The village of Vindelev in Eastern Jutland was presumably a gift to a Vendish military commander, who operated east of Vejle in the middle of the 400s. An impressive gold hoard opens up the world, in which he lived.
Category: Medieval Europe
Norðvegr – Sailing the Coast of Norway Year 1000
For three years, the archaeologist Greer Jarrett and his crew sailed up and down the coast of Norway in an old clinker-built Viking boat mapping the maritime mindscape of the Northmen
The Norwegian state, Norway, derives from the sailing route along the coast known as the Norðvegr. A recent paper explores this Norðvegr and its maritime mindscape as a lived experience.
What did it feel like to travel long distances in an open, clinker-built Viking boat along the Norwegian coast at the turn of the first millennium, when Cnut the Great ruled north-western Europe from Newfoundland to Sigtuna in Sweden? How did it all hang together? One of the preconditions was, of course, the technology – the Viking ships and boats, their oars, sails and rigging, the hardtack, and all the other paraphernalia involved. However, another was the knowledge of how to make way: the maritime mindscape. In terms of archaeology and literary studies, this is certainly not an unexplored field. An important contribution, however, has been the experimental archaeology carried out since the first recreation of a Viking ship set sail for Chicago in 1893. Most of these voyages have had the character of large-scale enterprises involving reconstructed ships based on the famous larger vessels discovered in Norwegian burial mounds or in the Firth of Roskilde.
Recently, though, experimental voyages have taken on another, and perhaps less spectacular, character: charting and exploring parts of the Norðvegr, which formed part of the via franca of the north-western European realm. What was the feasibility of travelling up and down the Norwegian coast in the small, ordinary, day-to-day clinker-built ships of yesteryear?
Greer Jarrett and his crew have explored this question “through experimental and ethnographic fieldwork onboard traditional Norwegian boats, focusing on aspects of Viking Age route choice, risk judgement, and the location of possible anchorages and harbours”. The goal has been not only to discover where people travelled, but also, through the identification of small harbours, to reconstruct concrete maritime itineraries along the Norwegian coast. In 2022, the sailing boat – an open, square-rigged clinker vessel modelled on those used during the Viking Age (800–1050 AD) – made a journey from Trondheim to the Arctic Circle. Since then, Jarrett and his team have sailed more than 5,000 km along historic Viking trade routes.
His research suggests that Viking voyages often took place well offshore, challenging earlier assumptions about their navigation methods. Simply put, navigating close to the coast appears to have been more unpredictable, as underwater currents and winds descending from the mountains created more complex sailing conditions. In short, the idea that Viking ships and boats sought to “hug the coast” is a myth. Putting out to sea was, in many cases, a better option. Over time, the Vikings became thoroughly accomplished seafarers. In an earlier study, Jarrett and his colleagues showed that, during the Middle Ages, Greenlanders could use this type of boat to reach remote areas of the Arctic in search of walrus tusks, while interacting with Inuit communities in the High Arctic.
Another conclusion is that the concrete experience of the preferability of the open sea helps to explain the location of the royal manors linked to the sea-king, Harald Fairhair, in Hordaland, which display a marked preference for outlying coastal areas. It may also explain why populations in inner Norway, hit by the climatic downturn after AD 536, moved westwards to the sea rather than maintaining settlements in the interior peninsula.
The Maritime Mindscape
One result has been the identification of four long-forgotten landing sites awaiting archaeological excavation. It is hoped that they will yield information about jetties, ballast stones, cooking pits, shelters, dung heaps, and other material remains – lost coins, amulets, and so forth.
However, one of the most important results of the research has been the identification of a cultural commonality which Jarrett has termed “the Maritime Mindscape”, or more precisely, “the Maritime Cultural Mindscape”. Put simply, the research has uncovered the practical seamanship underpinning the performance of this Maritime Mindscape, which was shared by people across the north-west and is also reflected in the literature (Jesch 2015), in mental geography (Jackson 2009), and in place-names signifying shipyards and landing sites (Stylegar 2002). Some Icelandic texts, such as Landnámabók, include passages that may be read as straightforward land- and sea-marks, so-called landkenningar.
The research has also shown that navigation was indeed possible – even across the open sea – without technical instruments. Seafarers well versed in this traditional lore would have been highly prized. In this respect, however, the recreated experience can never be entirely precise.
For reasons of safety, one “experience” was not explored: ignoring the weather forecast. Nor was the need to avoid actual Vikings – that is, pirates – part of the agenda. Moreover, relative sea level in 2022 differs from that of 1,200 years ago. Post-glacial land uplift would have resulted in a coastline that today lies approximately 3–5 metres below the level known from AD 1000.
PHOTOS:
Lund University and Greer Jarrett.
SOURCES:
Maritime Mindscapes: using experimental archaeology to reconstruct Viking Age seafaring routes
By Greer Jarrett
In D. Dangvard Pedersen, & J. Hansen (Eds.): Travelling Viking Age: Proceedings of the 40th Interdisciplinary Viking Symposium. Odense, University of Southern Denmark, May 3, 2023 (pp. 8-23).
(Kulturhistoriske studier i centralitet – Archaeological & Historical Studies in Centrality; Vol. 11). Forskningscenter: Centrum – Museum Odense – University Press of Southern Denmark
The lore of the leið: Tracking Viking Age voyages through traditional seafaring.
By Greer Jarrett
Acta Archaeologica Lundensia Series Altera in 8°, No 77
Doctoral Thesis (compilation), Department of Archaeology and Ancient
History, Lund University (2025).
From the Masthead to the Map: An Experimental and Digital Approach to Viking Age Seafaring Itineraries.
By Greer Jarrett
Journal of Archaeological Method Theory 32, 42.
The Threatening Wave: Norse Poetry and the Scottish Isles
By Janet Jesch
In: Barrett, J.H., Gibbon, S.J. (Eds.), Maritime Societies of the Viking and Medieval World. Routledge (2015)
Leeds, pp. 320–332.
Place-names as evidence for ancient maritime culture in Norway
By Frans-Arne H Stylegar
Årbok Norsk Sjøfartsmuseum 2002, pp 79-115
Ways on the “mental map” of medieval Scandinavians,
By T. N. Jackson
in: Heizmann, W., Böldl, K., Beck, H., Schier, K. (Eds.), Analecta Septentrionalia: Beiträge Zur Nordgermanischen Kultur- Und Literaturgeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin, pp. 211–220.
In the Italian Manner: Spain and Mediterranean Gothic 1320–1420
In spring 2026, the Prado in Madrid will offer a spectacular exhibition inviting us into the artistic world of Mediterranean Gothic, 1320–1420.
Praise Poem to Aonghas of Islay – Angus Mór of Islay
When Angus’s father died c. 1250, an Irish bard composed a praise poem petitioning the son to pay his father’s debt. The poem offers a vivid account of the cultural inventory of one of the Sea Kings.
The Kingdom of the Isles – and the Lords at Finlaggan
Excavated since 1987, Finlaggan on Islay, demonstrates how the medieval Kingdom of the Isles was on par with the rest of Europe in terms of political and cultural sophistication.
The Remains of Kings and Queens in Winchester
Since 2012, archaeologists and scientists have been poking through 1300 bones, the remains of kings, queens and bishops laid to rest in the mortuary chests in Winchester Cathedral.
Greenland Was Part of Scandinavia – and Denmark – for a 1000 years
When Greenland was settled by Norse immigrants in AD 997, it was uninhabited. From the outset it became part of the Danish–Scandinavian world
Medieval Fortifications in Caen Being Excavated
Archaeological excavations of the medieval fortifications in Caen is yielding new knowledge about the city before and during the hundred years war
Early Medieval Glass from Venice
From Shards to Sea Routes: Glass Evidence for Venice’s Mediterranean Networks in the 7th and 8th Centuries
Huge Swedish Treasure from ca. AD 1200
Weighing more than six kilograms, a remarkable treasure from the reign of Knut Eriksson was discovered near Stockholm in September
Putin’s Medieval Dream of Ruling an Empire
At his Alaska meeting with Trump, Putin made a curious demand that cut to the heart of the war: he wants to rule as Czar of a medieval-style empire
“Mr. Putin also demanded guarantees that Russian should be an official language in Ukraine, and that security should be established to allow the Russian Orthodox Church to be reinstated as the leader of the Orthodox Church in Ukraine”, wrote New York Times in a reference to Putin’s and Trump’s negotations in Alaska.
In truth, these demands appear downright bizarre. Consider the context: Russia has waged a war of aggression that, so far, has cost around a million Russian lives or ruined their health, without securing any meaningful territorial gains. And yet, Putin shows up in Alaska with demands that, beyond territorial concerns, peace should also reinstate the Russian language and the Russian Orthodox Church as national cultural focal points in the future Ukraine. Why is this so important to him? What is this war really about? Generally, three explanations are put forward:
Putin, the man
The first type of explanation is individual-oriented. Here we note that Putin, for one reason or another, appears as a character deviant. Maybe he is also ill (Parkinson’s has been mentioned). What we have witnessed since 2014, when Crimea was annexed, really looks from the outside like the work of a madman. For who else but psychopaths with delusions of grandeur start a war whose main manifestation is terror-bombings of civilians in Kyiv and the rest of Ukraine? And where more than a million Russian soldiers have ended up dead or maimed in the meat grinder of the battlefield since 2022?
Further on, commentators have attempted to dig deeper into Putin’s personal history. He was born in 1952 in Leningrad as the youngest son of a factory worker and soldier. His childhood home was undoubtedly also marked by a couple of other circumstances, namely that his grandfather had been cook for both Stalin and Lenin, while his mother was a dedicated churchgoer and believer. There must have been a certain “cognitive dissonance” in that home. In addition, it would have been marked by the stories of one of his two brothers, who died of hunger in Leningrad in 1942. The Revolution and the war would have been ghosts that haunted his childhood and youth. After school and university, where he studied law and economics, he was recruited in 1975 to the KGB. He then served in the GDR as liaison officer until 1989. After the coup against Gorbachev, however, he changed horses in midstream to support the restoration of the defunct Russia. In 1998 he was appointed head of the FSB (the KGB’s successor), until he was elected president in 2000. Might this be enough of an explication? Somehow, it does not quite suffice to explain the odd demands quoted here. We need more context
Putin, the medieval emperor
Although the sources are sparse, there is a straight line from Putin’s deeply felt regret over the collapse of the Soviet Union to his self-proclaimed preoccupation with Russia’s medieval history and the Russian Orthodox Church. He has himself mentioned this as a background for his political positioning.
This preoccupation with the Middle Ages is clearly linked to his desire to re-establish the world order that prevailed before the invention of the “nation” in the 1500s as the primary political “actor”. In short, the idea of a Europe of imagined communities configured as nations consolidated during the 15th and 16th centuries, to be finally codified in 1648 in Westphalia. Since then, the idea spread in a way that made it seem “natural.” Today in the Western world we no longer think in terms of empires, but rather nations shaped by the basic dictum: cuius regio, eius religio, with our addition, eius lex. The original dictum was confirmed in 1555 in Augsburg, though first formulated in 1582. It means: “Each kingdom, its religion (and its law.)”
The consequences of this “naturalness” with which we live with the national idea were according to his own words experienced acutely by Putin when the Russian Empire definitively collapsed after 1989, and everything from the Baltic States to Kazakhstan broke out of the Soviet imperial iron fist.
Putin, the latter-day Czar
Thus, there seems at least on the discursive and narrative level to be a clear connection between Putin’s loathing of the idea of “national independence,” his desire to restore “the Russian Empire,” and his preoccupation with Russian history as rooted in the Kievan Rus’ Empire.
From about 880–1100 a group of Nordic Vikings ruled over a huge territory that stretched from the Black Sea to the tundra in the north and across the Pontic steppe to the German forests in the west. Although this empire waxed and waned, it ruled the territory until 1240 when the Mongols sacked Kyev. Only with the Mongols’ final defeat by the Russians in 1480 did the center of gravity finally move eastward to Moscow. Apparently, it is this Viking empire that Putin has feared might re-emerge as a strong economic center. One, which perhaps even in the long run draw Belarus into its orbit, further reducing Russia to an even more insignificant periphery – a nation among other nations, leaving the global scene to USA, China and India.
To put it simply: Just as Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great had ambitions of being almighty Czars, the same applies to Putin. In this game he has of course received financial support from the oligarchs, who early on understood how to seize the Soviet Union’s massive natural resources, including the vast gas deposits. Lately, there was presumably a growing concern among these power brokers that Europe was moving toward a sustainable transition to more CO₂-neutral energy production, energizing the plans for “more control”. And following this, the war on Ukraine.
Given these economic interests, it is nevertheless significant that throughout the lead-up to the war in 2014 and the massive escalation of hostilities after 2022, Putin has consistently advanced “cultural,” “historical,” and “religious” rather than economic reasons for the war’s necessity.
Thus, Putin has also found support in the Russian Orthodox Church and its ambitions to once again control the Ukrainian church, which achieved independence in 2019 as a result of the schism between the leadership of the Russian church and the Ecumenical Patriarch in Constantinople. It is probably another reason why Putin could be quoted by the New York Times as having stipulated that supremacy over the Ukrainian church must again lie in Moscow.
These historical and cultural narratives have from the very beginning been intertwined and fairly unambiguous. The story is that Ukraine had adopted the West’s decadent culture and was heading toward membership in the EU (and perhaps NATO). Since Ukraine, however, had historically always been the starting point for Russia and therefore a natural part of the Russian Empire, this was an intolerable situation for an imperialist like Putin. In his view, Ukraine could not, historically speaking, continue as an independent nation.
Putin, an imperialist?
It is clear that in Putin’s eyes only empires should exist – that is, centralized spheres of power – and not nations. Which, incidentally, is a perspective he shares with Trump, who also regards nations – for example Canada and Greenland – as political perversions.
But the explanation is not only cultural and historical. It is also economic, in that we are observing here a former centre’s attempt to recapture its previous identity as an empire.
In other words: an entirely necessary insight from what in the social sciences is called “World System History” seems crucial to understanding what is happening.
Within this framework of understanding, Ukraine must be characterised as a former periphery that managed to stage a revolt against the former weakened centre’s economic exploitation. Culturally, Ukraine then escaped by reinventing itself as a cosmopolitan Western country complete with southern-style cafés, its own church, its own language, and a magnificent nature. In an increasingly tense militarized environment in Moscow and its surroundings, the newly established periphery – the nation-state Russia – then prepared to subjugate the former periphery in order, at the same time, to re-establish the Russian Empire as culturally superior and thereby (also) position itself as an economic power.
That Putin in this perspective has drawn heavily on the neo-medieval narrative of Russia’s cultural, popular, and economic superiority is no surprise. But in reality it is banal: it is about strong feelings of powerlessness and the dream of regaining power; and envisioning it as an empire.
It amounts to an almost medieval approach to the future world order of the 21st century.
Karen Schousboe
READ:
World System History. The Social Science of Long-Term Change.
Ed. by Robert A. Denemark, Jonathan Friedman, Barry K. Gills, and George Modelski.
Routledge 2008.
Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1900:
By C. Tilly
Blackwell 1990
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