Vallsgärde. Source -Wikipedia

The Viking Phenomena

Neil Price, Professor at the Institution for Archaeology at the University in Uppsala has been granted 50 mill SEK (5.4 mill EUR/5,9 Mill USD) to study “Vikingafenomenet” – The Viking Phenomena.

The carefully stacked remains of 33 men were buried in the ship that brought them from Scandinavia to an Estonian island more than a century before the Vikings are thought to have been able to sail across such distances. © Liina Maldre, University of Tallinn
The carefully stacked remains of 33 men were buried in the ship that brought them from Scandinavia to an Estonian island more than a century before the Vikings are thought to have been able to sail across such distances. © Liina Maldre, University of Tallinn

“The Viking Phenomena” is an umbrella programme that shelters several sub-strands, with a principle focus on the polities of eastern Scandinavia in the mid-eighth century.

A primary objective is the final, full publication of the Vallsgärde cemetery – Uppsala’s most prominent archaeological excavation over the years – to be undertaken by a team coordinated under the direction of Neil Price. This will be supported by an international collaborative arm with an Estonian team, conducting detailed post-excavation research on the extraordinary twin boat graves discovered at Salme on Saaremaa, which seem to represent the casualties of a raid on Estonia launched from Swedish Uppland, perhaps even by the Valsgärde people themselves. This view of a raiding society at ‘home’ and ‘away’, and the early date of the finds during the Vendel-Viking transition, when the fledgling polities of Scandinavia were still emerging, can provide unique perspectives on this critical period of cultural development in the Northern world.

This work will be dovetailed with a wide-ranging study of Viking economics (in the proper sense of the ‘Viking’ term), encompassing comparative paradigms of piracy, the role of slavery in the Viking Age economy, and the archaeology of the camps and winter quarters associated with the great Viking forces of the ninth century. All this work is in its early stages, but an ambitious programme of research and publication is planned for the period 2015 – 25.

ABOUT NEIL PRICE:

Neil Price is a recent appointee to the Uppsala department, having taken up the established Chair of Archaeology late in 2014. Its roots can be traced back to 1662, when Olof Verelius was awarded the rather wonderful title ‘Professor of the Fatherland’s Antiquities’, the first time ever that an academic post was devoted to prehistory. The Uppsala Chair is thus one of the oldest archaeological jobs of its kind in the world. There have been long gaps in its tenure since Verelius’ time, but it has been continuously filled since 1914.

READ MORE:

Odin's Whisper by neil price CoverOdin’s Whisper: Death and the Vikings
By Neil Price
Reaktion Books 2014 (PB 2016)
ISBN-10: 178023290X
ISBN-13: 978-1780232904

 

 

The Viking World Routledge CoverThe Viking World (Routledge Worlds)
by Stefan Brink (Editor) and Neil Price (Series Editor)
Routledge 2011
ISBN-10: 0415692628
ISBN-13: 978-0415692625

 

 

 

 

The_Viking_Way first edition CoverThe Viking Way: Religion and War in the Later Iron Age of Scandinavia
by Neil Price
Oxbow Books 2016 (2. revised edition of thesis from 2002)
ISBN-10: 1842172603
ISBN-13: 978-1842172605

FEATURED PHOTO:

The burial mounds at Vallsgärde north of Uppsala. Source: Wikipedia

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