Issues such as what is a grave and in what way gender studies have influenced Viking woman`s research are the focus issues in this study. How has the view of male and female in graves changed over time and how have the objects in these graves influenced the gender approach?  I will in this essay delineate myself to the Viking age during the 800-1050 AD. The geographical demarcation is Scandinavia and my intention is to focus on analyzing three excavated graves interpreted as female. In this way I will try to understand various researchers interpretation of gender. This study is a qualitative research overview through literature studies.  The result showed that the objects in the graves were previously interpreted as typically female or male, but that earlier view must now go through a paradigm shift. The archaeologist must now interpret the graves in a completely new way, where you can use genus archaeology along with other analyzes to broaden the previous approach, and not interpret the subjects as typically male and female according to old standards.

Viking-age boat grave burials are a less common but still repeatedly used way to bury the dead during the late Iron Age. Boat burials are exceptional in many aspects, not only due to placing the individual in a boat with numerous burial gifts including animals, but also by burying the individual without prior cremation, a common practice during the Iron Age. The aim of this thesis is to genetically analyse inhumation boat graves and compare the genetic composition of the ancient individuals with modern populations through population genetic analyses. This will highlight these particular human remains in a mobility context. A total of 11 individuals was analysed, but only one yielded enough DNA for further statistical analyses. This one individual proved genetically exceptionally well preserved. The results clearly show that the individual (a female) has a genetic affinity to populations in northern Europe. However, the results do not discriminate between modern Baltic/Scandinavian populations, depending on the statistical test.

Studies with primary focus on Viking age gilding techniques in Scandinavia has not been carried out since the sixties. During the past 50 years knowledge about prehistoric gilding techniques and traces of them in the archeological material, as well as the usage of natural sciences within archaeology, has developed considerably. The aim of this thesis was to revisit the topic of gilding and shed new light on Viking age metalworking in Scandinavia with focus on gilding techniques. The second aim was to determine the possibilities and limitations of the study of gilding with a non-destructive methodology. The surfaces of 13 metal objects, four of which are indigenous and the rest are imported goods, were analyzed with SEM-EDS. The chemical compositions of the gilded layers as well as the underlying silver- or copper alloys were analyzed. Furthermore, observations of micro morphological structures were carried out on the gilt surfaces. Interpretations of both chemical compositions and micro morphology were carried out in order to identify what technique or techniques have been used for gilding. The results show that two of artefacts have not been gilded at all, five of them have been fire gilded and the results of the remaining six objects are inconclusive mainly due to lacking reference data. It can be concluded that further research regarding the aging of gilt surfaces on gilded artefacts, more specifically the loss of mercury in fire gilded surfaces over time, needs to be carried out.

This study deals with runic carvings as a monument. Through map studies I try to locate runic carvings near water and other remains from the viking age. Previous research has put their focus on the inscription and not as much on the monument itself. The monument stands there in the landscape and communicates with its own appearance. During the Viking Age, communication by waterways was important as the roads on land were not the best. The starting point for this study was a waterway from the Baltic Sea to Mälaren through Södermanland county in Sweden. This waterway consists of several lakes and smaller streams. This study is an attempt to investigate and discuss the possible role of runic carvings along Viking Age water communication routes.