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tervening centuries. Some structures, especially

churches, mosques, and fortiﬁcations, are known,

but the paucity of associated habitation material

seems to indicate that the towns remained centers

of religious and political activity but were no longer

centers of population or economic activity. The few

locations where early medieval occupation levels

have been found are often restricted in area and as-

sociated with defensive locations or religious facili-

ties. In Mérida, one of the few towns where urban

excavation has revealed early medieval habitations,

they take the form of reuse of semi-ruined Roman

buildings, subdivided into small apartments, even-

tually abandoned, and not replaced with new struc-

tures until the ninth century.

The decline in urban occupation is probably re-

lated to general changes in the economy during the

Early Middle Ages. Under the Roman Empire, the

countries around the Mediterranean were linked by

active networks of long-distance trade, which can be

observed archaeologically in the remains of nonper-

ishable goods such as pottery. Even in the ﬁfth and

sixth centuries, pottery types made in what are now

Tunisia, Turkey, and other places all around the

Mediterranean were regularly available in the coast-

al cities of Spain and Portugal. After 550, however,

these imports rapidly declined, and they ceased en-

tirely by the latter half of the seventh century. Al-

though exchange of goods and ideas did not cease

entirely, long-distance trade on a scale large enough

to be archaeologically signiﬁcant did not resume

until the tenth century and later.

The economic changes were not limited to

overseas trade; the evidence for specialized produc-

tion and local exchange within the Iberian Peninsu-

la shows a similar pattern. In fact, for a long time

this pattern obscured the archaeology of the Early

Middle Ages. In previous generations, when medi-

eval archaeology was closely connected with art his-

tory, the shortage of ﬁnely produced items in early

medieval Spain and Portugal, compared to the

Roman and late medieval periods, made it difﬁcult

to study the period. The Visigothic period was best

known from metalwork such as brooches and belt

buckles found in cemeteries and from stonecarving

associated with churches. So skilled craftspersons

continued to exist, but they seem to have been

much less abundant than in the Roman period,

since few such objects are found in ordinary sites.

Referring once again to the artifacts that are most

abundant on archaeological sites, the ﬁnely made,

decorated table pottery of the late Roman period

disappeared after the ﬁfth or sixth century, and then

only plain, coarse pottery was made—often without

the use of the potter’s wheel, which is essential for

producing in large quantities—until new styles of

decorated tablewares based on eastern Islamic tradi-

tions appeared in the late ninth century.

These patterns of economic production are far

from the religious and political concerns of the writ-

ten historical sources, but by elucidating the context

in which the recorded events took place, they may

provide an essential part of improved explanations

of how culture and society changed in Spain and

Portugal during the early Middle Ages. Historical

events are necessarily shaped by the economic and

social context in which they occur, and this context

is lacking in the very limited written history of early

medieval Spain and Portugal. For example, the in-

ability of the Visigoths to form an effective resis-

tance after their king was defeated at the beginning

of the Islamic conquest has been attributed by his-

torians to moral decay or overcentralized rulership.

But it may be just as signiﬁcant that the population

of the region was at the bottom of a long process

of decline in the eighth century and that economic

disintegration would have made coordination difﬁ-

cult. These same factors also raise some interesting

questions about the effects of the demographic and

economic growth that appeared in the ninth and

tenth centuries, such as whether some regions grew

earlier or faster and therefore had advantages in po-

litical competition. Future archaeological research

has the potential to address such questions, which

could not even have been asked until the late twen-

tieth century.

See also Visigoths (vol. 2, part 7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Acién Almansa, Manuel. “Poblamiento y fortiﬁcación en el

sur de al-Andalus.” In Actas del III Congreso de Ar-

queología Medieval Española. Vol. 1, pp. 135–150.

Oviedo, Spain: Universidad de Oviedo, 1989.

Alba Calzado, Miguel. “Ocupación diacrónica del área ar-

queológica de Morería (Mérida).” In Mérida: Excavac-

iones arqueológicas, 1994–1995. Edited by Pedro Ma-

teos Cruz, Miguel Alba Calzado, and Juana Márquez

Pérez, pp. 285–315. Mérida, Spain: Consorcio Ciudad

Monumental Histórico-Artística y Arqueológica de

Mérida, 1997.

EARLY MEDIEVAL IBERIA

ANCIENT EUROPE

531

Barceló, Miquel. “Los h: us: ¯un, los castra y los fantasmas que

aún los habitan.” In Castillos y territorio en al-Andalus.

Edited by Antonio Malpica. Granada: Athos-Pérgamos,

1998, pp. 10–41.

Bazzana, André, Patrice Cressier, and Pierre Guichard. Les

châteaux ruraux d’al-Andalus. Madrid: Casa de Veláz-

quez, 1988.

Benito Iborra, Miguel. “La evolución estructural de las so-

ciedades históricas del sur de la Comunidad Valen-

ciana.” In Actas del IV Congreso de Arqueología Medi-

eval Española. Vol. 1, pp. 151–168. Alicante, Spain:

Diputación Provincial de Alicante, 1993.

Collins, Roger. Early Medieval Spain: Unity in Diversity,

400–1000. 2d ed. New York: St. Martin’s, 1995.

Dodds, Jerrilynn D. Architecture and Ideology in Early Me-

dieval Spain. University Park: Pennsylvania State Uni-

versity Press, 1990.

Dodds, Jerrilynn D., Bernard F. Reilly, and John W. Wil-

liams. The Art of Medieval Spain,

A.D. 500–1200. New

York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1993.

Fernandes, Isabel Cristina F., and A. Rafael Carvalho.

“Cerâmicas muçulmanas do Castelo de Palmela.” In La

céramique médiévale en Méditerranée, actes du VIe con-

grès de l’AIECM2. Edited by G. Démians

d’Archimbaud, pp. 327–335. Aix-en-Provence, France:

Narration Éditions, 1997.

Glick, Thomas F. From Muslim Fortress to Christian Castle:

Social and Cultural Change in Medieval Spain. Man-

chester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1995.

———. Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle

Ages. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1979.

Gómez Becerra, Antonio. “El litoral granadino en época al-

tomedieval (siglos VII–XI): Poblamiento, navegación y

defensa.” Arqueología y territorio medieval 7 (2000):

7–21.

Gutiérrez Lloret, Sonia. “De la civitas a la mad¯ı na: destruc-

ción y formación de la ciudad en el sureste de Al-

Andalus: el debate arqueológico.” In Actas del IV Con-

greso de Arqueología Medieval Española. Vol. 1, pp. 13–

35. Alicante, Spain: Diputación Provincial de Alicante,

1993.

———. “Production and Trade of Local and Regional Pot-

tery in Early Medieval Spain (7th–9th Centuries): The

Experience of the Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula.”

Boletín de arqueología medieval 6 (1992): 9–22.

Keay, S. J. Roman Spain. London: British Museum Press,

1988. (See particularly chap. 9, “The End of Roman

Spain.”)

Martí, Ramón, and Sergi Selma. “La huerta de la mad¯ına de

ubrub (Segorbe, Castelló).” Boletín de arqueología

medieval 9 (1995): 39–51.

Olmo Enciso, Lauro. “Consideraciones sobre la ciudad en

época visigoda.” Arqueología y territorio medieval 5

(1998): 109–118.

Ramallo Asensio, Sebastián F. “Arquitectura doméstica en

ámbitos urbanos entre los siglos V y VIII.” In Visigodos

y Omeyas: Un debate entre la antigüedad tardía y la alta

edad media. Edited by L. Caballero Zoreda and P. Ma-

teos Cruz, pp. 367–384. Madrid: Consejo Superior de

Investigaciones Cientíﬁcas, 2000.

Reynolds, Paul. Settlement and Pottery in the Vinalopó Valley

(Alicante, Spain),

A.D. 400–700. BAR International Se-

ries, no. 588. Oxford: Tempvs Reparatvm, 1993.

Ripoll López, Gisela. “The Arrival of the Visigoths in Hispa-

nia: Population Problems and the Process of Accultura-

tion.” In Strategies of Distinction: The Construction of

Ethnic Communities, 300–800. Edited by Walter Pohl

and Helmut Reimitz, pp. 153–187. Leiden, The Neth-

erlands: Brill, 1998.

Salvatierra Cuenca, Vicente. “The Origins of al-Andalus

(Eighth and Ninth Centuries): Continuity and

Change.” In The Archaeology of Iberia: The Dynamics of

Change. Edited by Margarita Díaz-Andreu and Simon

Keay, pp. 265–278. New York: Routledge, 1996.

Taller Escola d’Arqueologia. Un abocador del segle V d.C. en

el fòrum provincial de Tàrraco. Memòries d’Excavació

2. Tarragona, Spain: Ajuntament de Tarragona, 1989.

Wolf, Kenneth B. Conquerors and Chroniclers of Early Medi-

eval Spain. 2d ed. Translated Texts for Historians 9.

Liverpool, U.K.: Liverpool University Press, 1999.

AVID YOON

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532

ANCIENT EUROPE

EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

PRE-VIKING AND VIKING AGE NORWAY

■

Norway is a long, narrow, mountainous strip of land

on the northwestern edge of the European conti-

nent, facing the North Atlantic Ocean. The word

means “the way to the north” and originally may

have designated the sea-lane along the coast. This

is in line with the connections and developments of

Norway as a primarily maritime nation through his-

tory. Throughout the centuries an exchange of

goods, people, and ideas traveled both southward

and westward. About the year

A.D. 1000 the Chris-

tian faith was introduced to Norway from England,

but in the later Middle Ages relations with Rome

were carried on with Germany as the intermediary.

Danish and German inﬂuences were long para-

mount, until new connections with the west were

formed in the seventeenth century.

The ﬁrst evidence of people in Norway dates to

9000–8000

B.C. from the sites of Komsa in Finn-

mark and Fosna in the Mo

⁄

re area. We do not know

who the ﬁrst Norwegians were, because two differ-

ent migration routes are possible, one from the

north through the Kola Peninsula and one via Swe-

den and Denmark. The Stone Age in Norway dates

from 5000 to 3000

B.C. and is characterized by

hunters and gatherers that used coarse tools, espe-

cially axes, and had domesticated dogs. During the

Late Stone Age (3000–1500

B.C.), domesticated

cattle and the beginnings of agriculture made their

appearance. This period also marked the ﬁrst evi-

dence of an artistic tradition. Rock carvings of ﬁsh

and reindeer have been discovered. The one burial

dating from this period, located east of the Oslo-

fjord, is a collective grave. In later time periods sin-

gle graves came into use.

During the Bronze Age (1500–500

B.C.), there

are more extensive settlements and ﬁner tools and

weapons. Bronze (a copper and tin alloy) is not in-

digenous to Norway, and it had to be imported.

This metal probably indicates status when found at

archaeological sites. From this time period, there

are magniﬁcent rock carvings depicting sundials,

wheels, oxen and oxen-driven carts, ships, and ﬁsh

and ﬁshing. All the rock carvings are located on rock

faces with water cascading down or in indentations

that collect water. A series of large mounds of stone

and gravel are preserved from this time period and

contain the bodies of powerful chieftains. These

mounds also are placed in key locations in the land-

scape visible by outsiders, possibly as a sign of power

and claim on the land. Later in this time period, the

tradition moved toward cremation burials, where

the remains were buried in urns.

About 500

B.C. iron ﬁrst came to Norway. The

pre-Roman Iron Age, or Celtic Iron Age (500–1

B.C.), primarily is known through archaeological

work in southern Norway. Archaeological research

in connection with urban development has provid-

ed insights on settlement and settlement patterns.

It was a challenging time for agriculture, owing to

climatic deterioration. The end of this period

brought the Scandinavian countries into close asso-

ciation with the Roman civilization. The Roman

Iron Age (

A.D. 1–400) was marked by trade items

from the Roman Empire, and Scandinavians came

into contact not just with a different culture but also

ANCIENT EUROPE

533

with Christianity, literacy, and a written alphabet.

Both cremation and inhumation burials are found

dating to this period. Many of the inhumation buri-

als lie near megalithic monuments, often adorned

with runic inscriptions. When the Roman Empire

collapsed as the result of pressure from the German-

ic migration (

A.D. 400–600), a period of unrest also

was felt in Norway by new invading tribes, marked

by the ruins of local fortresses. This was termed the

Migration period. The following period, the Mero-

vingian (

A.D. 600–800), saw powerful chieftains in

the area, and close contact with the Germanic lan-

guage–speaking peoples is witnessed in the rise of

ornamental art, such as wood carvings, which ﬂour-

ished in the ﬁrst historic period, the Viking Age.

The Viking Age was the result of linked eco-

nomic intensiﬁcation, military and technological

advances, climate change, and, particularly, intense

competition among chieﬂy elites and between elites

and commoners. The era saw escalating Nordic im-

pact upon northwestern Europe and a dramatic ex-

pansion of European settlement into the offshore is-

lands of the North Atlantic. Early in this period,

Norwegians settled in the Shetlands and Orkneys

and Swedes on the coasts of Finland and Estonia. In

these early expansionistic movements, the motive

seems to have been more of peaceful integration

rather than aggression and war.

The attack on the monastery of Lindisfarne off

the coast of Northumberland in 793 marked the be-

ginning of an era that has forever given the Vikings

the reputation of raiders. The Viking expeditions

were eastward and westward. Swedes who sailed the

Baltic and founded the kingdom of Gardarike, with

Novgorod and Kiev as the main cities, primarily un-

dertook the eastward expansion. Voyages on the

Russian rivers brought them all the way to the By-

zantine Empire and Constantinople (modern-day

Istanbul), where many of these Vikings entered as

soldiers in the Roman emperor’s guard and were

called Varangians. Some of the Varangians were

Norwegians, the most noteworthy of them being

the half-brother of Saint Olaf, Harald Sigurdson.

He actually became chief of the Varangians and,

upon his return to Norway, king. Rich ﬁnds of Ara-

bian and Byzantine coins tell of the trade connec-

tions between the Orient and the Nordic countries

at the time.

Three ship burials dating to the early part of the

Viking Age have been unearthed: the Tune, Ose-

berg, and Gokstad ships. Ships typically were used

for the burial of nobles. The ﬁne craftsmanship and

ﬂexible frame, in conjunction with a shallow keel,

made the Viking boat a formidable tool in surprise

attacks. This construction also allowed ease in trans-

port when the waters were too shallow or when a

strip of land was blocking the river, as they could be

lifted over narrow stretches of land so that the voy-

age could continue on the other side.

The economic basis of the Viking expansion has

attracted a growing body of scholarship, increasing-

ly based upon a rich archaeological record, illustrat-

ing that economic power, military power, religious

authority, and competitive display were interlocking

elements in elite strategies for aggrandizement.

They also were key points of friction with the long-

established leveling mechanisms of Iron Age Ger-

manic society. Viking Age chieﬂy economics ulti-

mately was not about money but about honor and

power. Wealth generated from successful farming,

intensiﬁed ﬁshing, loot, trade, or protection selling

was not an end in itself but a means to acquire the

key elements of chieftainship. Among these prerog-

atives were well-armed retainers, loyal clients, ﬁne

clothing and weapons, exotic objects for display and

award, and spectacular architectural settings for glo-

rious feasts and impressive ritual moments. Evi-

dence of ritualistic activity, such as feasting and

horse ﬁghting, is evident in materials from the Mer-

ovingian site of A

ker, near Hamar in Norway.

In arctic Norway, mighty chieftainships grew up

on the Lofoten and Vestera˚len Islands during the

Late Iron Age, creating a power center that was to

contest primacy with the expanding petty kingdoms

of western and southern Norway for a long time.

Research on animal bone material from Iron Age

sites (both pre-Viking and Viking) in northern Nor-

way reveals great insight into the structure of politi-

cal economy of these northern chieﬂy establish-

ments. Huge boathouses, extensive farms, and at

least one large feasting hall at Borg, equipped with

imported gold and glass that must have rivaled any

similar structure below the Arctic Circle, point to

the formation of a political power center in the area.

While the warm currents of the North Atlantic drift

allowed some barley growing in these offshore arc-

tic islands, most barley production probably was re-

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

534

ANCIENT EUROPE

served for beer rather than porridge. The majority

of the diet was supplied by meat and milk of do-

mestic stock, birds and bird eggs, sea mammals,

and, especially, the abundant stocks of marine ﬁsh,

whose spawning grounds surround Lofoten and

Vestera˚len.

The development of ﬁshing, in particular, and

the building of a monetary economy based on the

exchange and trade of a storable product, such as

dried ﬁsh (stockﬁsh), in the twelfth century

A.D. al-

lowed a mercantile connection of these arctic lands

with mainland Europe. Royal and church patronage

had created a vast investment in the specialized ex-

ploitation of the abundant cod stocks accessible

from the Lofoten and Vestera˚len islands. Settlement

pattern, scheduling of subsistence activities, division

of labor, gender roles, and relations between Scan-

dinavian and Saami populations all were affected by

the profound economic and social transformation.

During the Iron Age the Norse were not unfamiliar

with the concepts of intensive ﬁshing and the use of

stockﬁsh (beheaded air-dried codﬁsh) as an integral

part of this multifaceted political economy. Stock-

ﬁsh became the key product that connected this

northern land with the mercantile economies of

mainland Europe during the eleventh and twelfth

centuries.

The difference between the Iron Age and medi-

eval times lies in the focus and scope of the activity

as well as the nature of the controlling elements. In

both eras, elites were transforming ﬁsh into objects

of abstract value. In the Iron Age ﬁsh was used for

prestige by facilitating the purchase of barley for

beer making, for getting furs that then were traded

for luxury items in distant ports, and, of course, for

feeding people both at home and during voyages.

All these transactions garnered the ultimate prod-

ucts of “honor,” prestige, and lineage power. In

medieval times the transformation was of a different

nature. Fish no longer was used for acquisition of

prestige but rather as money. Fish therefore, did not

just change into an object of abstract value but was

altered further to become an abstract commodity.

Its value went beyond the local and regional level to

achieving a truly international scale.

A frequently cited account by a North Norwe-

gian chieftain Ottar (recorded in the court of King

Alfred of Wessex in the ninth century) provides a

description of chieﬂy economics, mentioning in-

come from “tribute” collected regularly from the

Saami peoples for reindeer farming, and from both

the Saami and the Norse for whaling and walrus

hunting. According to N. Lund, a wandering

Anglo-Saxon scribe noted that this North Norwe-

gian chieftain owned far fewer cattle than any re-

spectable thane of Wessex but was “accounted

wealthy in his own country.” As King Alfred knew

all too well, Nordic seafaring skills allowed for the

acquisition of wealth from raiding, protection rack-

eteering (Danegeld collection—payment to the Vi-

kings in England and France for not being plun-

dered and for the assurance of defense, if necessary),

and large-scale slaving as well as ﬁshing and mari-

time trade. In the three centuries between

A.D. 800

and 1100, Iron Age Scandinavians became major

players in the royal politics of northwestern Europe,

and for a brief period in the early eleventh century

a single Scandinavian dynasty controlled most of

England, Denmark, and Norway. Several scholars

have argued that the escalating raids and massive

wealth generated by Viking activity contributed

greatly to social changes that eventually promoted

stable monarchies in Scandinavia and thus contrib-

uted to the demise of chieﬂy Viking Age politics in

Denmark, Norway, and Sweden by

A.D. 1100.

By the tenth and eleventh centuries Norway, as

well as the rest of Scandinavia, became Christian-

ized. The early kings used Christianity as an ideo-

logical reinforcement for their ﬂedgling states.

These kings promoted the development of ecclesi-

astical centers at foci of secular power, such as

Hamar and Nidaros (present-day Trondheim), and

the shift from the chieftain’s farm to the churchyard

marks the beginning of the Middle Ages.

See also Viking Ships (vol. 2, part 7); Viking Settlements

in Orkney and Shetland (vol. 2, part 7); Viking

York (vol. 2, part 7); Pre-Viking and Viking Age

Denmark (vol. 2, part 7); Pre-Viking and Viking

Age Sweden (vol. 2, part 7).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bigelow, Gerald F., ed. The Norse of the North Atlantic. Acta

Archaeologica, no. 61. Copenhagen, Denmark:

Munksgaard, 1991.

Fitzhugh, William W., and Elisabeth I. Ward, eds. Vikings:

The North Atlantic Saga. Washington, D.C.: Smithso-

nian Institution Press and National Museum of Natural

History, 2000.

PRE-VIKING AND VIKING AGE NORWAY

ANCIENT EUROPE

535

Gelsinger, Bruce E. Icelandic Enterprise: Commerce and

Economy in the Middle Ages. Columbia: University of

South Carolina Press, 1981.

Hansen, Jan Ingar, and Knut G. Bjerva, eds. Fra Hammer

til Kors: 1000 a˚r med kristendom Brytningstid I Viken

Chr [From hammers to crosses: 1000 years from the

transition to Christianity in Viken]. Oslo, Norway:

Schibsteds Forlag A/S, 1994.

Jones, Gwyn. The Norse Atlantic Saga: Being the Norse Voy-

ages of Discovery and Settlement to Iceland, Greenland,

and North America. Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1986.

———. A History of the Vikings. 2d ed. Oxford: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1984.

Lund, N. Two Voyagers, Othere, & Wulfstan at the Court of

King Alfred. York, U.K.: William Sessions, Ltd., 1984.

Midgaard, John. A Brief History of Norway. Copenhagen,

Denmark: Aschehoug Press, 1989.

Perdikaris, Sophia. “From Chieﬂy Provisioning to Commer-

cial Fishery: Long-Term Economic Change in Arctic

Norway.” World Archaeology 30, no. 3 (2000): 388–

402.

———. “Status and Economy: A Zooarchaeological Per-

spective from the Iron Age Site of A

ker, Norway.” In

Debating Complexity. Edited by D. A. Meyer, P. C.

Dawson, and D. T. Hanna. Proceedings of the Twenty-

sixth Annual Chacmool Conference. Calgary, Canada:

Chacmool Archaeological Association, 1993.

Sturluson, Snorri. From the Sagas of the Norse Kings. Trans-

lated by Erling Monsen with A. H. Smith. Oslo, Nor-

way: Dreyers Forlag, 1988.

Thurston, Tina. Landscapes of Power, Landscapes of Conﬂict:

State Formation in the South Scandinavian Iron Age.

Fundamental Issues in Archaeology. New York and

London: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishing, 2001.

Time-Life Books, eds. Vikings: Raiders from the North. Alex-

andria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1993.

Urban´czyk, Przemysław. Medieval Arctic Norway. Warsaw,

Poland: Zaklad Poligraﬁczny Press, 1992.

OPHIA PERDIKARIS

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

536

ANCIENT EUROPE

EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

PRE-VIKING AND VIKING AGE SWEDEN

■

Sweden is a long and rather narrow land stretching

more than 1,500 kilometers from Denmark in the

south to beyond the Arctic Circle in the north. To

the west it borders on Norway along a mountainous

ridge; to the east it faces the Baltic Sea. The climate

and vegetation of the agriculturally rich area of

Ska˚ne (Scania) in the south is similar to that of Den-

mark—to which this province formerly belonged.

The open plain of Ska˚ne lies immediately across a

narrow waterway from the Danish island of Sjælland

(Zealand). The large lakes Vänern, Vättern, Hjäl-

maren, and Mälaren dominate the middle of Swe-

den, which is also dotted with thousands of small

lakes. The land in the heartland of Sweden is still

gradually rising in delayed response to the melt of

the weighty ice cap of the Ice Age around 6000

B.C.

In areas near the present-day capital Stockholm, the

moraine landscape currently rises at a rate of about

one-half meter per century, which greatly affects

understanding shoreline locations in prehistory.

The large islands of Öland and Gotland lie to the

east in the Baltic Sea. Their nodal locations have

made both islands important trading locations, with

Gotland in particular playing an important indepen-

dent role into the medieval period. Norrland occu-

pies the northern two-thirds of Sweden and is cov-

ered by coniferous forests cut by large parallel rivers

running from the mountains down to the Gulf of

Bothnia. The archaeology of this region has been

studied less than the southern parts.

CHRONOLOGY

The ﬁnal phase of European prehistory is the Iron

Age, which follows the Stone and Bronze Ages. The

Iron Age in Sweden, which begins around 400

B.C.,

includes the pre-Roman Iron Age (400

B.C.–A.D.

50), the Roman Iron Age (

A.D. 50–400), the Mi-

gration period (

A.D. 400–550), and the Vendel peri-

od (

A.D. 550–800) and concludes with the Viking

Age (

A.D. 800–1050). The later Iron Age and thus

the pre-Viking phase begins c.

A.D. 400 with the

Migration period, when it is possible to recognize

evidence of a belief system and artistic traditions

that continue through the Viking Age. The entire

later Iron Age is in fact a transition from prehistory

to the historic medieval Christian period, with the

only contemporary writing in an indigenous runic

script in which memorial stones and other objects

are inscribed.

SUBSISTENCE AND BUILDING

CUSTOMS

Fishing and hunting of wild animals, including

moose, bear, and reindeer as well as small mammals

and birds, remained important throughout the Late

Iron Age—especially in Norrland—along with agri-

culture based on raising cattle, hogs, sheep, and

goats and growing barley, rye, oats, and ﬂax on ara-

ble land as the climate allowed. Ska˚ne, parts of cen-

tral Sweden, Öland, and Gotland were the most ag-

riculturally rich areas. In the far north, the nomadic

Saami reindeer herders moved into the region,

though it is unclear whether their arrival was during

the later Iron Age or the medieval period.

Characteristic house types were long rectangu-

lar houses like those known at Vallhagar near the

west coast of Gotland, dating to the sixth century,

ANCIENT EUROPE

537

Fig. 1. Viking silver coins and jewelry found at Birka, Sweden. THE ART ARCHIVE/HISTORISKA MUSÉET

STOCKHOLM/DAGLI ORTI. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

apparently similar to later Viking Age halls of indig-

enous longhouse type that are described in saga lit-

erature. A northern Swedish farming settlement

from the Early Iron Age that has been particularly

well studied is that of Gene on the Norrland coast.

Iron Age hillforts dot the landscape of central Swe-

den, the west coast, Gotland, and Öland, and there

are a few along the coast of Norrland. In coastal

areas, they seem to provide refuge from sea attacks

and protect waterways. Stone forts were built on the

Baltic Islands, including Torsburgen on Gotland

and Ismanstorp and Eketorp on Öland. Hoards of

Roman solidi (gold coins) deposited on the Baltic

Islands from the late ﬁfth century through the mid-

sixth century also reﬂect unrest in this period.

BURIALS

Burials include both inhumation and cremation

during the Late Iron Age, with single mounds grad-

ually replacing mound groups yet with great varia-

tion in grave types. At Gamla (Old) Uppsala near

present-day Uppsala, two of three prominent, large

burial mounds at the end of a chain of mounds exca-

vated in the nineteenth-century were dated to about

A.D. 500 and the mid-sixth century by ﬁnds of orna-

mented gold and bronze fragments damaged by the

cremation ﬁre. The three mounds are believed to

contain the remains of successive generations of Mi-

gration period kings. Several important groups of

boat burials have been investigated. At Vendel

church north of Uppsala, fourteen such burials con-

tained swords, shields, spears, helmets, domestic an-

imals, and horse harnesses all ornamented in the

eponymous Vendel style. At Valsgärde in the same

region, burials of both men and women, extending

in date from the Vendel period through the Viking

Age, were discovered; however, while the men were

interred in boats, women were cremated. By con-

trast, at Tuna in Badelunda in Västmanland, located

in the center of Sweden, women were buried in

boats and men were cremated. At Anundshög, also

in Västmanland, a 15-meter-high unexcavated

mound lies alongside large ship-shaped arrange-

ments of stones of a type known from the Bronze

Age through the Viking Age. Late Viking Age runic

memorial stones were also raised at the site. The

construction of large burial mounds represents a

concentration of power necessary to command large

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

538

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forces of labor. In the pre-Viking Age, eastern and

western Sweden formed separate regions that grad-

ually were consolidated, with the eastern Mälaren

region eventually gaining control.

CRAFT WORKING AND

ARTISTIC TRADITIONS

Ornamental metalwork is often found in burials but

also comes from hoards and bog ﬁnds. At the begin-

ning of the Migration period, votive deposits were

most often made in watery places—as at Skede-

mosse on Öland, where gold rings were discov-

ered—whereas deposits of the later centuries were

more often made on dry land. Metalwork preserves

the characteristically Nordic style of animal orna-

mentation studied by the Swedish scholar Bernhard

Salin, who described Scandinavian Styles I–III, with

Style I current in the ﬁfth century, Style II in the

sixth and seventh centuries, and Style III from the

eighth century into the Early Viking Age.

Migration period ornamentation is usually of

gold, made from melted down late Roman solidi,

which have been discovered in great numbers on

the Baltic Islands. Besides the coins, the gold is

found in the form of thin, disk-shaped pendants

stamped on one side (known as bracteates), sword

pommels, scabbard mounts, and large, extravagant-

ly decorated collars with applied decoration. These

spectacular objects, particularly from Norway and

western Sweden, display the emergence of Nordic

animal ornament called Salin’s Style I. Style II is

mainly an eastern phenomenon, found in particular

on weapons and horse harnesses at sites such as

Valsgärde and Vendel in Uppland, with the style

often referred to as the Vendel style. Style III is a

pan-Scandinavian style, manifested in wood from

the Oseberg ship burial in Norway but also in gilt

bronze harness mounts from Broa in Halla on Got-

land as well as brooches from sites across all of Scan-

dinavia. After the Migration period, the import of

Roman gold solidi disappeared and was gradually

replaced by silver from melted down Arabic dirhams

reaching Scandinavia from an eastern route through

Russia. The subsequent Viking styles of ornamenta-

tion have been named after the type-sites of Borre

in Norway, Jelling and then Mammen in Denmark,

and ﬁnally Ringerike and Urnes in Norway; howev-

er, examples of each of these formal styles are also

found in Sweden.

Animal ornamentation dominates artistic pro-

duction, but there are exceptional examples of ﬁgu-

rative art. Large (as high as 2.5 meters), mushroom-

shaped raised stones of the Early Viking Age on

Gotland (known as picture stones) display narrative

scenes of ships, battles, and heroic ﬁgures that seem

to represent stories known from later saga literature

and reﬂect Continental inﬂuence. Gold bracteate

pendant amulets of the Migration period also dis-

play ﬁgures based on Roman emperor portraits that

become transformed into images that may represent

Nordic deities, and tiny stamped rectangles of gold

called guldgubber (gold old men), such as from

Uppa˚kra in Ska˚ne, show male and female couples in

greatly simpliﬁed form. On the whole, however, an-

imal ornamentation decorates surfaces of metal

brooches, buckles, and horse harnesses throughout

the later Iron Age.

COMMERCE AND THE

DEVELOPMENT OF TOWNS

Trading and craft-working sites developed during

the later Iron Age, and by the Viking Age, some

could actually be called towns. Early market and

harbor sites include A

hus and Löddeköpinge in

Ska˚ne and Paviken and Fröjel on Gotland. (More

sites are found along the coast every year.) Shipping

technology was advanced, with the introduction of

the sail before the Viking Age. Transportation along

waterways of the coast and interior lakes and rivers

became more important with increased long-

distance trade and exploitation of resources, such as

iron and furs, from the mountainous north. Luxury

trade from continental Europe and from Asia is evi-

dent at some sites, particularly Helgö and Birka,

both in Uppland.

Helgö is located on an island in Lake Mälaren

west of Stockholm. Excavations of several groups of

structures dating from the ﬁfth through eleventh

centuries were ﬁrst directed by Wilhelm Holmqvist

and carried out for almost thirty years after the dis-

covery of the site in 1950. Objects of foreign origin

include late Roman solidi, a Coptic bronze ladle, a

western European Christian crosier, and most re-

markably, a sixth-century Buddha statuette from

northern India. Bronze-casting workshops in struc-

tures on terraces were revealed through the discov-

ery of crucible fragments and ninety thousand mold

fragments, particularly for Migration period jewelry

PRE-VIKING AND VIKING AGE SWEDEN

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539

types. Debate still centers around the scale and size

of the site. Some believe that it was a proto-urban

site for trade and manufacture, while others think

that it was an exceptional economic site attached to

the royal estate of Hundhamra, located on the op-

posite side of a narrow waterway. The ﬂorescence of

Helgö occurred before the Viking Age, although it

continued as an agricultural site into the eleventh

century.

Near Helgö, the site of Birka on the island of

Björkö appears to have taken over some of the func-

tions of Helgö in the Viking Age. Birka became a

more extensive town and trading site and is associat-

ed with the royal manor of Adelsö across a narrow

strait. Unlike the other sites discussed, Birka is at-

tested to in a contemporary document, the Vita

Anskarii, an account of the life of Ansgar, who be-

came bishop of Hamburg and Bremen and whose

biography was written by Rimbert, his successor,

around

A.D. 870. Ansgar was sent in A.D. 820 and

again

A.D. 851–852 to a place called Birka, which

was identiﬁed by the seventeenth-century antiquari-

an Johan Hadorf with the island of Björkö, as

known from medieval times. The important com-

plex of ﬁnds at Birka has led to its designation as a

World Heritage site by the United Nations Educa-

tional, Scientiﬁc, and Cultural Organization

(UNESCO). The occupation layers at Birka are ex-

tremely thick and dark—the site has thus been

dubbed the “Black Earth”—and the island is dotted

with cemeteries including more than two thousand

cremations under mounds and one thousand inhu-

mations. Beginning in the 1870s, the island became

the focus of numerous excavations, ﬁrst by Hjalmar

Stolpe, who dug in the settlement area and then in

the cemeteries, excavating eleven hundred inhuma-

tion and cremation graves by standards that were

modern for the time. His ﬁnds from the cemeteries

were not published until a hundred years later and

reveal an indigenous population of farmers as well

as a number of foreigners, probably merchants and

craft workers. Some graves include luxuries and arti-

cles of Eastern character. Glass from the Rhineland,

Slavic ceramics, Byzantine or Chinese silk, and Ara-

bic dirham coins reﬂect far-ﬂung contacts. Excava-

tions directed by Björn Ambrosiani in the settle-

ment area during 1990s have led to reassessment of

the dating of Birka and the beginning of the Viking

Age. Finds of a jetty and workshop dating from

about

A.D. 750 onward demonstrate that the Viking

Age did not begin suddenly in the year

A.D. 800.

The workshop debris included thousands of mold

fragments from bronze jewelry casting, antler scrap

from comb making, and glass residue from bead

making. These products apparently were made for

local markets. Other evidence, namely bones of feet

of furbearing animals from the north and iron debris

worked from northern bog ore, points to the use of

Birka as a center for redistribution of goods for

long-range trade. Birka was a bustling trading cen-

ter into the tenth century but gradually lost its im-

portance as a harbor as the land rose and Lake Mä-

laren changed from an inlet of the Baltic Sea to an

inland lake. The functions of Birka seem to have

been taken over largely by the town of Sigtuna, lo-

cated north of Birka on the Fyris River, during the

Late Viking Age.

EXPANSION EASTWARD AND THE

COMING OF CHRISTIANITY

Trade goods found in both Sweden and Russia re-

veal Swedish Viking contacts eastward across the

Baltic to Russia and beyond. While western Vikings

from Norway and Denmark were reviled for their

raids in England and elsewhere, the eastern Vikings

seem to have concentrated more on trade and colo-

nization. In reality, most Scandinavians of the Vi-

king Age were farmers who stayed at home. Swedish

Vikings known as the Rus were instrumental in the

formation of the Russian state and in the foundation

of Novgorod and Kiev. They voyaged as far east as

Constantinople (modern Istanbul), leaving Norse

runic inscriptions as evidence of their travels. Late

Viking Age rune stones with Christian crosses and

prayers also reveal that many Vikings were becom-

ing Christian during the eleventh century. Al-

though Ansgar’s mission to Birka in the ninth cen-

tury failed to convert the population, contacts with

the rest of Christian Europe probably made conver-

sion inevitable. Power shifts from royal manors to

ecclesiastical centers of power, such as Uppsala, not

far from Sigtuna, and Sweden, become solidly

linked with Christian medieval Europe as merchants

and clerics move within the European core.

See also Pre-Roman Iron Age Scandinavia (vol. 2, part

6); Viking Harbors and Trading Sites (vol. 2, part

7); Rus (vol. 2, part 7); Saami (vol. 2, part 7); Pre-

Viking and Viking Age Norway (vol. 2, part 7);

7: EARLY MIDDLE AGES/MIGRATION PERIOD

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