vikings

In archaeology, we distinguish osteological sex from artefact gender. Osteo-sex is with very few exceptions (odd chromosomal setups) the same thing as what your genitals are like. Artefact gender is the material correlate of a role you play according to the conventions of your time: e.g. whether you keep your genitals in Y-fronts or lacy knickers. We judge these two parameters from separate source materials. Your skeleton can't tell us anything about your gender, and your grave goods can't tell us anything about your osteo-sex. They are in principle able to vary independently. Nevertheless,…

A buddy & colleague of mine took this picture in an Eslöv pizza place, commenting drily that it's a fine example of how the cultural heritage can be used. We've got Thor's hammer, we've got two cartoon Vikings, we've got Swedish flags, and note the three yellow crowns on a blue background: the arms of the Kingdom of Sweden, a strong nationalist statement. Rural Eslöv municipality is one of the anti-immigration Swedish Hate Party's strongholds, with 22% of the vote in the last election. Vikings and Scandinavian Paganism are of course much beloved by the extreme Right, and stylewise the…

Detectorist John Kvanli is the chairman of Rygene detektorklubb and one of Norway's most prominent proponents of collaboration between amateurs and professionals in field archaeology. Of course he has a tattoo! It's an Urnes brooch from c. AD 1100, in the final exquisite Christian style of Scandinavian animal art. John tells me he has found several fragments of these fragile objects, but the one inked onto his upper right arm is a settlement excavation find from Lindholm Høje, across the fjord from Aalborg in northern Jutland. The needlework was done by the Martin Tattoo Studio in Bangkok,…

Metal detectorist Dennis Fabricius Holm made a pretty sweet find yesterday: the third known Birka crucifix. These little wonders of 10th century goldsmith work are named for the first find, made in 1879 when Hjalmar Stolpe excavated in the cemeteries of Birka near Stockholm. In addition to the crucifix grave 660 contained, among other things, two other fine silver filigree pendants and a bronze-capped iron wand that may have served pagan religious purposes. Crucifix from grave 660 at Birka, Uppland, Sweden. In 2012 Silke Eisenschmidt identified fragments of a second Birka crucifix among…

It's been a busy couple of days with a lot of publicity. Monday morning a paper I've co-authored with my friend, geophysics specialist Andreas Viberg, was published in the on-line version of Archaeological Prospection. For reasons of scientific priority (which I myself like to establish by spilling everything I do onto the blog immediately) I've been sitting on this since April of 2013, so it feels real good to finally blog about it. Here's a brief summary. There's a huge weird barrow at Aska in Hagebyhöga near Vadstena in Östergötland. It's oval and flat instead of round and domed. My old…

Anders Winroth (born in 1965) is a Swedish historian who received his PhD from Columbia in 1996 and now holds an endowed professorship in history at Yale. He has written several books on the Viking Period for lay readers, the latest one of which I've been given to review. The main contents of The Age of the Vikings is organised into eight chapters on: Raiding and warfare Emigration and overseas settlement Ships in reality and mythology Trade The development of political leadership Home life in Scandinavia and the roles of women Religion Arts and letters All eight are well written and…

The Lion of Pireus is a large 4th century BC marble statue that was moved from Pireus, the port of Athens, to Venice in 1688. It is now at the city's Arsenal. The Lion has unmistakeable Swedish 11th century runic inscriptions which have been known to Scandinavian scholars since 1798/99. Clearly they have something to do with the Varangian Guard, Swedish soldiers in the employ of the Byzantine Emperor from the 980s onward. But due to poor preservation, the message carried by those runes has been believed lost. There is a cast of the Lion at the Historical Museum in Stockholm, and I've often…

Utah has gay marriage. Say no more. It's officially over at the highest levels, folks. You can't spend decades legislating and ordering equality from the chambers of congress, statehouses, and the benches of the high courts before, eventually, it becomes part of our culture to assume that the state and society supports equality even if an obnoxiously large minority of citizens does not. Struggle is followed by reluctant acceptance and regulation which is followed by shifting norms. What happens then is interesting: You have to shut up. STFU in fact. If you are really against equal…

Inspired by Tim Hamilton's facebook post I played a bit with my old bit of silfurberg this weekend In particular, I was curious to test whether there was some plausibility to birefringent calcite being the "sunstone" of the Saga's. This evening, about an hour before sunset, we had nice thick rain clouds moving from Ohio, so, as I had promised the Astronomers fb group, I popped out to check what I could see. After a short time playing with rotation, looking with peripheral vision and doing some slow scans, I gave the biggest piece to my daughter (who I am reasonably sure has not read this…

When I was about 9 years old, my grandmother gave me a piece of Iceland Spar, it had belonged to my grandfather and she felt I ought to have it. Iceland Spar This is the piece, my kids have it now, somewhere along the way it broke into three pieces while in storage. She showed me the birefringence, I remember playing with it for hours. I also remember having had it impressed upon me that it was important, not just a curio, though I am also acutely aware of the possibility that I have reinterpreted my partial memories based on what I learned later. Birefringence in Iceland Spar. The…

On January 29th, 2010, I wrote: I do not appreciate the fact that the New Orleans Saints defense, when playing the superior Minnesota Vikings, clearly designed, practiced, and successfully implemented a strategy that if adopted by other teams and not stopped by new rules, will change the way the sport is played forever. During the playoff game with the Vikings, the Saints' defense got through the Vikings' defensive line and knocked down the quarterback something like 19 times. Not sacked. They knocked him down after he had thrown or passed off the ball. One time there was a penalty, and the…

But that isn't always how it goes. On today's radio show, Steve Borsch was talking about the way in which social networking (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) is playing out -- as an extension of social interaction more than as a new form of shopping mall or marketing environment -- and an observation I made a couple of weeks ago during the Vikings game congealed like mucus in the back of your throat when you are getting over a cold (See Pandemonium Looms in Minneapolis). So, since I have a blog, I thought I'd hack it up for you. Chris Kluwe is the beloved kicker for the Vikings. I don't really…

This is just one of dozens of responses to common climate change denial arguments, which can all be found at How to Talk to a Climate Sceptic. Objection: Newfoundland was so warm in the Medieval Warm Period that when the Vikings landed they called it Vineland and brought boatloads of grapes back to Europe. Answer: One can not infer a global climate from an anecdote about a single region, or even a few regions, you need detailed analysis of proxy climate indicators from around the world. These proxy reconstructions have shown that the Medieval Warm Period (around the time the Vikings were…