Combining non- and minimally invasive archaeological survey, geomorphological methods and linguistic studies enables a better understanding of the dynamic use of the Daugava waterway from the Bronze to the Viking ages. Results indicate a common origin period of many fortified settlements and also identify research questions about cultural fluctuations in the Baltic-Slavic–Scandinavian contact area.

Excavations at the vicarage yard (prästgården) at the famous Late Iron Age magnate centre of Gamla Uppsala, Sweden, have yielded six Viking Age (c. ad 750–1100) boat burials, several containing the remains of domestic dogs. The present study is an osteological examination of the remains of three of these dogs, one each from three boat graves, with a primary goal of morphological reconstruction and a secondary focus on identifying sex, age, and pathology. Two dogs were large, slender sight hounds, while the third was somewhat smaller and of indeterminate type. The preference for sight hounds in high-status graves is consistent with previous results from the contemporaneous nearby boat cemeteries of Vendel and Valsgärde, adding weight to the hypothesis of a shared funerary culture between these sites in the Late Iron Age.

During the tenth century AD, Harald Bluetooth ruled Denmark from the royal seat at Jelling. The two extant Jelling mounds are traditionally associated with Harald's parents, Gorm and Thyra, about whom we know little. Unusually, the name Thyra appears on both Jelling runestones and on several others from the region. If all refer to the same person, she would be commemorated on more runestones than anyone else in Viking-Age Denmark. The authors use 3D-scanning to study rune carving techniques, combined with analyses of orthography and language, concluding that the Jelling 2 and Læborg stones are linked by the hand of the carver Ravnunge-Tue. The results suggest Thyra played a pivotal role in the emergence of the Danish state.

Debate surrounds the identity of the Europeans who settled Iceland and Greenland in the early medieval period. Historical sources record settlers travelling from Norway to Iceland and then Greenland, but recent analyses of biological data suggest that some settlers had British and Irish ancestry. Here, the authors test these hypotheses with 3D-shape analyses of human crania from Scandinavia, Britain and Ireland, and one of the Norse colonies in Greenland. Results suggest that some 63 per cent of the ancestry of the Greenlandic individuals can be traced to Britain and Ireland and 37 per cent to Scandinavia. These findings add further weight to the idea that the European settlers who colonised Iceland and later Greenland were of mixed ancestry.

Hedeby was the largest town in the Viking North. Investigations have identified imports at the site from central and northern Scandinavia revealing long-distance connections. The chronology of this trade, however, is unclear. Here, the authors use a typological-biomolecular approach to examine connections during the early Viking Age. The application of ZooMS to an assemblage of antler combs, stylistically dated to the ninth century AD, reveals nearly all were made of reindeer antler. As most craft production waste from Hedeby comprises red deer antler, it is argued that these combs were manufactured elsewhere, perhaps hundreds of kilometres further north. The results have implications for understanding of production and regional connectivity in early medieval Scandinavia.

In this article, I take up the case of runic writing to reflect upon James Scott’s view of the nexus between writing and various forms of domination in early states, especially the use of literacy for taxation in cereal-growing societies. Scott’s theses provide interesting matter “to think with,” even when his grasp of historical detail has been found wanting. It is not controversial to grant Scott that cuneiform writing was a remarkable tool for statecraft, and exploitation, in the first states of Mesopotamia, around 3500 BC. The same is true of writing in other early states. But in the first states of Scandinavia, particularly Denmark ca. AD 500–800, writing had a more troubled relationship with the state. No evidence survives that runic writing was used to administer taxation or much else, as it was in other agrarian civilisations. It is true that the runic script was used to commemorate kings, most famously by Haraldr Blátǫnn (r. ca. 958–ca. 986.). But, statistically speaking, it was more often used to aggrandize the sort of local big men who usually resisted centralized power. In this article, I survey the relationship between runic writing and administration. I consider what the Danish situation suggests about the relationship between states and writing and offer a tentative hypothesis of a short-lived attempt at runic bureaucracy around 800, which created—and quickly lost control of—a shortened variety of the runic script (the Younger Futhark).

Research on archaeological knowledge production emphasises the contingent nature of understandings of the past. In practice, however, levels of uncertainty and conjecture can easily become less than obvious in interpretations, perhaps especially visual ones. The authors interrogate multiple textual and visual accounts of a Viking-Age burial to demonstrate how selection processes—what to portray or omit—highlight the contextual nature of the knowledge claims in these images. Arguing that the circulation of reconstructions shorn of textual nuance leads to misperceptions, the authors call for transparency in the creation of these images. Rather than definitive depictions of archaeological fact, these reconstructions offer tools for archaeologists and the public to think with.

The human remains recovered from the famous Bjerringhøj Viking Age burial in Denmark have been missing for more than 100 years. Recently, an assemblage of bones resembling those recorded at Bjerringhøj—some with adherent textiles—were discovered in a misplaced box in the National Museum of Denmark. Here, the authors use new skeletal and comparative textile analyses, along with radiocarbon dating, to confirm that the bones are indeed those from the Bjerringhøj burial. This rediscovery offers new data for interpreting Viking Age clothing, including the presence of long trousers, and emphasises the importance of reinvestigating old archaeological collections housed within museums and archives.

This article discusses the construction details of the mounds erected over large Viking ship burials in Norway and shows that they form an integral part of mortuary practice. Moreover, elements of the construction that are potentially unique to this type of monument are repeated, suggesting a knowledge of the properties of materials and their inter-relationships within the mounds. Here, referencing between and within the mounds is considered alongside the connections these soils, sediments, and other earth-sourced materials contained in relation to the cultural landscape. The selection of such materials and the location of the burials in the landscape were fundamental to the creation of a performative scene for the burial rites, and for establishing a desired, interlinked, social memory.

The Late Nordic Iron Age (AD 550–1050) was characterised by significant change in political, military, judicial and religious structures across Scandinavia, most clearly manifested in the appearance of high-status ‘central places’ in the landscape. Recent ground-penetrating radar surveys at Gjellestad in Norway have revealed a site comprising several large burial mounds—one of which contains a ship burial—in addition to a possible cult house and a feasting hall. This combination of features suggests that Gjellestad was part of a hitherto unknown central place on the eastern shores of the Oslofjord. If correct, the authors’ interpretations demonstrate that the layouts of these sites were formulaic, and that central places may be more common than previously thought.

Viking Age burial mounds are usually interpreted with reference to their exterior dimensions, the funerary treatment of the deceased and the artefacts placed within them. The process of constructing these mounds, however, may also have played an important role in funerary traditions. Investigations at the Gokstad mound in Norway demonstrate that the building of this mound—in terms of its phases and material expressions—formed an integral part of the overall burial rite. The complex construction sequence contained references to both the physical and mythical landscapes, revealing the potential of the study of burial mound construction at other sites in Viking Age Scandinavia and beyond.

This article offers a new perspective on a diverse corpus of high-status Western Slavic objects from the domain of the Piast dynasty in Poland, dated between the tenth and eleventh centuries ad. It is proposed that the lavish zoomorphic decorations, often depicting snakes, found on jewellery, weapons, and equestrian equipment reflected Western Slavic pre-Christian religious ideas and served as material markers of elite identity. The results of this study lead to a more nuanced understanding of Western Slavic worldviews and their material expressions, paving the way for new investigations into cultural interactions both within and beyond the Slavic homelands.

Borre in Norway is famous for its Late Nordic Iron and Viking Age (AD 400–1050) monumental burial mounds. Recently, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys have revealed three large structures close to the mound cemetery. Their unusual layout and size, and location within such a prominent burial site, suggest that they were halls—high-status buildings mentioned in the Nordic sagas. The authors present the GPR results, discuss the buildings’ typological classification and provide a preliminary chronological framework. The latter suggests that the buildings coexisted with some of the burial mounds, and raises important questions about the significance of such buildings in Nordic mound-building societies.

In 2017, eight runestones on Bornholm were scanned in 3D and the microtopography of the grooves was analysed by multivariate statistical methods. One of the stones was previously not known to runological research. The aim of this paper is to compare the carving technique of the Bornholm runestones with runestones from Swedish regions to shed light on old issues concerning Bornholm's links with other regions in and around the Baltic Sea. The rune carvers are important agents in this, as the runestones are often related to issues including landholding, Christianization, possible Swedish influences, and the inclusion of Bornholm into the Danish realm. In addition, rune carvers as native writers were intimately connected to the introduction of literacy. The results of this study indicate that the rune carvers did not cooperate much with carvers from the islands of Öland and Gotland, whereas Södermanland, among the Swedish mainland provinces, was their first choice.

The Viking Age in the West has long been perceived as a direct, colonising expansion of Scandinavian peoples, its causes most frequently sought within Scandinavia and linked together as concerted phenomena. This debate piece seeks to question these assumptions. Drawing on recent research that stresses the heterogeneity of Viking war-bands—and their early involvement in Francia and England—it proposes a ‘southern route’ through which Viking influence flowed towards the North Atlantic. The saga-attested early dominance of Norway over the Northern Isles is challenged, and attributed to a politicised re-writing of history four centuries later.

The warrior woman has long been part of the Viking image, with a pedigree that extends from the Valkyries of Old Norse prose and poetry to modern media entertainment. Until recently, however, actual Viking Age evidence for such individuals has been sparse. This article addresses research showing that the individual buried at Birka in an ‘archetypal’ high-status warrior grave—always assumed to be male since its excavation in 1878—is, in fact, biologically female. Publication, in 2017, of the genomic data led to unprecedented public debate about this individual. Here, the authors address in detail the interpretation of the burial, discussing source-critical issues and parallels.