AY4020: VIKING ARCHAEOLOGY - IN DEPTH (2024-2025)

This course explores the archaeological evidence for the origins, world-view, development and expansion of Scandinavian culture during the Viking Age, c. AD 750-1100. Students will gain an understanding of a major and catalytic period of European history that laid the foundations for many institutions of the modern Western world. As an introduction to the archaeology of the Viking Age, this course will provide students with:

• an insight into the nature of Viking Age Scandinavian society and culture, including settlement and subsistence patterns, material culture, social structures, issues of identity and ethnicity, and world-views and mentalities from the traditional belief systems of the North to the introduction of Christianity
• an understanding of the political developments in the Viking Age and the transformation from tribal- to state-based societies in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, including the development of urban centres, coinage, and Christian monarchies
• detailed knowledge of the geographical scope of the Viking world, including an understanding of the Viking diaspora and its long-term effects, including the complex patterns of culture contacts and environmental impacts that characterised Scandinavian raiding, warfare, trading, colonisation and settlement activities
• an understanding of how archaeologists combine a range of sources (material, textual and environmental) to achieve a synthetic understanding

Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.

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