The phenomenon of the medieval royal election thing of Mora, on the outskirts of Uppsala in central Sweden, is an under-researched topic from an archaeological viewpoint. With the archaeological material in focus, the author reviews the current state of research and offers a new hypothesis about the development of Mora as a non -continuous thing site with three phases: in the 500s, 1300s and 1400s. It connects to long debated questions such as where in Mora the actual thing was located, why Mora was chosen to host this important ceremonial act, and how the semi-mythical "Stone of Mora" is to be understood.
At the 14th Saga Conference, Carrie Roy presented a paper on the meaning of the gripping- beast motif in Viking Period culture. Roy leveled serious criticism against her peers, including the co-authors of this note, declaring them victims of their own subjectivity. In Fornvännen 2012:1, we responded to criticism that Carrie Roy had directed towards us in print. The matter appeared especially urgent as her account contained errors of fact and misquotations that did injury to fellow researchers. Thus, the main focus of our reply was on academic craftsmanship. Reading Roy's reply in Fornvännen 2012:2, we noted with regret that she remains set in her ways, rather than admitting human error. Therefore, we felt compelled to compose a final reply.
At the 14th Saga Conference, Carrie Roy presented a paper on the meaning of the gripping- beast motif in Viking Period culture. Roy levels serious criticism against her peers, including the co-authors of this note, declaring them victims of their own subjectivity. The three of us have contributed equally to the following reply.
This study compares the results from radiocarbon measurements performed on charcoal and burnt bone from the same contexts in order to assess the reliability of the two materials for dating. The study deals with seven Mesolithic sites in Norrland and Dalecarlia, an area where datable organic material is difficult to find. The bone samples have been chosen for the study and the charcoal samples are mainly from previous work. The study shows that both materials are suitable for dating as long as they are sampled correctly and with knowledge of the errors that can occur.
A key feature of swords from the Migration and Merovingian Periods is that they consist of many different parts, as recently highlighted by the discovery of the Staffordshire hoard. This paper seeks to understand sword parts and their depositional contexts by interpreting them as symbols of kleptocracy, animated by their object biographies in a martial society. This is done by evaluating four important finds from Sweden: a stray intact sword from Scania, a cremation grave from Heberg in Halland, a wetland deposit from Snosback in Vastergotland, and the settlement finds from Uppakra in Scania. The presence of the various different parts varies substantially in the different kinds of contexts. In particular, the Uppakra settlement is missing hundreds of sword parts that ought to have been there given the professional excavations and systematic metal-detecting over many years there. This allows for the interpretation of the Uppakra sword parts as the remains of a battlefield of about AD 600 where most of the sword parts were removed from the site shortly after the battle.
This paper aims mainly to analyse the relationship between university scholars and heritage conservation by means of two examples: Iron Age house types, which is history, and the analysis of planned Iron Age architecture, which has not yet benefited sufficiently from contract archaeology. I recognise the duty of university scholars to develop research topics that may be useful to contract archaeology as well as to heritage conservation and university archaeology. As a topic of research, I suggest a cognitively based understanding of Iron Age house planning and construction. I suggest that an important understanding of cognitive history can be related to a shift in Iron Age building principles: in the Early Iron Age form follows function, but in the Late Iron Age construction principles give form.
This paper aims mainly to analyse the relationship between university scholars and heritage conservation by means of two examples: Iron Age house types, which is history, and the analysis of planned Iron Age architecture, which has not yet benefited sufficiently from contract archaeology. I recognise the duty of university scholars to develop research topics that may be useful to contract archaeology aswell as to heritage conservation and university archaeology. As a topic of research, I suggest a cognitively based understanding of Iron Age house planning and construction. I suggest that an important understanding of cognitive history can be related to a shift in Iron Age building principles: in the Early Iron Age form follows function, but in the Late Iron Age construction principles give form.
This is a study of a small runestone material from the Selaön Island in Lake Mälaren. As an island material, the inscriptions are set apart from their surroundings. They link in with common traits among decorated 11th runestones, but also with the characteristic breadth of middle-sized and well-defined materials. This local diversity may nevertheless be seen as a characteristic in itself of the larger Lake Mälaren area: this region is partly built from local nodes united by the lake. Based on the study three research fields are identified: 1) small-scale runestone geography and chronology, 2) the non-banal and complex relationship between design, text and ornament, 3) a dimension of intent characteristic of Selaön, that is, a local sincerity in the commemorative inscriptions. Micro-geography, complex design and mindset are thus suggested as new fields for a cognitively more rewarding contextual research into the runestone vogue in the Lake Mälaren area.
Based on an introductory account of the shortcomings of a purely archaeological endeavour to understand the cultural history of the 1(st) millennium ce, this case study begins with an interpretation of the Old Norse word meior. This is followed up by a short comparative analysis of the function of the oe words beam and rod in the Dream of the Rood. Thus, having been inspired by Old Norse and Old English texts, the next step is an analysis of two archaeological excavations in which several constructions seem to qualify as a meior in the everyday sense of the word. Essentially, the word means 'drying rack' and as a construction it consists of two vertical poles with crutches, which support a horizontal rod that joins them together. On this rod more or less anything may hang - even Hav during his rite of passage merging with Ooinn.
This article discusses the embroidered skull reliquary on foot, kept in the Linkoping Castle and Cathedral Museum (SHM 3920:6). The reliquary was examined by Agnes Branting and Andreas Lindblom in 1928 and discussed in this journal by Axel Romdahl in 1929. Inger Estham describes the object in the 2001 publication on Linkoping Cathedral and suggests that it was a gift from Vadstena Abbey to the cathedral for the translation of Bishop Nils Hermansson's relics in 1515. Our analysis of the textiles, the embroidery, the traces of lost ornaments and the iconography has led us to believe that the assumed provenance from the hands of the nuns of Vadstena Abbey is correct. However, the decoration on top of the lid, forming a typical Birgittine crown, would not be correct for a bishop: it would instead be most appropriate for a Birgittine nun. Furthermore, the decoration and the execution of the embroidery correspond to textile production in Vadstena Abbey in the mid-15th century, not the early 16th. Finally, a description of the skull reliquary used at the translation of St. Catherine of Vadstena in 1489 fits rather well with what the Linkoping reliquary is likely to have looked like originally. We therefore dismiss the reliquary's association with the translation of Bishop Nils Hermansson in 1515 and instead suggest a date no later than 1489.
The clasp found at Lilla Ullevi in Bro parish near Stockholm is puzzling in many respects. The composition of its animal art unites a number of puzzle pictures alluding to different Vendel style phases. Despite repair, there are no traces of wear typical for dress or belt clasps. Does the clasp predate the abandonment of Ullr’s sanctuary or vice versa? In 2007 a gilded copper-alloy clasp was found in a stratum covering a late-1st Millennium cult site at Lilla Ullevi in Bro parish near Stockholm. The clasp’s animal art (with affinities to the Vendel styles B, D and E) unites five different motifs (some of them doubled) that are masterfully interlaced into puzzle pictures. The find context, unfortunately, does not al - low us to state whether the clasp was lost before, during or after the closing-down of the sanctua - ry. Its stylistic date points to a date after c. AD 725, and it may even be an archaising piece dating from the Viking Period. Despite a rivet that may be evidence of repair, the mount shows none of the typical corrosion or wear traces of a dress. It rather associates with a hard underlay, ante- dating the book clasps of later centuries.
Following the suggestions of Sophus Müller in his essay "Dyreornamentiken i Norden" (1880), scholars in Late Iron Age artefact studies long avoided interpretations of Germanic animal art which differed from the traditional idea of a meaningless ornament. Accordingly, research in Germanic animal art has been dominated by an interest in the establishment of stylistic groups, as indicators of chronological and regional variations. In recent years, however, a paradigm shift has come to pass, influenced by new theoretical schools and motivated by the results of iconographers led by Karl Hauck. This paper presents new iconographic methodology, explores the fate of two animal types through the successive animal art styles of the Vendel Period, and suggests an iconological interpretation connected to the cult of Odin.
This article focuses on the inhumation graves from the Late Bronze Age and the earliest part of the Iron Age that have been excavated in Uppland. The aim is to discuss the inhumation burial practice during the Late Bronze Age in this part of the Malaren valley. It has been known for a long time that there was wide variety in the construction of graves and/or bone deposits from the Late Bronze Age in Uppland. Most of the graves are cremation graves, but archaeological excavations in Uppland and central Sweden in the loth century and at the beginning of the 21st century found and investigated a few inhumation graves dated to the Late Bronze Age and the earliest part of the Iron Age. Even though inhumation graves in the area were known during most of the loth century, they are often seen as something unknown, unexpected and unusual. Recent studies of burial traditions in the Malaren valley during the Bronze Age have mainly focused on cremation graves, and especially the category of "cremation graves" which contain very few bones. In the article it is argued that the evidence of inhumation burials in Uppland needs to be further examined in order to better understand the complex burial customs of the Late Bronze Age and the earliest Iron Age in central Sweden.
During the Late Bronze Age in the eastern parts of Central Sweden, the remains of the deceased were treated in many different ways. In addition to cairns and stone settings (which are usually regarded as graves), human bones, cremated as well as not cremated, have also been found in settlements, in heaps of fired cracked stones, wells, pits and in water. These "bone deposits" are made up of parts of people rather than complete bodies, and show a complex treatment of the dead (see, for example, Thedeen 2004; Eriksson 2005; Fredengren 2011). The purpose of this article is to study and discuss the highly varied practice of treating the remains of the deceased in eastern Central Sweden during the Late Bronze Age. This issue is discussed through two very well-known Bronze Age sites: Hallunda, Botkyrka parish in Sodermanland and Broby, BOrje parish in Uppland. In the article we argue that the bone deposits found in the area must partly be seen in a different way than a "grave" in the sense of a place for the deceased's last resting place. We highlight circumstances which indicate that the human bones that are found are the result of ritual processes with different phases, rather than individual "burials" with the grave as a last resting place for the dead. We also argue that a distinctive feature in the treatment of the remains of the dead in eastern Central Sweden is that the link between the dead individual and the "grave monument" (which is central to the concept of the grave) is weak.
Saint Erik was King of Sweden for a few years up to 1160, when he was killed. A skeleton attributed to him is kept in Uppsala Cathedral. It underwent scientific reappraisal in 2014. The analyses included computer tomography, Xray absorptiometry, isotope analysis and DNA sampling. Radiocarbon confirms the alleged age of the bones. They belong to a 35-40-year-old man in excellent physical shape. The many wounds that he received in connection with his death fit surprisingly well with the saint's legend, whose preserved version was written 130 years after the event.
The authors have carried out osteological analyses on 14 cremation graves which are extremely rich in bones. The analysed Late Iron Age graves are concentrated to the Lake Mälaren valley. The resulta show tha) a great number ol animals were sacrificed on lhe funeral pyres in honour of the dead. The animals include trained falcons and bawks. They reveal that falconry already in the 6th century was pracliced by the wealthy class.
Recently, a worn prehistoric ceramic sherd was found in a field outside the city of Borlange in the province of Dalarna, central Sweden. The sherd has been identified as a fragment of a vessel belonging to the Battle Axe culture, the first one ever found in Dalarna. At the same time, the sherd is the youngest known Stone Age pottery in the province, and after that the craft seems to have disappeared. The first reappearance dates to the Early Iron Age, 500 BCE-400 CE. Both south and north of Dalarna, ceramic production carried on continuously from the time it was introduced during the Neolithic. With very few exceptions (including northernmost Norway), this applies to the entire northern circumpolar part of the world despite difficulties in finding raw materials, fuel and suitable weather to perform the craft. Dalarna offers all the prerequisites for producing pottery, but despite this, and despite decades of contract archeology in the province, it seems from the current state of research that this was not done for about 2000 years. The main question is therefore: how may we understand why the ceramic tradition ceased in Dalarna at the end of the Stone Age?