Preface

Summary

In the two decades since James Graham-Campbell and Colleen Batey published Vikings in Scotland: An Archaeological Survey, a tremendous amount of research and publication has taken place. The twentieth anniversary of the book offered an excellent opportunity to provide an update in light of the countless excavations, scientific advances, historical and place-name studies and postgraduate theses that had been produced since 1998. This was partly inspired by a day conference held in honour of Barbara Crawford in 2007 (Woolf 2009) to celebrate twenty years since the publication of Scandinavian Scotland (Crawford 1987). The resulting Vikings in Scotland: 20 Years On conference was held in December 2018 at the University of Glasgow. Scholars from around the UK and abroad shared their latest research on the Viking Age in Scotland, and the papers in this book are a result of that conference.

The format of this volume is different from James and Colleen’s book in that each chapter is a separate paper authored by a conference speaker. Rather than feature a few select papers, the editors of this volume opted to include as many papers as possible from the conference to cover as much ground as one volume can. As a result, the papers in this volume are slightly shorter than in many volumes, and short chapters on specific sites are meant to illustrate wider concepts discussed in the volume. Many excellent monographs and reports about these sites that have been produced or are nearing publication can provide more detailed information.

The keynote speaker from our conference, Judith Jesch, begins this volume with a tribute to Colleen. Subsequently, Olwyn Owen provides an historical overview paying homage to a key strength of Vikings in Scotland, namely an accessible overview of the recent research on Viking-Age Scotland. Thereafter, the book follows thematic sections which begin with first contacts and Norse settlement in ‘Arrival of the Vikings and Native–Norse Interactions’, ‘Scandinavian Settlement’ and ‘Place-names: Interactions with the Landscape’, then to ‘Environmental Impact and Land Use’. The updated research continues with sections on ‘Power and the Political Landscape’ and ‘Economy and Exchange’.