Crafts and Social Networks in Viking Towns

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Author :
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 178925163X
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (892 download)

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Book Synopsis Crafts and Social Networks in Viking Towns by : Stephen P. Ashby

Download or read book Crafts and Social Networks in Viking Towns written by Stephen P. Ashby and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-02-19 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Crafting Communities explores the interface between craft, communication networks, and urbanization in Viking-age Northern Europe. Viking-period towns were the hubs of cross-cultural communication of their age, and innovations in specialized crafts provide archaeologists with some of the best evidence for studying this communication. The integrated results presented in these papers have been made possible through the sustained collaboration of a group of experts with complementary insights into individual crafts. Results emerge from recent scholarly advances in the study of artifacts and production: first, the application of new analytical techniques in artifact studies (e.g. metallographic, isotopic, and biomolecular techniques) and second, the shifted in interpretative focus of medieval artifact studies from a concern with object function to considerations of processes of production, and of the social agency of technology. Furthermore, the introduction of social network theory and actor-network theory has redirected attention toward the process of communication, and highlighted the significance of material culture in the learning and transmission of cultural knowledge, including technology. The volume brings together leading UK and Scandinavian archaeological specialists to explore crafted products and workshop-assemblages from these towns, in order to clarify how such long-range communication worked in pre-modern Northern Europe. Contributors assess the implications for our understanding of early towns and the long-term societal change catalysed by them, including the initial steps towards commercial economies. Results are analyzed in relation to social network theory, social and economic history, and models of communication, setting an agenda for further research. Crafting Communities provides a landmark statement on our knowledge of Viking-Age craft and communication

Exploring Ireland’s Viking-Age Towns

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Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1000984397
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (9 download)

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Book Synopsis Exploring Ireland’s Viking-Age Towns by : Rebecca Boyd

Download or read book Exploring Ireland’s Viking-Age Towns written by Rebecca Boyd and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-20 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring Ireland’s Viking-Age Towns discusses the emergence of towns, urban lifestyles, and urban identities in Ireland. This coincides with the arrival of the Vikings and the appearance of the post-and-wattle Type 1 house. These houses reflect this crucial transition to urban living with its attendant changes for individuals, households, and society. Exploring Ireland’s Viking-Age Towns uses household archaeology as a lens to explore the materiality, variability, and day-to-day experiences of living in these houses. It moves from the intimate scale of individual households to the larger scale of Ireland’s earliest urban communities. For the first time, this book considers how these houses were more than just buildings: they were homes, important places where people lived, worked, and died. These new towns were busy places with a multitude of people, ideas, and things. This book uses the mass of archaeological data to undertake comparative analyses of houses and properties, artefact distribution patterns, and access analysis studies to interrogate some 500 Viking-Age urban houses. This analysis is structured in three parts: an investigation of the houses, the households, and the town. Exploring Ireland’s Viking-Age Towns discusses how these new urban households managed their homes to create a sense of place and belonging in these new environments and allow themselves to develop a new, urban identity. This book is suited to advanced students and specialists of the Viking Age in Ireland, but archaeologists and historians of the early medieval and Viking worlds will find much of interest here. It will also appeal to readers with interests in the archaeology of house and home, households, identities, and urban studies.

Northern Emporium

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Publisher : Aarhus Universitetsforlag
ISBN 13 : 8793423837
Total Pages : 418 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (934 download)

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Book Synopsis Northern Emporium by : Søren M. Sindbæk

Download or read book Northern Emporium written by Søren M. Sindbæk and published by Aarhus Universitetsforlag. This book was released on 2023-02-23 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the second and final volume presenting the results of the Northern Emporium research project and the high-definition excavations carried out within this programme in 2017-18 in Ribe. The 22 chapters survey the remarkable range of finds retrieved from this hub of the North Sea world in the eighth and ninth centuries AD: artefacts made from pottery, stone, shell, glass, metals, amber, leather, wood, textile, bone and antler. They offer detailed insights that highlight discoveries such as the assemblages from glass bead or comb-making workshops, and rare finds such as wooden furnishings and musical instruments. The focus of the book is on assembling Ribe’s early urban network. By analysing finds and their context, we develop a picture of social roles and interactions between residents and visitors in the emporium. And we follow the connections they created with other worlds as we trace the flows of glass vessels, pottery and wine barrels from Western Europe; iron, stone and animal products from North and Central Scandinavia and beads and coins that travelled from the Middle East and the Indian Ocean into northern Europe’s new maritime frontier.

Tracing Textile Production from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages

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Author :
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789257786
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (892 download)

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Book Synopsis Tracing Textile Production from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages by : Ingvild Øye

Download or read book Tracing Textile Production from the Viking Age to the Middle Ages written by Ingvild Øye and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book concerns textile production at the fringes of north-western Europe - areas in western Norway and the North Atlantic in the expanding, dynamic and transformative period from the early Viking Age into the Middle Ages. Textiles constitute one of the basic needs in human life - to protect and keep the body warm but also to show social status and affiliations. Textiles had a wide spectrum of use areas and qualities, fine and coarse in various contexts, and in the Viking Age not least related to the production of sails - all essential for the development and character of the period. So, what were the tools and textiles like, who made them, who used them and who exposed them? By tracing textile production from the remains of tools and textiles in varied landscapes and settings - Viking Age graves and in situ workplaces from the whole period - and combining this with textual information, many layers of information are exposed about technology and qualities as well as gender, gender roles, social relations, power and networks. By combining tools, textiles and texts in various settings, this book aims to contextualize dispersed archaeological finds of tools and textiles to uncover patterns across larger areas and in a long-term perspective of half a millennium.

Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0755618181
Total Pages : 449 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (556 download)

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Book Synopsis Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age by : Jonathan Shepard

Download or read book Muslims on the Volga in the Viking Age written by Jonathan Shepard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-21 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The year 922 saw a series of remarkable face-to-face encounters in the steppes between Bukhara and the Middle Volga. Ibn Fadlan was an intrepid member of a diplomatic and religious mission from the distant caliphate in Baghdad to the ruler of the Volga Bulgars. His account gives a vivid eyewitness description of the peoples he came upon (whose appearance, rituals and filthy habits both fascinate and appal) and a famous depiction of a Viking Rus ship burial. It is unique testimony to burgeoning exchanges between several different cultures, and to the emergence of new political structures on the steppes. Yet the account survives only as part of a later composite work, raising questions of meaning and historical interpretation. This pioneering interdisciplinary study of Ibn Fadlan's text and the world he surveyed draws on a variety of specialists to give readers both 'the bigger picture' of cultural and economic change in Eurasia, Byzantium and the Muslim world, and hard facts, in the form of archaeological and numismatic data.

Franks and Northmen

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Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1040030777
Total Pages : 265 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (4 download)

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Book Synopsis Franks and Northmen by : Daniel Melleno

Download or read book Franks and Northmen written by Daniel Melleno and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-06-03 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franks and Northmen explores the full spectrum of Franco-Scandinavian interaction, examining not just violence but also less well-known relationships centered on acts of diplomacy, commerce, and mission and demonstrating the transformative nature of cross-cultural encounter during the Viking Age. In the year 777, the Frankish sources mention the Northmen, better known to most as the Vikings, for the first time. By the tenth century these Northmen, once a mysterious people on the borders of the Carolingian Empire, would be a familiar presence in the Frankish world. As raiders and pillagers, the Vikings would fill the pages of Frankish authors, leaving a legacy that continues to fascinate even to the twenty-first century. But a closer look at sources, both textual and material, reveals that the relationships between Franks and Northmen were far more complex and multifaceted than a rigid focus on Viking violence might suggest. Merchants carried goods across the North Sea, missionaries encouraged new ways of understanding the world, and Franks and Northmen formed relationships and bonds even amidst conflict and violence. This study is a useful resource for both students and specialists of central and northern Europe in the early medieval period.

Art and Worship in the Insular World

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Author :
Publisher : BRILL
ISBN 13 : 9004467513
Total Pages : 413 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (44 download)

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Book Synopsis Art and Worship in the Insular World by :

Download or read book Art and Worship in the Insular World written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-08-16 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book examines the lived experience of worship in early medieval England and Ireland, ranging from public experience of church and stone sculptures, to monastic life, to personal contemplation of, and meditation on, manuscript illuminations and other devotional objects.

Archaeological Networks and Social Interaction

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351003046
Total Pages : 223 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis Archaeological Networks and Social Interaction by : Lieve Donnellan

Download or read book Archaeological Networks and Social Interaction written by Lieve Donnellan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-03 with total page 223 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeological Networks and Social Interaction focuses on conceptualisations of human interaction, human-thing entanglement, material affordances and agency. Network concepts in the archaeological discipline are ubiquitous these days. They range from loose concepts, used as metaphors to address a notion of connectivity, to highly formal and mathematically complex predictions of human behaviour. These different networked worlds sometimes clash and rarely converge. Archaeologists interested in network analysis, however, have achieved a much better understanding of the implications of adopting formal methods for studying social interaction and there have been theoretical advancements realising a better synergy between different theoretical perspectives. These nascent concerns are explored further in this volume with regional specialists exploring case studies from Prehistory to the Middle Ages throughout the Ancient and New Worlds, outlining how formal network approaches contribute to studying social interaction archaeologically. This book will be of interest to archaeologists wishing to access the latest research on networks and interconnectivity and how these approaches have been productively modified to archaeological research.

The Economy of a Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides

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Author :
Publisher : Oxbow Books
ISBN 13 : 1789255392
Total Pages : 1225 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (892 download)

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Book Synopsis The Economy of a Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides by : Niall Sharples

Download or read book The Economy of a Norse Settlement in the Outer Hebrides written by Niall Sharples and published by Oxbow Books. This book was released on 2020-11-23 with total page 1225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the economic evidence for the settlement at Bornais on South Uist. It reports in detail on the large assemblages of material found during the excavations at mounds 2 and 2A. There is important evidence for craft activity, such as bone and antler working and this includes the only comb making workshop from a rural settlement in Britain. A large proportion of the copper alloy, bone and antler assemblages comprise pieces of personal adornment and provide important information on the dress and thereby social relations within the settlement occupation. There is a large assemblage of iron tools and fittings, which provides important information on the activities taking place at the settlement. The information derived from the artefact assemblages is complemented by that provided by the ecofactual material. Large amounts of animal, fish and bird bones plus carbonised plant remains provide detailed information on agricultural practices, and the processing, preparation and consumption of foodstuffs. It is clear that the Norse inhabitants of the settlement had access to a much richer variety of resources than had been exploited before the Viking colonisation of the region. The settlement also had a significantly wider range of connections; material culture indicates contacts to the south with the Irish Sea ports and Bristol, and to the north with Shetland and the Viking homelands of Norway. The evidence produced by these excavations is exceptional and provides an unparalleled opportunity to explore medieval life in the Scandinavian kingdoms of Western Britain.

The Vikings

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Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 0429632819
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (296 download)

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Book Synopsis The Vikings by : Neil Price

Download or read book The Vikings written by Neil Price and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-12 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Vikings provides a concise but comprehensive introduction to the complex world of the early medieval Scandinavians. In the space of less than 300 years, from the mid-eighth to the mid-eleventh centuries CE, people from what are now Norway, Sweden, and Denmark left their homelands in unprecedented numbers to travel across the Eurasian world. Over the last half-century, archaeology and its related disciplines have radically altered our understanding of this period. The Vikings explores why we now perceive them as a cosmopolitan mix of traders and warriors, craftsworkers and poets, explorers, and settlers. It details how, over the course of the Viking Age, their small-scale rural, tribal societies gradually became urbanised monarchies firmly emplaced on the stage of literate, Christian Europe. In the process, they transformed the cultures of the North, created the modern Nordic nation-states, and left a far-flung diaspora with legacies that still resonate today. Written by leading experts in the period and exploring the society, economy, identity and world-views of the early medieval Scandinavian peoples, and their unique religious beliefs that are still of enduring interest a millennium later, this book presents students with an unrivalled guide through this widely studied and fascinating subject, revealing the fundamental impacts of the Vikings in shaping the later course of European history.

Communication, Translation, and Community in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

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Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110776871
Total Pages : 642 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Communication, Translation, and Community in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period by : Albrecht Classen

Download or read book Communication, Translation, and Community in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period written by Albrecht Classen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-08-22 with total page 642 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Die neue englischsprachige Reihe zur Mediävistik strebt eine methodisch reflektierte, anspruchsvolle Verbindung von Text- und Kulturwissenschaft an. Sie widmet sich den kulturellen Grundthemen der mittelalterlichen Welt aus der Perspektive der Literatur- und Geschichtswissenschaft. ‚Grundthemen' sind die kulturprägenden Denkbilder, Weltanschauungen, Sozialstrukturen und Alltagsbedingungen des mittelalterlichen Lebens, also z. B. Kindheit und Alter, Sexualität, Religion, Medizin, Rituale, Arbeit, Armut und Reichtum, Aberglauben, Erde und Kosmos, Stadt und Land, Krieg, Emotionen, Kommunikation, Reisen usw. Die Reihe greift wichtige aktuelle Fachdiskussionen auf und stellt ein Forum der interdisziplinären Mittelalter-Forschung dar. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture steht Sammelbänden ebenso offen wie Monographien. Intention ist immer, kompendienhafte Werke zu zentralen Fragen der mittelalterlichen Kulturgeschichte vorzulegen, die einen soliden Überblick über einen geschlossenen Themenkreis aus der Perspektive verschiedener Fachdisziplinen vermitteln. Im Ganzen bietet die Reihe so eine Enzyklopädie der mittelalterlichen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte und ihrer Hauptthemen. Es werden ca. zwei Bände pro Jahr erscheinen.

Animals and Sacred Bodies in Early Medieval Ireland

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Author :
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793630402
Total Pages : 263 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (936 download)

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Book Synopsis Animals and Sacred Bodies in Early Medieval Ireland by : John Soderberg

Download or read book Animals and Sacred Bodies in Early Medieval Ireland written by John Soderberg and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-01-04 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Clonmacnoise was among the busiest, most economically complex, and intensely sacred places in early medieval Ireland. In Animals and Sacred Bodies in Early Medieval Ireland: Religion and Urbanism at Clonmacnoise, John Soderberg argues that animals are the key to understanding Clonmacnoise’s development as a thriving settlement and a sacred space. At this sanctuary city on the River Shannon, animal bodies were an essential source of food and raw materials. They were also depicted extensively on religious objects. Drawing from new theories about the intersections between religion and economics, John Soderberg explores how transformations emerging from animal encounters made Clonmacnoise a sacred settlement and created the sacred bodies of early medieval Ireland.

Making Money in the Early Middle Ages

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Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691177406
Total Pages : 544 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis Making Money in the Early Middle Ages by : Rory Naismith

Download or read book Making Money in the Early Middle Ages written by Rory Naismith and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-11 with total page 544 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of coined money and its significance to rulers, aristocrats and peasants in early medieval Europe Between the end of the Roman Empire in the fifth century and the economic transformations of the twelfth, coined money in western Europe was scarce and high in value, difficult for the majority of the population to make use of. And yet, as Rory Naismith shows in this illuminating study, coined money was made and used throughout early medieval Europe. It was, he argues, a powerful tool for articulating people’s place in economic and social structures and an important gauge for levels of economic complexity. Working from the premise that using coined money carried special significance when there was less of it around, Naismith uses detailed case studies from the Mediterranean and northern Europe to propose a new reading of early medieval money as a point of contact between economic, social, and institutional history. Naismith examines structural issues, including the mining and circulation of metal and the use of bullion and other commodities as money, and then offers a chronological account of monetary development, discussing the post-Roman period of gold coinage, the rise of the silver penny in the seventh century and the reconfiguration of elite power in relation to coinage in the tenth and eleventh centuries. In the process, he counters the conventional view of early medieval currency as the domain only of elite gift-givers and intrepid long-distance traders. Even when there were few coins in circulation, Naismith argues, the ways they were used—to give gifts, to pay rents, to spend at markets—have much to tell us.

Vikings Across Boundaries

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1000204707
Total Pages : 310 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Vikings Across Boundaries by : Hanne Lovise Aannestad

Download or read book Vikings Across Boundaries written by Hanne Lovise Aannestad and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-26 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the changes that occurred during the Viking Age, as Scandinavian societies fell in line with the larger forces that dominated the Insular world and Continental Europe, absorbing the powerful symbiosis of Christianity and monarchy, adapting to the idea of royal lineage and supremacy, and developing a buzzing urbanism coupled with large-scale trade networks. Presenting research on the grand context of the Viking Age alongside localised studies, it contributes to the furthering of collaborations between local and ‘outsider’ research on the Viking Age. Through a diversity of approaches on the Viking homelands and the wider world of the Vikings, it offers studies of a range of phenomena, including urban and rural settlements; continuity in the use of places as well as new types of places specific to the Viking Age; the social significance of change; the construction and maintenance of social identity both within the ‘homelands’ and across large territories; ethnicity; and ideas of identity and the creation and recreation of identity both at home and abroad. As such, it will appeal to historians and archaeologists with interests in Viking-Age studies, as well as scholars of Scandinavian studies.

Viking-Age Transformations

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Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
ISBN 13 : 1317001907
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (17 download)

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Book Synopsis Viking-Age Transformations by : Zanette T. Glørstad

Download or read book Viking-Age Transformations written by Zanette T. Glørstad and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-05-12 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Viking Age was a period of profound change in Scandinavia. As kingdoms were established, Christianity became the encompassing ideological and cosmological framework and towns were formed. This book examines a central backdrop to these changes: the economic transformation of West Scandinavia. With a focus on the development of intensive and organized use of woodlands and alpine regions and domestic raw materials, together with the increasing standardization of products intended for long-distance trade, the volume sheds light on the emergence of a strong interconnectedness between remote rural areas and central markets. Viking-Age Transformations explores the connection between legal and economic practice, as the rural economy and monetary system developed in conjunction with nascent state power and the legal system. Thematically, the book is organized into sections addressing the nature and extent of trade in both marginal and centralized areas; production and the social, legal and economic aspects of exploiting natural resources and distributing products; and the various markets and sites of trade and consumption. A theoretically informed and empirically grounded collection that reveals the manner in which relationships of production and consumption transformed Scandinavian society with their influence on the legal and fiscal division of the landscape, this volume will appeal to scholars of archaeology, the history of trade and Viking studies.

Approaches to the Medieval Self

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Author :
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN 13 : 3110664763
Total Pages : 357 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (16 download)

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Book Synopsis Approaches to the Medieval Self by : Stefka G. Eriksen

Download or read book Approaches to the Medieval Self written by Stefka G. Eriksen and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The main aim of this book is to discuss various modes of studying and defining the medieval self, based on a wide span of sources from medieval Western Scandinavia, c. 800-1500, such as archeological evidence, architecture and art, documents, literature, and runic inscriptions. The book engages with major theoretical discussions within the humanities and social sciences, such as cultural theory, practice theory, and cognitive theory. The authors investigate how the various approaches to the self influence our own scholarly mindsets and horizons, and how they condition what aspects of the medieval self are 'visible' to us. Utilizing this insight, we aim to propose a more syncretic approach towards the medieval self, not in order to substitute excellent models already in existence, but in order to foreground the flexibility and the complementarity of the current theories, when these are seen in relationship to each other. The self and how it relates to its surrounding world and history is a main concern of humanities and social sciences. Focusing on the theoretical and methodological flexibility when approaching the medieval self has the potential to raise our awareness of our own position and agency in various social spaces today.

The Children of Ash and Elm

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Author :
Publisher : Penguin UK
ISBN 13 : 024128399X
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (412 download)

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Book Synopsis The Children of Ash and Elm by : Neil Price

Download or read book The Children of Ash and Elm written by Neil Price and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2020-08-25 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 'As brilliant a history of the Vikings as one could possibly hope to read' Tom Holland The 'Viking Age' is traditionally held to begin in June 793 when Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, and to end in September 1066, when King Harald Hardrada of Norway died leading the charge against the English line at the Battle of Stamford Bridge. This book, the most wide-ranging and comprehensive assessment of the current state of our knowledge, takes a refreshingly different view. It shows that the Viking expansion began generations before the Lindisfarne raid, and traces Scandinavian history back centuries further to see how these people came to be who they were. The narrative ranges across the whole of the Viking diaspora, from Vinland on the eastern American seaboard to Constantinople and Uzbekistan, with contacts as far away as China. Based on the latest archaeology, it explores the complex origins of the Viking phenomenon and traces the seismic shifts in Scandinavian society that resulted from an economy geared to maritime war. Some of its most striking discoveries include the central role of slavery in Viking life and trade, and the previously unsuspected pirate communities and family migrations that were part of the Viking 'armies' - not least in England. Especially, Neil Price takes us inside the Norse mind and spirit-world, and across their borders of identity and gender, to reveal startlingly different Vikings to the barbarian marauders of stereotype. He cuts through centuries of received wisdom to try to see the Vikings as they saw themselves - descendants of the first human couple, the Children of Ash and Elm. Healso reminds us of the simultaneous familiarity and strangeness of the past, of how much we cannot know, alongside the discoveries that change the landscape of our understanding. This is an eye-opening and surprisingly moving book.