3 - The Viking World

Summary

When envisioning the Viking world in the Scandinavian homelands, enigmatic sites such as Ribe, Kaupang, Hedeby and Birka come to mind. The research about these sites fills monographs, essay collections and exhibition catalogues. Yet none of these places was truly representative of a society that in most ways still remained very traditional, rural and agrarian. Traces of everyday society emerge in the mundane, routinely made rescue excavations performed by heritage services and contract archaeology, which seldom make the headlines or attract scholarly attention. Another limiting factor for a more profound understanding of this society is the often poor preservation conditions at such sites: the remains of building features are often reduced to a series of postholes situated immediately below the modern plough layer, and often such features are merely accompanied by an ever-repeating canon of household artefacts.