Horses have played a large part in many cultures across the world, the Scandinavian Viking Age included. They are frequently found in graves and sacrificial sites, meant to denote, or represent the status and social caste of the humans they served. More and more studies and research projects are now taking place where the horses are allowed to take center stage, but these rarely touch on the subject of the horse’s agency. Were the abilities of the horses themselves what determined whether they be brutally sacrificed, or whether they keep serving the living? This is an area of study which hopes to introduce new perspectives into a complicated, lengthy debate over horses in sacrificial contexts, and shift focus away from the anthropocentric perspective that has dominated the subject. This study will discuss the archaeological and osteological finds in Scandinavia through a social zooarchaeological perspective, in an effort to offer a different perspective and to give agency to one animal that helped to shape our world.

The purpose of this thesis is to perform a gender study focusing on Viking Age weapon graves. A female weapon burial, a male weapon burial and a female burial are studied in this thesis. It is necessary first to discuss the meaning of a weapon burial. Thereafter the thesis will discuss if it is possible to find any differences in the gender interpretation of weapon burials belonging to men and females. The weapon graves will also be interpreted in relation to a female burial. The research history is primarily based on Conkey & Spector’s (1984) article regarding archaeological androcentrism. The result of the thesis states that a weapon burial must consist of at least one of following weapons: sword, shield, spear, axe, horse equipment or arrowheads. The results also state that the interpretation of a weapon burial depends on the sexual identity of the buried individual. It is easier to state that the buried individual is a warrior if the individual is assumed to be a male. It is also possible to see differences regarding male and female burials in general where the interpretation of rich female graves is questioned due to the absence of a man in the grave. The graves are still interpreted in traditional gender roles, where the gender roles are based on the grave goods.

During the Viking Age, the burials on Gotland consisted of both cremations and inhumations. However, inhumation became increasingly common at the end of that period. Furthermore, several children have been identified around the island, but almost all of them are in inhumation graves. Only a few analyses of cremations from the Viking Age have been conducted. At the moment, there are only two burial grounds, dating to the Viking Age on Gotland, where the remains of cremated children have been noted. This study aims to try to locate children's graves, or possible children's graves, by studying cremations from the burial ground in Stora Ihre, Hellvi parish. Hopefully, this will contribute to future studies of cremations from Gotland in the early Iron Age and bring more knowledge on how children were treated. A total of 60 cremations have been analyzed, where only two graves contain the remains of non-adult individuals, but only one of these dates to the Viking age. At Stora Ihre, children of several ages have been buried in inhumation graves, like many other places in the rest of Gotland. In several cases, they have been buried together or secondarily next to an older individual, both in or around an inhumation or cremation grave, but in some cases, children have been given their own grave. This may indicate that a shift in burial traditions of children took place from the Vendel period to the Viking age, but it may also reflect social differences between the ages.

Leather has been one of the most common crafting materials in human history. With its incredible versatility it has been used for clothes, shelter, books, armour, containers, decoration, and everything in between. The boat graves from Valsgärde presents a for the time period large amount of preserved leather, allowing us to have a peek into how it was used during the late Scandinavian Iron Age. This essay focuses on which animals have been used in the making of these objects and what the choice of raw material and visible crafting skills might tell us. A total of 54 samples from the Valsgärde boat graves were analysed using the ZooMS method. Additionally, tanning methods and other related processes are discussed. The main conclusions are that while the choice of material has an important impact on the final result, it seems like the skills of the craftsperson was the most important factor affecting quality and exclusivity for an item. / Läder har varit ett av de vanligaste materialen i mänsklighetens historia. Med sin fantastiska mångsidighet har det använts till kläder, bostäder, böcker, rustningar, behållare, dekoration, och allt däremellan. Båtgravarna i Valsgärde erbjuder en för tidsperioden stor mängd bevarat läder vilket ger oss chansen att få en glimt av hur materialet användes under den sena järnåldern i Skandinavien. Den här uppsatsen fokuserar på vilka djur som använts för att tillverka dessa föremål och vad valet av råmaterial och hantverkmetoder kan säga oss. Totalt har 54 prov från Valsgärdes båtgravar analyserats med ZooMS-metoden. Därtill behandlas garvning och andra relaterade processer i läderhantverk. De huvudsakliga slutsatserna är att även om valet av råmaterial har en stor inverkan på slutresultatet så verkar hantverkarens skicklighet vara den viktigaste faktorn för kvalitet och exklusivitet i ett föremål. / <p>This thesis was made possible through funding from Västgöta Nation.</p>

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the social role of women in the Viking Age on Gotland. The female jewellery articulated the Gotlandic identity on the island in the Viking Age, unlike the men's jewellery which expressed similarities with other places in Scandinavia. Therefore, the female jewellery can be seen as traces of an important cultural expression that distinguished the Gotlandic women from others. The understanding of which types of jewellery that are considered to be linked to the female gender during the Viking Age is based on a number of excavated graves. The jewellery in graves have been researched for a long time. However, there is another category that includes jewellery which have been neglected, namely hoards. Therefore, this thesis investigates female jewellery in graves to understand the composition of jewellery in hoards. The purpose of this is to interpret if the hoards can express a female gender identity, similar to the female gender identity in graves based on the composition of jewellery. This is realized through the use of performativity and embodiment theory. The similarities and the differences between the jewellery in graves and hoards are investigated through a correspondence analysis. The result show that the differences between the composition of jewellery in graves and hoards are meaningful. The graves consists of a more complete set of jewellery made of bronze, whereas the hoards are interpreted to consist of parts of a complete set or a larger number of the same type of jewellery. The hoards also contain more jewellery made of precious metals than the graves. The hoards are intrepreted as savings of vaiable jewellery that could be resumed and used again by women. The Guta Law is applied in this thesis to contribute to the understanding of who owned the jewellery that women wore. The result is that women did not own the jewellry individually. Instead it was owned collectively by the family but that women might have had the responsebility of the jewellery during their lifetime. It is interpreted that women, through the use of Gotlandic jewellery, had the social role in society to show off the family wealth and their Gotlandic identity. Therefore, it is argued that women played a crucial part in public gatherings and had an active role in the Gotlandic society in the Viking Age.

The Viking age of Gotland has been subject to extensive studies. Research often addresses treasures, highly monetary valued objects, and changes in religion. In contrast, research on natural objects as fossils have received little attention. This bachelor’s thesis seeks to understand the usage of fossils in the Viking age of Gotland. With quantitative and qualitative analysis of fossils, this material shows us that people made elaborate choices in every step of utilization and with high probably created meaning through them. This study demonstrates that fossils are a heterogeneous archaeological material with capability to show us complementary view of the people who used them.

The aim of this study is to examine the possibility of calculating the total weight of coins in poorly documented Viking Age silver hoards found on Gotland. A method for calculating the total weight of the silver coins in the hoards, and thus the weight relationship between minted and un-minted silver, would facilitate further and deeper studies using the hoards from Gotland. The method will be based on the average coin weights obtained from numismatic sources. Two calculations, one of Arabic coins and another with mixed coin, is attempted. Apart from the calculations of the Viking Age coins, earlier studies of the relation between silver coins and silver object will be discussed in the earlier research. The different Viking Age coins in the calculation and the development of the Viking age minting will also be discussed in earlier research. The result of the study demonstrate that an estimated total weight could be calculated for the Arabic silver coins. Unfortunately the mixed coin hoards could not achieve a calculation that could estimate an equivalent total weight of the silver coins

Denna kandidatuppsats behandlar sländtrissor och vävtyngder från vikingatida lokaler samt yngre järnålderslokaler som angränsar till den vikingatida handelsplatsen Birka. Syftet är att studera sländtrissor och vävtyngder från vikingatida fyndlokaler i Birkas omland; vilket åsyftar geografiska områden i Södermanlands län (Södermanland), Stockholms län och Uppsala län (Uppland). Sländtrissor påverkar de textila råmaterialen och de spunna trådarna, vidare påverkar vävtyngderna varpen och de vävda tygerna. Vilka trådar och vilka tyger som har producerats inom vikingatida lokaler i angränsning till Birka diskuteras utifrån sländtrissornas och vävtyngdernas vikt, form och storlek (trots att fragmentariska artifakter förekommer). Studien omfattar spår av textilproduktion inom vikingatida lokaler i Birkas omland, samt en undersökning gällande om det har förekommit inhemska importer av textilier från fastlandet till Birka under vikingatiden. Resultatet påvisar om att gårdsbaserad textilproduktion har förekommit i Birkas omland och ett fåtalet gårdar i omlandet tolkas ha haft möjlighet att exportera textilier till Birka. / This bachelor thesis is regarding spindle whorls and loom weights from late Iron Age-sites and Viking Age-sites in adjoining relation to the Viking Age town Birka. The basis of this thesis concerns in which amount spindle whorls and loom weights occur at Viking Age-sites in Birka's hinterland; it refers to geographical areas in Södermanland County and Uppland County. Spindle whorls influences the textile raw materials and the spun threads, furthermore loom weights influences the warp and the woven cloths. Which threads and which cloth that were produced at the Viking Age-sites in adjoining relation to Birka will be discussed by regarding the weight, form and size of the spindle whorls and loom weights (though fragmental artifacts occur). The thesis will concern trails of textile production from Birka's hinterland and furthermore an investigation about domestic imports of textiles from the mainland to Birka could have oocurred during the Viking Age. The Results indicates that farmbased textileproduction has occured in Birka's hinterland and furthermore numerous of the farms in the hinterland can be discussed as farms with the possibility to export textiles to Birka.

The aim of this thesis is to study 31 individuals from an early christian cemetery in Varnhem, Sweden and through the use of XRF, study the strontium concentrations and the strontium to calcium ratios in bone and use that as an indicator for diet. The material consists of femurs and teeth and through analyzing this I will compare previous dietary studies using stable carbon, nitrogene and sulphur isotope analyses to see wether quantitative strontium analysis can be used as a way to study diet in prehistoric societies. The conclusion is that XRF is not as thorough as an isotope study but it provides a general knowledge of what the population has been eating where we can determine which individuals has had diet consisting of more meat or terrestrial plants.

Animal art is one of the more mystical aspects of Scandinavian Iron Age culture. It has foremost been regarded in the light of art and style history. Interpretation has also – mainly from the 1990s and onwards – been made through iconographic analysis. But the problem here is that iconography requires textual analogy, something that the Scandinavian Iron Age lacks. The purpose of this paper is to lift some of the ”mystical fog” that engulfs the scandinavian animal art, by developing a method for interpretation of pre-historic images that evades the flaws in the iconographic method. This by doing an interpretation of the gripping beast motif on Gotlandic Viking Age animal-head brooches. The study is divided into three parts. Part one focuses on reception within research history and how the use of language and methodological approaches shapes the perception of animal art within it's own time, it also discusses animal art in the light of style, motif and communication. Part two aims to outline a method for pre-historic image interpretation, a structuralistic iconology with addition of contextualization and anthropological theories of agency. The chapter also discusses the cosmological order through means of ”structuralistic iconology”. Finally part three contextualizes the gripping beast to the object – the animal head-brooch – through notions of use, combination and age. Concluding that the gripping beast should be understood as a hybrid creature closely linked to ancestry, odal and the fatalistic worldview of Iron Age Scandinavia.