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Mortuary monuments constitute one of the main sources for acquiring information about people of past societies. In the process of collecting and documenting archaeological remains, the methods are explicit and requirements for scientific viability extensive. But when the remains have been documented and the process of interpretation begins, new approaches seem to apply. The study of a ‘warrior grave that turned out to be female’ (grave Bj 581 from Birka), and the response it received, brought to light the fact that the interpretative process followed parallel frameworks depending on the biological sex of the buried individual. Sex became a game-changer, making previously accepted interpretations no longer valid although nothing concerning the grave had actually changed. The change was instead that the expected correspondence between the biological sex and the socially constructed, gender mediated through the material culture, no longer existed.1 That burials are interpreted differently, depending on the biological sex of the skeleton is not necessarily wrong or irrelevant, but the differences in how interpretations are selected must be firmly anchored in the archaeological material, and verifiable. Using three burials from the Viking town Birka as illustrations, this paper is a reflection on how we as scholars approach the archaeological source material, the choices we make, and the perspectives that influence our interpretations and narratives.

Sexing the skeletal remains of young individuals is crucial yet notoriously difficult in archaeology. Children, who cannot be reliably sexed morphologically, are often excluded from gender-related research, limiting our understanding of past childhood. This issue is compounded in contexts lacking grave goods, such as early Christian burials. We conducted genomic screening of 142 individuals from Sweden dating from the late Viking Age to the Medieval period, including 68 subadults and 74 adults from 27 single and 50 multiple burials. To investigate the treatment of children in death and the role of collective graves, we applied genomic sexing and kinship analyses to individuals from three sites. Contrary to the assumption that collective burials reflect close kinship, our results show that children interred with adults rarely shared close biological ties. Burial patterns indicate that gender roles were established early, with both boys and most girls mirroring adult spatial patterns. However, flexibility existed, and extended kinship likely played a central role in structuring these communities.

 When Viking Age house interiors are reconstructed, the focus is usually on the fireplace and the placement of tables, benches and beds. These features help us understand how people lived. However, we often forget that textiles, such as blankets, sheets, tablecloths and wall hangings, were also important in everyday life. Textiles were used for comfort, cleaning and decoration, and they helped tell stories as well as signal a person’s or family’s social status. Most Viking Age textiles that have survived are found in graves. These include not only clothing but also bedding, pillows and fabrics used to wrap objects. A burial can be seen as a kind of room for the dead, filled with items that reflect how people lived and what they valued. Because of this, grave finds are important when discussing the interior textiles used in Viking Age houses. Wall hangings are mentioned as status symbols in the Icelandic sagas, and examples from the late Viking Age and early medieval period have been found and preserved in churches, giving us insight into their use and value. Old Norse texts also mention soft furnishings such as tablecloths and handcloths, and the use of interior textiles can be seen on the Bayeux embroidery. Other types of iconography, such as on rune stones and picture stones, help us understand how interior textiles may have been used. By combining information from textiles, written sources and iconography, and by applying different approaches, the chapters in this book offer various perspectives on how interior textiles were used in the Viking Age, why they were needed and how valuable they were.

 When Viking Age house interiors are reconstructed, the focus is usually on the fireplace and the placement of tables, benches and beds. These features help us understand how people lived. However, we often forget that textiles, such as blankets, sheets, tablecloths and wall hangings, were also important in everyday life. Textiles were used for comfort, cleaning and decoration, and they helped tell stories as well as signal a person’s or family’s social status. Most Viking Age textiles that have survived are found in graves. These include not only clothing but also bedding, pillows and fabrics used to wrap objects. A burial can be seen as a kind of room for the dead, filled with items that reflect how people lived and what they valued. Because of this, grave finds are important when discussing the interior textiles used in Viking Age houses. Wall hangings are mentioned as status symbols in the Icelandic sagas, and examples from the late Viking Age and early medieval period have been found and preserved in churches, giving us insight into their use and value. Old Norse texts also mention soft furnishings such as tablecloths and handcloths, and the use of interior textiles can be seen on the Bayeux embroidery. Other types of iconography, such as on rune stones and picture stones, help us understand how interior textiles may have been used. By combining information from textiles, written sources and iconography, and by applying different approaches, the chapters in this book offer various perspectives on how interior textiles were used in the Viking Age, why they were needed and how valuable they were.

 The Viking Age town of Birka in Lake Mälaren is renowned for its exceptionally rich archaeological textile material. Textiles recovered from burials, together with extensive evidence for on-site textile production and more recent finds from the harbour area, have provided an unparalleled basis for reconstructing Viking Age cloth culture. This material has consequently become an important point of reference for studies of textiles throughout Viking Age Scandinavia. One context remains comparatively unexplored, however: the use of textiles in martial environments.

This chapter addresses this research gap by examining textiles in the context of Birka’s garrison, an archaeologically unique site characterized by its explicitly martial character and clearly defined material culture. As very little textile material is preserved in the garrison itself, the study requires an alternative approach, combining the limited surviving evidence with knowledge of textile production, manufacture, and use derived from other contexts. The chapter explores the possible roles and functions of textiles in a martial setting and seeks to identify different categories of martial textiles. In doing so, it aims to broaden our understanding of the material conditions of warriors, armies, and raiding groups and to establish a framework for further research into textiles and martial culture in the Viking Age.

 This volume offers an interdisciplinary exploration of gender relations in medieval Scandinavia, focusing on the roles of women in Old Norse society. Despite decades of research, this topic continues to attract critical attention, a reflection both of its enduring relevance in medieval studies and of the ways in which it intersects with contemporary cultural discourse. Bringing together eight contributions by leading specialists, this book combines archaeology, history, literary analysis, and legal studies to shed new light on established debates and to offer insights into emerging perspectives. The chapters draw on both methodological and theoretical approaches, variously tracing connections between legendary heroines such as Brynhild and the enigmatic women of the Oseberg and Birka graves, exploring gender in the mortuary landscape, and assessing the role played by women in creating and promulgating skaldic verse. Highlighting the interplay between text and material culture, this collection presents a coherent yet multifaceted picture of women’s roles in Viking Age societies.

This chapter focuses on the elite boat burial from Pukkilain Isokyrö, Finland (ad 700), one of the last elaborate burials during the Merovingian period in southern Ostrobothnia. This is a Scandinavian-type burial which is situated in a cemetery context (cremation cemetery under level ground) that is often associated with Finnic language areas but in a region where the closest genetic matches are not too distant to the modern Sami. Based on diverse grave-goods we interpret the buried as a local middleman in the fur trade between Scandinavia and eastern cultures. A key concept is cultural creolization. Culture is here approached in terms of socially accessed signs with their conventions of use and combination.From this perspective, language is one type of sign system among others. Creolization developed in linguistics as a concept to account for the emergence of languages called ‘creoles’.  ‘Creole’ initially referred to ahybrid language (and also people) that emerged in the process of European expansion and in environmentsof colonialism. In more recent times, ‘creole’ as alinguistic phenomenon has been distinguished from specific historical political-economic circumstances in which emblematic examples arose. This concept has been extended from language to the full spectrum of cultural phenomena. Creolization has sometimes been used as a vague synonym for hybridization, but is here described more specifically as the hybridization of a sign system or systems that move between groups in an asymmetrical relationship resulting in a new, distinct,synthetic and socially shared sign system or systems. This case study illustrates the utility of the concept as a tool in research while simultaneously illustrating the problems of simple correlations of emblematic objects with ethnic or cultural identities.

Early modern history abounds with descriptions of “barbarians,” a term originating in ancient Greece and later applied to people deemed uncivilized. Historical knowledge about these groups comes largely from colonial or imperialist outsiders who mischaracterized them as irrational and violent. This characterization masks the fact that these decentralized groups achieved large-scale strategic coordination in the absence of centralized power. This paper examines historical examples of such collectives, illustrating how they leveraged flexible cultural and political repertoires, including socially cooperative violence, to maintain autonomy while scaling up collective action. We present a framework for understanding these dynamics that emphasizes how groups drew upon repertoires of institutions, resources, and strategies and analyze four case studies to explore how decentralized societies coordinated effectively without central authority. Finally, we suggest ways archaeologists might identify similar patterns in the past, offering a fresh perspective on the structural dimensions of large-scale, decentralized societies.