A cause des pillages et des ravages des Vikings dans plusieurs régions de la France et du fait qu’ils se sont installés finalement en Normandie d’une façon permanent, ils ont du laisser certaines traces dans la langue française, comme leurs descendants l’ont fait plus tard en Angleterre après l’invasion en 1066. Avant l’invasion de Guillaume le Conquérant, les peuples d’Angleterre parlaient des langues germaniques, mais aujourd'hui l’anglais consiste dans sa plus grande partie de mots romans. Il est évident que la langue scandinave n’a pas eu la même force d’impact sur la langue française que la langue française sur l’anglais, mais on peut s’attendre à retrouver quelques traces. Dans ce mémoire, je vais examiner quel rôle a joué la langue scandinave et quelles en sont les traces visibles aujourd’hui. A-t elle eu un impact profond qui a laissé de grandes empreintes sur la langue française ou est-ce que cette période de présence scandinave est-elle passée imperceptiblement ? S’il y a des vestiges dans le français, quels sont-ils dans ce cas, et dans quelles régions, aussi bien géographiques que linguistiques, se trouvent-ils ? Je me concentrerai d’abord sur l’influence qu’ont eu les Vikings et la langue scandinave en Normandie, puisque c’était là qu’ils sont restés le plus longtemps et, par conséquent, il doit être probable qu’il y a des traces évidentes les plus fréquents.

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.

The publication of the thitherto unavailable original scroll of On the Road in 2007 marked a decisive point for Beat scholarship. Enabling line-by-line comparison, the two versions could suddenly be placed under proper scrutiny, and Kerouac’s revisions set up against the established myth of the novel’s creation. How should we understand the revisions? To supply a contribution to an answer, this paper will map the artistic as well as personal trajectory of Jack Kerouac throughout the 1950s. Basing my analysis largely on correspondence, I will show how Kerouac constantly oscillated between different positions and attitudes within the space of literary production. The essay will argue that Kerouac’s pursuit of literary prestige, stood side by side with the always-present alternative of satisfying the demands of the large audience. If we add to this Kerouac’s obsession with his imagined audience it becomes clear that his final work resulted from more than his own aesthetic preferences. Devoting a section to his aesthetic program, I will explore to what extent editorial revisions, even seemingly minor ones, compromised his original text in significant ways. Keeping in mind his erratic trajectory, and adding to it Warren French’s complementary observation that Kerouac’s personality was violently split, will allow us to identify an equally contradictory literary self-expression. Thus comparing On the Road with Visions of Cody (the latter emerged through the revisions of the former), Kerouac’s literary expression can be said to manifest itself in two fundamentally different ways. In Road as a reifying gesture that mystifies man’s connection with the earth, and, in Visions as an opposite gesture of dereification that seeks to disclose the source of man-made products that have become reified. Proposing that the autobiographical component of Kerouac’s writing is essentially a gesture of dereification, the essay will argue that editorial revisions of such works inescapably destabilize the unity between experienced reality and textual representation.

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.

A review of archaeometallurgical studies carried out in the 1980s and 1990s of early medieval (c. AD410-1100) iron knives revealed several patterns, with clear differences in knife manufacturing techniques present in rural cemeteries and later urban settlements. The main aim of this research is to investigate these patterns and to gain an overall understanding of the early medieval iron industry. This study has increased the number of knives analysed from a wide spectrum of sites across England, Scotland and Ireland. Knives were selected for analysis based on x-radiographs and contextual details. Sections were removed for more detailed archaeometallurgical analysis. The analysis revealed a clear change through time, with a standardisation in manufacturing techniques in the 7th century and differences between the quality of urban and rural knives. Analysis of cemetery knives revealed that there was some correlation between the knife and the deceased. Comparison of knives from England, Dublin and Europe revealed that the Vikings had little direct impact on England¿s knife manufacturing industry, although there was a change in manufacturing methods in the 10th century towards the mass produced sandwich welded knife. This study also suggests that Irish blacksmiths in Dublin continued their ¿native¿ blacksmithing techniques after the Vikings arrived. Using the data gathered a chaîne opértoire of the iron knife was re-constructed, this revealed that there was a specific order to the manufacture process and decisions were not only influenced by the cost of raw materials, the skill of the blacksmith and the consumer status, but also by cultural stimulus.

The research contained in these papers embodies both results from direct archaeological investigation and also the development of techniques (geophysical, chronological and geoarchaeological) in order to understand long-term settlements and their associated landscapes in Orkney and Shetland. Central to this research has been the study of soil management strategies of arable plots surrounding settlements from the Neolithic to the Iron Age. It is argued that this arable system provides higher yields in marginal locations. The ability to enhance yield in good years and to store surplus can mitigate against shortage. Control and storage of this surplus is seen as one catalyst for the economic power of elite groups over their underlying or ¿client¿ population. The emergence of a social elite in the Iron Age, building brochs and other substantial roundhouses of near broch proportions, is seen as being linked to the control of resources. Evidence at the site of Old Scatness indicated that there was a continuity of wealth and power from the Middle Iron Age through the Pictish period, before the appearance of the Vikings produced a break in the archaeological record. The Viking period saw a break in building traditions, the introduction of new artefacts and changes in farming and fishing strategies. Each of the papers represents a contribution that builds on these themes.