This book is the coming together of several disciplines under the thematic umbrella of Viking Camps and provides the very latest research presented by the leading researchers in the field, making it the most comprehensive compilation of the phenomenon of Viking camps to date.
Compiling the current state of research on encampments across the Viking world and their impact on their surroundings, this volume provides an all-encompassing analysis of their characteristics—functions, form, inner workings, and interaction with the landscape and the local population. It initiates a wider discussion on the features and functions that define them, making it possible to identify and understand new sites, also broadening the geographical scope. Sites in Ireland, England, Sweden, Frankia, and Iberia are presented and explored, allowing the reader to understand the camp phenomenon from a comparative, more inclusive perspective. The combination of geographically bound case-studies and in-depth analyses of specific themes, such as economy and religion, bring together an abundance of methodologies and approaches. The volume introduces new interdisciplinary approaches to define and identify Viking encampment sites, combining archaeology, historical documents, metal detecting, landscape analysis, and toponymic research. It builds the methodological foundations for future research on Viking camps, the armies inhabiting them, and their interaction with the surrounding world.
Viking Camps contributes to a better understanding of the functioning of Viking expeditionary groups, both on campaign and during the early stages of settlement, and will be of use to researchers in Viking archaeology, history, and Viking Studies.
Introduction; 1 Setting a new place for winter camps. An Introduction; 2 Viking Camps: a historiographical overview; 3 The Vikings at Repton: wintersetl og mindesmærke winter camp and place of memory; 4 Beyond the D-shaped enclosure: winter camps of the Viking Great Army in England; 5 The Viking Great Army North of the Tyne: A Viking camp in Northumberland?; 6. Viking military camps in early tenth century Ireland; 7. The Woodstown Enigma. A discussion of the ninth and tenth century Viking Winter Camps at Woodstown, Co. Waterford, Ireland. 8. Hostile in Tent. Reconsidering the Roles of Viking Encampment across the Frankish Realm 9. Viking Wintering in Frankish Territory 10. The Viking Camps of Medieval Iberia 11. Between the Winter Camps: Logistics of the Viking Great Army 12. Viking camps and trading sites in Britain and Ireland: defences, functions and definitions. The Religious Life of Viking Armies; 14. Pirate utopias? Viking camps and aspirational polities; 15. Not a camp but a garrison: martial life ‘at home’; 16. Viking camps, an economic interpretation
Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson is an associate professor and senior researcher in archaeology at Uppsala University and the Swedish History Museum. With a long-time engagement in the archaeology and research of the Viking town Birka, she has investigated the material remains of martial society and explored issues of warfare, identity, mobility, and material culture in the Viking World. Her research has often adopted an interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeological material and methods with genetics and isotope studies. Irene García Losquiño is a María Zambrano Research Fellow at the University of Santiago de Compostela. She investigates viking presence in areas of the viking diaspora with low levels of Norse settlement. Irene received her PhD on runology from University of Aberdeen in 2013 and, since then, she has worked in institutions in Sweden, Scotland, and Spain, including a postdoctoral Bernadotte Fellowship at the Onomastics Department at the University of Uppsala.
