This study consists of four chapters. The first is a source critical analysis of the fragmented poem Rigsþula arguing that the poem, as we know it today, is an excerpt meant to support the editor behind the manuscript Codex Wormianus in his work listing words for male and female peasants that could be used as poetic metaphors in the 14th century on Iceland. The second study seek to demonstrated the parallels between on the one hand the Rigsþula fragment and the poem Fór Skínis and on the other the first four songs of the Hêliand poem, i.e. Song II-V. These essays therefore deal with the upper classes and the way they adjusted to Christianity and Paganism. The two last essays deal with nonsensical runes. The first centres on a group of Viking Age syllabic texts from Uppland. It is argued that they served as a form of galdr or rigmarole. The second deals with the early Iron-Age runes on weapons. They are considered to relate to what Taci-tus termed Barditus, the singing used by the Germans to judge the outcome of a battle. The Viking Age texts are considered to belong to a subculture, and against the background of the older texts they are seen as an example of a lower strata in society trying (in vain) to accommodate both old-fashioned invocations and modern, i.e. strophe-like compositions.
In order to show its potential, this article introduces a non-intuitive chronological Bayesian analysis of the pre Roman Iron Age settlement site at Askim Church in Østfold, Norway. The archaeological background is provided by an article by Grethe Bjørkan Bukkemoen (2015). The calibration program used to perform the Bayesian analyses is BCal (Buck m.fl. 1999). The analysis suggests that the settlement commences in the early part of the 3rd c. BCE and comes to an end in the early part of the 1st BCE. Presently, its continuation during the Roman Iron Age is unknown. The main part of the analysis concerns the dating of the houses 1:1 and 1:2 which overlap each other – House 1:1 being the older of the two. The time gap between the two buildings seems too large to be filled by the adjacent House 2, which is younger than House 1:1 and older than House 1:2. In the discussion the chronological analysis is used to corroborate and develop Bukkemoen’s discussion on the pre Roman Iron Age farm house as a social agent. It is suggested that the pre Roman Iron Age house, which initially is determined by the subsistence landscape, is replaced by the late pre Roman Iron Age house, which in its turn defines the subsistence landscape.
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.
Denna bok är en bakgrundsanalys av de runinskrifter som huvudsakligen skrevs innan klimatkrisen 536 - 550 efter vår tideräkning Det är inte lätt att sammanfatta den yngre järnåldern i Sydskandinavien. Av och till är det omöjligt om man inte först underbygger en del av den tidens kulturfenomen bättre än man kan i en sammanfattning. De äldsta nordiska runinskrifterna som social- och kulturhistoriska fenomen är ett sådant fält. Om texterna inte tolkas i termer av kulturgeografi, socialhistoria och litteratur, så platser de inte i en syntes av den yngre järnålderns sydskandinaviska samhälle. Samtidigt är det orimligt att man inte har en ungefärlig uppfattning om skrivkunnighetens plats i ett samhälle, om skrivkunnighet bevisligen finns.
Venantius Fortunatus was a Latin, Ravenna educated, semi-political rhetorical poet active in Merovingian Francia in the late 6th century. Arriving in Austrasia from the Alps in the spring of 566, he wrote three poems, not least an epithalamium publicly performed at the wedding of Sigibert and Brunhild. This literary genre, its structure and the three addressees of his poems can be seen as a surprisingly detailed template for the Norse poem Skírnismál. The value of Fortunatus’ poetry rests with his ability to amalgamate Germanic, Christian and Latin Roman culture in a period of transition from a pagan to a Christian society. Since these periods of transition are reoccurring, it is possible to see an education in the 10th–11th century as the background for the Norse Skírnismál author, who probably must have read Fortunatus in order to compose his Norse wedding entertainment. Skírnismál is thus neither a purely Norse nor a purely oral composition.
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 book in Swedish was produced within the Swedish Research Council project Den yngre järnålderns mentalitetshistoria i Sydskandinavien – Late Iron Age South Scandinavia—a Historical Anthropology. It centres on a discussion of three runic inscriptions. The one on the slab from Eggja in Sogndal, Norway, the one on the oath ring from Forsa in Hälsingland and the one on the bridge stone from Eggeby in Uppland (Inscription U69 in Sveriges runinskrifter). The metrical qualities of these, primarily oral, expressions are a reoccurring aspect of the discussion.
Innehåll: 1 : Det myntade guldet ; 2 : Det omyntade guldet
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.
This article discusses a text, a satire, in the manuscript Paris, Bibl. Nat. lat. 8121A. Conveniently this section of the codex is called Semiramis (see Dronke 1970). Based on Dronke’s (1970) and Gunnell’s (1995) research, the article looks further into Semiramis and discusses whether staging rather than reading it comes with a profit. While discussing this hypothesis four major reasons why Semiramis would benefit from being read as a dramatic script and staged can be singled out. Although the play is a distinctly Latin Semiramis shows affinities with the Anglo-Danish culture of it day and age as well as with Eddic plays, especially Skírnismál and Lokasenna (see Gunnell 1995).
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.