Viking and Medieval Scandinavian History

The information about exact chapters, page ranges, and page references which you are expected to read for each class and where these books and texts can be found is provided in the specific modules on CANVAS.

Basic handbooks

Stefan Brink, Neil Price (eds.), The Viking World (Abingdon 2008)

Neil Price, Ben Raffield, The Vikings (Abingdon 2023)

Kirsi Salonen, Kurt Villads Jensen, Scandinavia in the Middle Ages 900-1550: Between Two Oceans (Abingdon 2023)

Source texts

The Chronicle of Duke Erik: A Verse Epic from Medieval Sweden, tr. Erik Carlquist, Peter C. Hogg (Lund 2012)

Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness: Arab Travellers in the Far North, tr. Paul Lunde & Caroline Stone (London 2011)

Legenda Sancti Henrici in English translation, Tuomas Heikkilä, Sankt Henrikslegenden, trans. Rainer Knapas (Helsinki, 2009), pp. 254–75

Morkinskinna: The Earliest Icelandic Chronicle of the Norwegian Kings (1030-1157), tr. by Theodore M. Andersson, Kari Ellen Gade (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000)

Njals saga: https://sagadb.org/brennu-njals_saga.en

The Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr, tr. Devra Kunin (London 2001) http://www.vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Text%20Series/Historia%26Passio.pdf

Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes (London 2011-15), vol. I: http://vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Heimskringla%20I%20revised.pdf

Secondary Literature

Sverre Bagge, ‘Old Norse Theories of Society. From RígsÞula to Konungs skuggsiá’, in Speculum regale. Der altnorwegische Königsspiegel (Konungs skuggsiá) in der europäischen Tradition, ed. by Jens Eike Schnall, Rudolf Simek (Vienna 2000), pp. 7-45: https://bora.uib.no/bora-xmlui/bitstream/handle/1956/674/Old%20Norse%20Theories%20of%20Society.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

J. H. Barrett, ‘What caused the Viking age?’, Antiquity, 82 (2008), 671-685, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003598X00097301

Jesse Byock “Feuding in Viking Age Iceland’s Great Village”, in Warren C. Brown and Piotr Górecki (eds.), Conflict in Medieval Europe: Changing Perspectives on Society and Culture (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), pp. 223-241: http://www.viking.ucla.edu/publications/articles/feuding_viking_age_iceland_byock_vengeance.pdf

Carl Olof Cederlund, ‘The Modern Myth of the Viking’, Journal of Maritime Archaeology, 6 (2011), pp. 5–35 available at https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11457-011-9079-0

Katherine Cross, Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c.950-c.1015 (York 2018)

Thomas A. DuBois (ed.), Sanctity in the North: Saints, Lives and Cults in Medieval Scandinavia (Toronto 2007)

Iben Fonnesberg-Schmidt, ‘Father and Son, Brother and Friend: The Papal Curia and the Status of the Nordic Ecclesiastical Elite’, in Nordic Elites in Transformation, c. 1050–1250, Volume III: Legitimacy and Glory, ed. by Wojtek Jezierski, Kim Esmark, Hans Jacob Orning, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (New York 2021) pp. 221-244

Roberta Frank, ‘The Invention of the Viking Horned Helmet’, in International Scandinavian and medieval studies in memory of Gerd Wolfgang Weber: ein runder Knäuel, so rollt' es uns leicht aus den Händen, ed. by Michael Dallapiazza (Trieste 2000), pp. 199-208 available here: https://ingebretsens-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/51267328-frank-invention-of-horned-helmet.pdf

Henrik Janson, ‘Christianisations in Scandinavia’, in Mass Conversions to Christianity and Islam, 800–1100, ed. by Tsvetelin Stepanov, Osman Karatay (Cham: Springer, 2023), pp. 45-76

Magnus Källström, ‘Sighs and Sorrows – But No Laughter? Expressions of Emotions in Runic Inscriptions’, in Tears, Sighs and Laughter. Expressions of Emotions in the Middle Ages, ed. by Per Förnegård, Erika Kihlman, Mia Åkestam, Gunnel Engwall (Stockholm: Vitterhetsakadmien, 2017), pp. 276-288 Available here: https://vitterhetsakad.bokorder.se/open-access/7dfb3b63-b199-4966-af93-46b0a20a9474 and here: https://vitterhetsakad.bokorder.se/doi/2877

Carolyne Larrington, The Norse Myths That Shape the Way We Think (London 2023)

John H. Lind, ‘The Viking Fallacy: The Functional ‘viking’ vs the Scandinavian Viking’, in Dísablót. Сборник статей коллег и учеников к юбилею Елены Александровны Мельниковой (Moscow 2021), pp. 29-40

William Ian Miller, 'Why is your axe bloody?': A reading of Njáls Saga (Oxford 2014)

Marika Mägi, In Austrvegr: The Role of the Eastern Baltic in Viking Age Communication Across the Baltic Sea (Leiden 2018)

Marika Mägi, The Viking Eastern Baltic (Leeds 2019)

Margaretha Nordquist, ‘Eternal Bonds of Love or Foreign Oppression? Entangled Identities in Late-medieval Scandinavia’, Quaestiones Medii Aevi Novae, 23 (2018), pp. 381-405: https://su.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:1327308/FULLTEXT01.pdf

S. M. Sindbæk, ‘The small world of the Vikings: Networks in early medieval communication and exchange’, Norwegian Archaeological Review, 40 (2007), pp. 59-74, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00293650701327619

Thomas Småberg, ‘Mead and Beer and Cherry Wine and Wine both Red and White’: Feasts, Courts, and Conflicts in Fourteenth-Century Sweden’, in Rituals, Performatives, and Political Order in Northern Europe, c. 650–1350, ed. by Wojtek Jezierski, Lars Hermanson, Hans Jacob Orning, and Thomas Småberg (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), pp. 295–320

The Vikings Reimagined: Reception, Recovery, Engagement, ed. by Tom Birkett and Roderick Dale (Berlin 2020)