Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T22:34:07.316Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘A River of Knives and Swords': Ritually Deposited Weapons in English Watercourses and Wetlands during the Viking Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Ben Raffield
Ben Raffield*
Affiliation:
Human Evolutionary Studies Program, Simon Fraser University, Canada Department of Archaeology, University of Aberdeen, UK
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper discusses the deposition of weapons in English rivers and wetlands during the Viking Age. Such finds have been extensively studied in Scandinavia but have rarely been academically discussed in Britain. It can be argued that the arrival of the Scandinavians in ninth- to eleventh-century Britain precipitated a marked increase in depositions of a ‘pagan’ nature. Despite deep-rooted, institutionalized Christianity having dominated England for some time, it is possible that pagan beliefs were dormant but not forgotten, with the Scandinavian arrival triggering their resurgence. Weapons form a large number of ritual depositions, with seventy deposits being mapped geographically to identify distributional patterns across the landscape. It is suggested here that ‘liminal' depositions in Viking Age Scandinavia provide an interpretative model for these finds. Given the context of endemic conflict and territorial consolidation within which they may have been deposited in England, this material can shed new light on attitudes to landscapes subject to conflict and consolidation.

Cet article étudie le dépôt d'armes dans les rivières et zones humides anglais pendant l'Âge des Vikings. Ce genre de découvertes ont été l'objet d'études approfondies en Scandinavie, mais n'ont que rarement été examinées académiquement en Grande-Bretagne. On peut faire valoir qu'avec l'arrivée des Scandinaves en Grande-Bretagne du 9e au 11e siècle, le nombre des dépôts de nature ‘païenne’ a augmenté de façon significative. Malgré le christianisme bien enraciné et institutionnalisé qui dominait l'Angleterre depuis un certain temps, il se peut que les croyances païennes étaient certes dormantes, mais non pas oubliées; elles resurgissaient avec l'arrivée scandinave. Une grande partie des dépôts rituels sont constitués d'armes, et 70 d'entre eux ont été cartographiés afin d'identifier des schémas de distribution à travers le pays. On propose ici d'utiliser les dépôts “‘liminaires’” de la Scandinavie Viking comme modèles interprétatifs pour les découvertes anglaises. Vu le contexte de conflict endémique et de consolidation territoriale dans lequel ces armes ont probablement été déposées en Angleterre, ce matériel devrait permettre d'analyser les paysages sujets à conflit et consolidation sous un angle nouveau. Translation by Isabelle Gerges

Zusammenfassung

Zusammenfassung

Dieser Beitrag diskutiert die Niederlegung von Waffen in englischen Flüssen und Feuchtgebieten während der Wikingerzeit. Derartige Funde wurden in Skandinavien intensiv untersucht, jedoch in Großbritannien bislang kaum akademisch diskutiert. Es kann angenommen werden, dass die Ankunft der Skandinavier zwischen dem 9. und 10. Jh. eine merkliche Zunahme von Deponierungen mit, heidnischem‘ Charakter herbeiführte. Trotz des tief verwurzelten und institutionalisierten Christentums, das England schon für einige Zeit dominiert hatte, ist es möglich, dass pagane Glaubensvorstellungen zwar schlummerten, jedoch keinesfalls vergessen waren und die Ankunft der Skandinavier ihr Wiederaufleben auslöste. Waffen bilden einen großen Anteil der rituellen Niederlegungen, wobei hier 70 Horte geographisch kartiert wurden, um Verteilungsmuster in der Landschaft zu erkennen. Es wird hier vorgeschlagen, dass, liminale‘ Niederlegungen im wikingerzeitlichen Skandinavien als interpretatives Modell für diese Funde dienen können. Vor dem Hintergrund lokalen Konflikts und territorialer Konsolidierung, in dem sie in England deponiert worden sein dürften, kann dieses Material neues Licht auf Einstellungen zu Landschaften werfen, die Konflikt und Konsolidierung unterworfen waren. Translation by Heiner Schwarzberg

Keywords

Viking AgeconflictlandscaperitualdepositionsweaponswetlandsAnglo-Saxon EnglandÂge des Vikingsconflitpaysageritueldépôtsarmeszones humidesAngleterre anglo-saxonneWikingerzeitKonfliktLandschaftRitualNiederlegungenWaffenFeuchtgebieteangelsächsisches England
Type
Articles
Information
European Journal of Archaeology , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , 2014 , pp. 634 - 655
Copyright
Copyright © European Association of Archaeologists 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abrams, L. 2001. The Conversion of the Danelaw. In: Graham-Campbell, J., Hall, R., Jesch, J. & Parsons, D.N., eds. Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress. Oxford: Oxbow Books, pp. 31–44.Google Scholar
Andrén, A., Jennbert, K. & Raudvere, C. eds. 2006. Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives. Lund: Nordic Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Androshchuk, F. 2002. Har gotländska vikingar offrat vapen i Dnepr-forsarna? Fornvännen, 97 (1): 9–14.Google Scholar
Arbman, H. & Nilsson, N-O. 1969. Armes scandinaves de l'époque viking en France. Meddelanden från Lunds Universitets Historiska Museum, 1968–69: 163–202.Google Scholar
Barrett, J.H. 2003. Introduction. In: Barrett, J.H., ed. Contact, Continuity, and Collapse. The Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 1–8.Google Scholar
Bemmann, G. & Bemmann, J. 1998. Der Opfer-platz von Nydam. Die Funde aus den älteren Grabungen: Nydam-I und Nydam-II. Neumünster: Wachholtz.Google Scholar
Biddle, M. & Kjølbye-Biddle, B. 1992. Repton and the Vikings. Antiquity, 66: 36–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Biddle, M. & Kjølbye-Biddle, B. 2001. Repton and the ‘Great Heathen Army’, 873–4. In: Graham-Campbell, J., Hall, R., Jesch, J. & Parsons, D.N., eds. Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress. Oxbow: Oxford, pp. 45–96.Google Scholar
Blair, J. 1994. Anglo-Saxon Oxfordshire. Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing Limited.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. 1990. The Passage of Arms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. 1998. The Significance of Monuments. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bradley, R. 2000. An Archaeology of Natural Places. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Brink, S. 2001. Mythologizing Landscape. Place and Space of Cult and Myth. In: Strausberg, M., ed. Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 76–112.Google Scholar
Brink, S. 2013. Myth and Ritual in Pre-Christian Scandinavian Landscape. In: Nordeide, S.W. & Brink, S., eds. Sacred Sites and Holy Places. Exploring the Sacralization of Landscape Through Time and Space. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 33–51.Google Scholar
Cameron, K. 1988. English Place-Names. Revised 4th edition. London: Batsford.Google Scholar
Carlson, D. 2010. Skatter, gårdar och landskap—vikingatidens Gotland. Myntstudier, 2010: 6–10.Google Scholar
Carver, M.O.H. 1990. Pre-Viking Traffic in the North Sea. In: McGrail, S., ed. Maritime Celts, Frisians & Saxons: Papers Presented to a Conference at Oxford in November 1988. London: Council for British Archaeology, pp. 117–25.Google Scholar
Carver, M.O.H. 2001. Why That, Why There, Why Then? The Politics of Early Medieval Monumentality. In: Macregor, A. & Hamerow, H., eds. Image and Power in Early Medieval British Archaeology. Essays in Honour of Rosemary Cramp. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 1–22.Google Scholar
Carver, M.O.H. 2002. Reflections on the Meaning of Anglo-Saxon Barrows. In: Lucy, S. & Reynolds, A., eds. Burial in Early Medieval England and Wales. Society for Medieval Archaeology Monographs 17. London: Society for Medieval Archaeology, pp. 132–43.Google Scholar
Chaney, W.A. 1970. The Cult of Kingship in Anglo-Saxon England: The Transition from Paganism to Christianity. Berkley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Colgrave, B. trans. & ed. 1956. Felix's Life of St. Guthlac. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, J. 1993. The Battle of Maldon: Fiction and Fact. London: Hambledon Continuum.Google Scholar
DuBois, T. 2006. Rituals, Witnesses and Sagas. In: Andrén, A, Jennbert, K. & Raudvere, C. eds. Old Norse Religion in Long-Term Perspectives. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, pp. 74–78.Google Scholar
Effros, B. 2003. Merovingian Mortuary Archaeology and the Making of the Early Middle Ages. Berkley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Everson, P. & Stocker, D. 2011. Custodians of Continuity? The Premonstratensian Abbey at Barlings and the Landscape of Ritual. Heckington: Heritage Trust of Lincolnshire.Google Scholar
Fabech, C. 1994. Reading Society from the Cultural Landscape: South Scandinavia between Sacral and Political Power. In: Nielson, P.O., Randsborg, K. & Thrane, H., eds. The Archaeology of Gudme and Lundeborg. Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, pp. 169–83.Google Scholar
Fell, C. 1956. A Viking Spearhead from Kentmere. Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, 56: 67–69.Google Scholar
Fredengren, C. 2002. Crannogs: A Study of People's Interaction with Lakes, with Special Reference to Loch Gara in the North West of Ireland. Bray: Wordwell.Google Scholar
Geake, H. 1997. The Use of Grave-Goods in Conversion-Period England. British Archaeological Reports British Series 261. Oxford, Archaeopress.Google Scholar
Geisslinger, H. 1967. Horte als Geschichtquelle, dargestellt an den völkerwanderungs- und merowingerzeitlichen Funden des südwestlichen Ostseeraumes. Neumünster: Wachholtz.Google Scholar
Graham-Campbell, J. ed. 1992. Viking Treasure from the North West; The Cuerdale Hoard in its Context. Liverpool: National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside.Google Scholar
Graham-Campbell, J. 2011. The Cuerdale Hoard and Related Viking-Age Silver and Gold from Britain and Ireland in the British Museum. London: British Museum.Google Scholar
Graham-Campbell, J. & Sheehan, J. 2009. Viking Age Gold and Silver from Irish Crannogs and Other Watery Places. The Journal of Irish Archaeology, 18: 77–93.Google Scholar
Green, M.J. 1998. Vessels of Death: Sacred Cauldrons in Archaeology and Myth. The Antiquaries Journal, 78: 63–84.Google Scholar
Griffiths, B. trans. 1991. The Battle of Maldon: Text and Translation. Pinner: Anglo-Saxon Books.Google Scholar
Gurney, D. 1986. Settlement, Religion and Industry on the Fen-Edge: Three Romano-British Sites in Norfolk. East Anglian Archaeology 31. Gressenhall: Norfolk Archaeology Unit.Google Scholar
Hadley, D. 2006. The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and Culture. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, R.A. 1989. The Five Boroughs of the Danelaw: A Review of Present Knowledge. Anglo-Saxon England, 18: 149–206.Google Scholar
Hall, R.A. 2000. Scandinavian Settlement in England—The Archaeological Evidence. Acta Archaeologica, 71: 147–57.Google Scholar
Halsall, G. 1989. Anthropology and the Study of Pre-Conquest War and Society: The Ritual War in Anglo-Saxon England. In: Chadwick Hawkes, S., ed. Weapons and Warfare in Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, pp. 155–77.Google Scholar
Halsall, G. 2000. The Viking Presence in England? The Burial Evidence. In: Hadley, D. & Richards, J., eds. Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries. Turnhout: Brepols, pp. 259–76.Google Scholar
Halsall, G. 2003. Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West, 450–900. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hayward, P.A. 2011. Kingship, Childhood and Martyrdom in Anglo-Saxon England. Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar
Hedeager, L. 1999. Sacred Topography: Depositions of Wealth in the Cultural Landscape. In: Gustafsson, A. & Karlsson, H., eds. Glyfer och arkeologiska rum. In honorem Jarl Nordbladh. Gotarc Series A, 3. Gothenburg: Gothenburg University, pp. 229–52.Google Scholar
Hedeager, L. 2002. Scandinavian Central Places in a Cosmological Setting. In: Hardh, B. & Larsson, L., eds. Central Places in the Migration and Merovingian Periods: Papers from the 52nd Sachsen Symposium, Lund, August 2001. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell Internat, pp. 3–18.Google Scholar
Hedeager, L. 2008. Scandinavia Before the Viking Age. In: Brink, S. & Price, N. eds. The Viking World. London: Routledge, pp. 11–22.Google Scholar
Heide, E. 2011. Holy Islands and the Otherworld: Places Beyond Water. In: Jaritz, G. & Jørgensen, T., eds. Isolated Islands in Medieval Nature, Culture and Mind. CEU medievalia 14, The Muhu Procedings 2. Budapest/Bergen: Central European University/Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bergen, pp. 57–80.Google Scholar
Heide, E. 2014 Contradictory Cosmology in Old Norse Myth and Religion—But Still a System? Maal og Minne, 1: 102–43.Google Scholar
Hill, D. 1981. An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Hoggett, R. 2007. Charting Conversion: Burial as a Barometer of Belief? In: Semple, S. & Williams, H., eds. Anglo-Saxon Studies in History and Archaeology 14. Oxford: Oxford University School of Archaeology, pp. 28–37.Google Scholar
Ilkjaer, J. 2002. Illerup Ådal—Archaeology as a Magic Mirror. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.Google Scholar
Jankuhn, H. 1955. Die Friihgeschichte tom Ausgang der Volkenoanderungeeit bis zum Ende der Wikinger zeit (Geschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, III). Neumunster: Wachholtz.Google Scholar
Karras, R. 1990. Concubinage and Slavery in the Viking Age. Scandinavian Studies, 62: 141–62.Google Scholar
Kershaw, J. in press. Scandinavian-Related Metalwork from the Southwest: New Light on the ‘First Viking Age’ in Wessex. In: Lavelle, R. & Roffey, S., eds. Danes in Wessex. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Keynes, S. & Lapidge, M. trans. 1983. Alfred the Great. Asser‘s Life of King Alfred and Other Contemporary Sources. London: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Knapp, A.B. & Ashmore, W. 1999. Archaeological Landscapes: Constructed, Conceptualized, Ideational. In: Ashmore, W. & Knapp, A.B., eds. Archaeologies of Landscape. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 1–30.Google Scholar
Lang, J.T. 1975. Hogback Monuments in Scotland. Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 105: 206–35.Google Scholar
Larrington, C. trans. 1996. The Poetic Edda. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lund, J. 2005. Thresholds and Passages: The Meanings of Bridges and Crossings in the Viking Age and Early Middle Ages. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 1: 109–35.Google Scholar
Lund, J. 2006. Vikingetidens værktøjskister i landskab og mytologi. Fornvännen, 101: 323–41.Google Scholar
Lund, J. 2008a. Banks, Borders and Bodies of Water in a Viking Age Mentality. Journal of Wetland Archaeology, 8: 53–72.Google Scholar
Lund, J. 2008b. Åsted og vadested Deponeringer, genstandsbiografier og rumlig strukturering som kilde til vikingetidens kognitive landskaber. , University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Lund, J. 2010. At the Water's Edge. In: Carver, M., Sanmark, A. & Semple, S., eds. Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 49–66.Google Scholar
McLeod, S. 2013. The Acculturation of Scandinavians in England: A Consideration of the Burial Record. Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association, 9: 61–88.Google Scholar
Morris, C. 1983. A Late Saxon Hoard of Iron and Copper-Alloy Artefacts from Nazeing, Essex. (Metalworkers hoard, 11th century deposition?). Medieval Archaeology, 27: 27–39.Google Scholar
Peirce, I. 2002. Swords of the Viking Age. Woodbridge: Boydell Press.Google Scholar
Raffield, B. 2013a. Landscapes of Conflict and Control: Creating an Archaeological Atlas of Scandinavian Occupied England, AD 878–954. , University of Aberdeen.Google Scholar
Raffield, B. 2013b. Antiquarians, Archaeologists and Viking Fortifications. Journal of the North Atlantic, 20: 1–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ragnar Hagland, J. & Watson, B. 2005. Fact or Folklore: The Viking Attack on London Bridge. London Archaeologist, 10 (12): 328–33.Google Scholar
Randsborg, K. 1999. Into the Iron Age: A Discourse on War and Society. In: Carman, J. & Harding, A., eds. Ancient Warfare. Stroud: Sutton Publishing, pp. 191–202.Google Scholar
Raudvere, C. 2008. Popular Religion in the Viking Age. In: Brink, S. & Price, N., eds. The Viking World. London: Routledge, pp. 235–43.Google Scholar
Reynolds, A. & Semple, S. 2011. Anglo-Saxon Non-Funerary Weapon Depositions. In: Brookes, S., Harrington, S. & Reynolds, A., eds. Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology: Papers in Honour of Martin G. Welch. British Archaeological Reports British Series 527. Oxford: Archaeopress, pp. 40–48.Google Scholar
Richards, J. 2003. Pagans and Christians at a Frontier: Viking Burial in the Danelaw. In: Carver, M., ed. The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300–1300. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, pp. 383–96.Google Scholar
Richards, J. 2004a. Viking Age England. Stroud: Tempus.Google Scholar
Richards, J. 2004b. Excavations at the Viking Barrow Cemetery at Heath Wood, Ingleby, Derbyshire. The Antiquaries Journal, 84: 23–116.Google Scholar
Sanmark, A. 2004. Power and Conversion - A Comparative Study of Christianization in Scandinavia. Occasional Papers in Archaeology 34. Uppsala: Uppsala University Press.Google Scholar
Sanmark, A. 2009. Administrative Organisation and State Formation: A Case Study of Assembly Sites in Södermanland, Sweden. Medieval Archaeology, 53: 205–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanmark, A. & Semple, S. 2008. Places of Assembly. New Discoveries in Sweden and England. Fornvännen, 103: 245–59.Google Scholar
Sanmark, A. & Semple, S. 2013. Assembly in North West Europe: Collective Concerns for Early Societies? European Journal of Archaeology, 16 (3): 518–42.Google Scholar
Scarre, C. ed. 2002. Monuments and Landscape in Atlantic Europe: Perception and Society During the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Scragg, D. ed. 1991. The Battle of Maldon, AD 991. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar
Semple, S. 1998. A Fear of the Past: The Place of the Prehistoric Burial Mound in the Ideology of Middle and Later Anglo-Saxon England. World Archaeology, 30 (1): 109–26.Google Scholar
Semple, S. 2010. In the Open Air. In: Carver, M., Sanmark, A. & Semple, S., eds. Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 21–49.Google Scholar
Sheppard, T. 1939. Viking and Other Relics at Crayke, Yorkshire. Yorkshire Archaeology Journal, 34: 273–81.Google Scholar
Shetelig, H. ed. 1940. Viking Antiquities in Great Britain & Ireland. Vol. 4. Oslo: H. Aschehoug.Google Scholar
Skanderborg Museum. 2012. Alken Enge—The Mass Grave at Lake Mossø. [online] [Accessed 14 February 2013]. Available at: <http://www.skanderborgmuseum.dk/Alken_Enge-English_version-1070.aspx>..>Google Scholar
Stocker, D. & Everson, P. 2003. The Straight and Narrow Way: Fenland Causeways and the Conversion of the Landscape in the Witham Valley, Lincolnshire. In: Carver, M., ed. The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300–1300. Woodbridge: Boydell Press, pp. 271–88.Google Scholar
Ten Harkell, L. 2011. Land or Gold? Changing Perceptions of Landscape in Viking Age Lincolnshire. Assemblage, 11: 15–33.Google Scholar
Thurston, T.L. 2002. Landscapes of Power, Landscapes of Conflict. State Formation in the South Scandinavian Iron Age. London: Kluwer Academic Press.Google Scholar
Tilley, C. 1994. A Phenomenology of Landscape. Oxford: Berg.Google Scholar
Tilley, C. 2006. Introduction: Identity, Place, Landscape and Heritage. Journal of Material Culture, 11 (1–2): 7–32.Google Scholar
Turner, S. 2006. Making a Christian Landscape: The Countryside in Early Medieval Cornwall, Devon and Wessex. Exeter: Exeter University Press.Google Scholar
Webster, L. 1983. A Viking Age Sword from Skerne, N. Humberside. The Antiquaries Journal, 63: 387.Google Scholar
Welinder, S. 2003. Christianity. Politics and Ethnicity in Early Medieval Jämtland, Mid Sweden. In: Carver, M., ed. The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, AD 300–1300. Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, pp. 509–30.Google Scholar
Wilke, G. 1999. Unterwasserarchäologie in polnische Flüssen und Seen. Skyllis, 2 (1): 46–57.Google Scholar
Williams, H. 2010. At the Funeral. In: Carver, M.O.H., Sanmark, A. & Semple, S., eds. Signals of Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited. Oxford: Oxbow, pp. 67–83.Google Scholar
Wilson, D.M. 1965. Some Neglected Late Anglo-Saxon Swords. Medieval Archaeology, 9: 32–54.Google Scholar
Yorke, B. 1990. Kings and Kingdoms of Early Anglo-Saxon England. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Zachrisson, T. 1998. Gård, gräns, gravfält: Sammanhang kring ädelmetalldepåer och runstenar från vikingatid och tidig medeltid i Uppland och Gästrikland. Stockholm Studies in Archaeology 15. Stockholm: Stockholms Universitet.Google Scholar