Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse

The Vikings were the master mariners and ship-builders of the middle ages: their success depended on these skills. Spectacular archaeological finds of whole or partial ships, from burial mounds or dredged from harbours, continue to give new and exciting evidence of their practical craftsmanship and urge to seek new shores. The nautical vocabulary of the Viking Age, however, has been surprisingly neglected – the last comprehensive study was published in 1912 and was heavily dependent on post-Viking Age sources.

Far better contemporary sources from the later Viking Age are available to document the activities of men and their uses of ships from c.950-1100, and Judith Jesch undertakes in this book the first systematic and comparative study of such evidence. The core is a critical survey of the vocabulary of ships and their crews, of fleets and sailing and battles at sea, based on runic inscriptions and skaldic evidence from c.950-1100. This nautical vocabulary is studied within the larger context of ‘viking’ activity in this period: what that activity was and where it took place, its social and military aspects, and its impact on developments in the nature of kingship in Scandinavia.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

JUDITH JESCH is Reader in Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham, and author of Women in the Viking Age.

Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse
By Judith Jesch
Boydell Press 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0851158266

The Viking World (Routledge Worlds)

Filling a gap in the literature for an academically oriented volume on the Viking period, this unique book is a one-stop authoritative introduction to all the latest research in the field.

Bringing together today’s leading scholars, both established seniors and younger, cutting-edge academics, Stefan Brink and Neil Price have constructed the first single work to gather innovative research from a spectrum of disciplines (including archaeology, history, philology, comparative religion, numismatics and cultural geography) to create the most comprehensive Viking Age book of its kind ever attempted.

Consisting of longer articles providing overviews of important themes, supported by shorter papers focusing on material of particular interest, this comprehensive volume covers such wide-ranging topics as social institutions, spatial issues, the Viking Age economy, warfare, beliefs, language, voyages, and links with medieval and Christian Europe.

This original work, specifically oriented towards a university audience and the educated public, will have a self-evident place as an undergraduate course book and will be a standard work of reference for all those in the field.

The Viking World (Routledge Worlds)
Stefan Brink (Editor), Neil Price (Editor)
Routledge 2011

The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia

Magic, sorcery and witchcraft are among the most common themes of the great medieval Icelandic sagas and poems, the problematic yet vital sources that provide our primary textual evidence for the Viking Age that they claim to describe. Yet despite the consistency of this picture, surprisingly little archaeological or historical research has been done to explore what this may really have meant to the men and women of the time.

This book examines the evidence for Old Norse sorcery, looking at its meaning and function, practice and practitioners, and the complicated constructions of gender and sexual identity with which these were underpinned. Combining strong elements of eroticism and aggression, sorcery appears as a fundamental domain of women’s power, linking them with the gods, the dead and the future. Their battle spells and combat rituals complement the men’s physical acts of fighting, in a supernatural empowerment of the Viking way of life. What emerges is a fundamentally new image of the world in which the Vikings understood themselves to move, in which magic and its implications permeated every aspect of a society permanently geared for war. In this fully revised and expanded second edition, Neil Price takes us with him on a tour through the sights and sounds of this undiscovered country, meeting its human and otherworldly inhabitants, including the Sami with whom the Norse partly shared this mental landscape. On the way we explore Viking notions of the mind and soul, the fluidity of the boundaries that they drew between humans and animals, and the immense variety of their spiritual beliefs. We find magic in the Vikings’ bedrooms and on their battlefields, and we meet the sorcerers themselves through their remarkable burials and the tools of their trade.

Combining archaeology, history and literary scholarship with extensive studies of Germanic and circumpolar religion, this multi-award-winning book shows us the Vikings as we have never seen them before.

The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia
By Neil Price
Published by the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Uppsala University 2002. New edition will be published 2014 by Oxbow
ISBN:         91-506-1626-9

Viking Ship Museum Boats

The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde is the Danish museum for ships and shipping in prehistoric and medieval times. The museum collection is based on the five viking ships which were excavated at Skuldelev in 1962 and through reconstructions of those and other vessels, the museum aims to bring life to the archaeological finds. The boat collection continues to grow and reveals how the wooden vessels of today still show visible evidence of having viking forefathers – it has not been necessary to change the basic principles of boat construction in a thousand years! The book provides an overview of the various boat types in the collection. Leveringstid kan forekomme.

 The Viking Ships Museum Boats
By Max Vinner
Vikingeskibsmuseet 2002
ISBN 978-87-85180-48-3.
Price: €20