Fouracre P. The New Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. 1: c. 500-c. 700

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Scandinavia 513

Figure 6.Gold bracteate from Skydstrup, Denmark

(after Hauck (1985–89), no. 166)

all signiﬁcant in the ‘shamanistic’ system of belief: the snake that collects

knowledge from the underworld, the bird that ﬂies to all corners of the world

to get information, and the large animal, protecting the journey to the other

world.

As a recurrent theme in the Old Norse texts we ﬁnd this dualist relationship

between man and animal. It is expressed in the words ‘hugr’, ‘fylgja’ and ‘hamr’.

‘Hugr’ means ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’ that can leave the body in the guise of animal

or human;

‘fylgja’ means a sort of doppelg

anger or alter-ego

or eventually

‘skin’, ‘cloak’ or ‘animal clothing’.

It represents the protective spirits which

attach themselves to individuals, often at birth, and remain with them right

through to death, when they transfer their powers to another member of the

family. ‘Fylgja’ often appears as an animal (or a woman) and it is usually visible

Ellis Davidson (1978).

Simek (1996), p. 96.

Glosecki (1989), p. 186.

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514 lotte hedeager

only at times of crisis, either in waking or in dreams. It is an externalised ‘soul’

but also an embodiment of personal luck and destiny and the concept has

much in common with the less attested ‘hamr’.

Thus the ﬁgurative art, the animal ornamentation and the Old Norse texts

show the same transcendental perception of metamorphosis between man and

animal. In the sixth and seventh centuries especially, wolf, wild boar, eagle

and snake are organising elements in the ornamentation’s metamorphic rep-

resentation of humans and animals. The animals could do what man was

not capable of doing, namely cross the threshold to the Other World. Only

in the guise of an animal could man transcend the boundaries between life

and death. Acknowledging that contact with the Other World passed through

the animals and that the ‘fylgja’ was the embodiment of personal destiny also

helps us understand how animal ornamentation could sustain an organis-

ing role in Scandinavian – and Germanic – society up until the introduc-

tion/consolidation of Christianity.

Last but not least, it makes sense of why

wild and dangerous animals were so important as artistic expression to the

pre-Christian warrior elite of Scandinavia, on the continent and among the

Anglo-Saxons.

gift-giving and political authority

Although most Germanic peoples had a king or kings, powerful central rulers

were lacking. The tribes consisted of a large number of relatively indepen-

dent and autonomous elements based on kinship and residence in the same

geographical area. A tribe was composed of several sub-tribes, who in turn

included separate entities eventually with their own king. The tribe not only

was an entity in a political sense, but also constituted a cult community and

the kings were descended from the gods. Although the kings were members

of long-distance networks of marriage and gift exchange, they did not uphold

a political monopoly within the tribe. The warrior elite played an important

role because, like the king, they possessed their own armed retinue. Relation-

ships between king and noble, between king or noble and the warrior-followers

(‘hird’), etc. were, like the relationship between kings, reciprocal, although by

nature more or less asymmetrical.

The written sources, whether Old Norse or from early medieval Europe, give

the impression of gift-giving as the decisive instrument in creating and uphold-

ing these political alliances, between lord and warrior-follower and within the

warrior elite itself. Whether characterised as inalienable or alienable objects,

Orchard (2002); Raudvere (2001), pp. 102ff., and (2003), p. 71.

Hedeager (2003) and (2004).

Bazelmans (1999), pp. 3ff.

Cf. Parry and Bloch (1993), p. 8.

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Scandinavia 515

moveable wealth of speciﬁc symbolic value circulated as rewards from the ﬁfth

century onwards.

No doubt gift-giving was an important political instru-

ment all through the second half of the ﬁrst millennium, but the Migration

period not only created special opportunities for access to gold but at the

same time claimed extraordinary investments in these values too. Gold –

and silver – could play an important role in political strategies because –

ﬁrst of all – they were to a great extent accessible from outside the local

system.

The idea of bestowing honoriﬁc gifts was embedded in the cosmological

world and the system of cultural values and as such highly ritualised, and

gold and silver, often lavishly ornamented, played an important role for ritual

and ceremonial use in the social reproduction of late Iron Age societies. Even

if gift-giving was highly ritualised throughout the late Iron Age, the intense

competitive display in the ﬁfth and sixth centuries (and in the Viking Age)

must have been outstanding.

Strictly speaking, the ‘golden age’ of Scandinavia is the Migration period.

Immense numbers of gold hoards were deposited during a few generations in

the ﬁfth and sixth centuries. These gold depositions fascinate and challenge the

academic world of archaeologists and historians of religion because they signal

‘wealth’ and ‘power’, keywords in the modern world. From the point of view

of proﬁt and economic strength it is easy to explain our ‘rational’ approach

towards the gold depositions, although no consensus exists as to the meaning

of these hoards. They have, broadly speaking, been explained as treasures, that

is ‘economic’ depositions meant to go back into circulation – or as tactical

gifts, that is ritual sacriﬁces, meant for the supernatural world and a way of

creating alliances with the gods. Recently the latter explanation has been the

dominant approach.

The Migration-period hoards consist of a wide variety of precious objects:

bracteates, ﬁnger-, neck- and arm rings, so-called payment rings, and relief

brooches, often highly decorated with animal ornamentation. If metal objects

such as these were circulated as gifts, there may be no evidence at all in the

archaeological record. If the strategy of gift-giving included an element of

competitive display, however, gift-giving would be drawn more centrally into

the process of the political strategy and we should expect to ﬁnd some evidence

of the ritualised consumption of these artefacts in hoards and in graves.

This

Bazelmans (1992), (1999) and (2000).

For discussion see in particular Geisslinger (1967); Herschend (1978–79); Fonnesbech-Sandberg

(1985); Hines (1989); Hedeager (1991), (1992a) and (1999b); Fabech (1994a), (1994b) and (1997);

Wiker (1999).

Barrett, Bradley and Green (1999), p. 240.

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516 lotte hedeager

is obvious in the case of the Migration period, where the gold hoards reﬂect a

short ‘horizon of investment’.

Although many of the gold hoards are found in areas which, from a modern

and rational economic point of view, are marginal, in an overall perspective

they are connected to fertile agricultural areas. This is particularly clear in

Sweden where a majority of the gold ﬁnds come from the most fertile Swedish

provinces of Scania and V

asterg

otland (approx. 22 kg, i.e. more than half of

the gold from mainland Sweden in this period).

The hoards have been found

in central settlement areas, in or very close to houses, and they have been

found in marginal areas. The hoards are linked to a particular kind of marginal

area, namely bogs, streams, coasts, etc. as a kind of border zone to areas in

agricultural use. They must reﬂect some kind of past ritual practice since they

obviously were deposited in deliberately chosen localities in the landscape.

The fact that physical boundaries such as rivers, streams, bogs, etc. were

in use for depositions of wealth during the Migration period indicates that

these areas played an important role in people’s perception of the landscape.

This period was characterised by extensive changes in settlement structure

and land use. When old boundaries were changed and new land was taken

into agricultural use, the cultural landscape – as well as the cognitive – must

have been dramatically reorganised. The landscape had to be domesticated

and given a new place in the discursive knowledge and the cosmology for

people living – or going to live – there. The hoards were deliberately placed on

boundaries between cultivated/domesticated land and wilderness,

often in

the transitional zone between land and sea, earth and water, where a majority

of sacral place-names, i.e. names with Odin, Tyr, Freyr and God, are also

located.

The transitional zones between land and water appear to uphold

a special position in the perception of the cultural landscape as places for

negotiation with the Other World. Once deposited, the hoards for generations

shaped the landscape by creating a sacred topography in people’s mind. They

represented the link between past and present, between this world and the

Other World, and as such they gave legitimacy to the land by becoming part

of the discursive knowledge of the people who lived in these areas. Although

hidden, these hoards remained ‘visible’ for generations, continuing to play an

active role in people’s negotiation with the past.

The gold hoards were deposited in a period with great social stress and radical

changes in the organisation of the settled land during the Migration period

Comparable to the Viking period hoards (Hedeager (1999b)).

Hedeager (1999b), p. 246. The total amount of gold in Denmark is about 50 kg; in Norway it is

much less (estimated one third or less) (Hedeager (1999b)).

See also Johansen (1996), p. 97.

Jakobsson (1997), p. 91; Andersen (1998), p. 26.

Hedeager (1999a).

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Scandinavia 517

all over the fertile part of Scandinavia. They may have played a special role

as an important mediator in resource-consuming political alliances and long-

distance networks as well as perhaps serving as an instrument in organising –

or reorganising – the cultural landscape according to the cosmological world

in a slightly more hierarchical political structure.

hierarchical settlement pattern

The settlement structure in late Iron Age Scandinavia clearly developed hier-

archically with respect to size and function. The concept of ‘central places’ has

been developed in Scandinavian archaeology since the 1970stoclassify speciﬁc

rich settlement sites from these centuries, often with great quantities of metal

ﬁnds indicating extended casting activity.

For the Nordic realm before 800,

where there is no textual evidence of any speciﬁc locations of religious or polit-

ical power, the archaeological sources and the toponymic evidence provide the

only basis for analysing the hierarchical structure in this settlement structure.

However, OldNorse literature does throw some light on certain essential

components of ‘powerful’ places in Scandinavia. For example, the hall assumes

great importance in the ideological universe represented in these texts.

Given

the prominent role of the hall in Old Norse literature, it is remarkable that

the word ‘hall’ hardly ever turns up in Scandinavian place-names. The reason

may be that the Scandinavian language of the time used another word, such

as sal,asinUppsala, Onsala, Odensala or just Sal(a): the god whose name is

compounded with sal is always Odin, the king of the gods.

The word sal is

sometimes linked with zulr (thyle), the term for a particular type of leader or

priest. The ‘thyle’ is regarded as a poet, a skald or storyteller: in other words the

person who preservesthe treasurehoard of mystical and magical knowledge that

was necessary to understand the Edda poetry and fundamental to upholding

political authority. He was the cult leader who understood the cult activities

and uttered the proper magical words. His primary function was to speak,

whether this was to recite the verses and sacred stories, to know and to declare

the laws, or to function as the spokesman of a king or earl during a feast, a

cult festival or a legal moot.

In other words he was one of the specialists who

controlled the society’s esoteric knowledge on the king’s behalf.

Apparently ‘sal’ means the king’s and earls’ assembly hall, cult hall or moot

hall: the place in which the functions of ‘theatre, court, and church’ were

united.

The ‘sal’ or the hall was the centre of the human microcosmos, the

Larsson and H

ardh (1998); Hedeager (2001); H

ardh and Larsson (2002); Jørgensen (2003).

Enright (1996); Herschend (1997a), (1997b), (1998) and (1999), p. 414.

Brink (1996).

Brink (1996), pp. 256–7.

See the comprehensive account in Herschend (1998).

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518 lotte hedeager

Figure 7.‘Guldgubbe’ from Lundeborg, Funen, Denmark (drawing: Eva Koch)

symbol of stability and good leadership. The hall was also the location where

communal drinking took place, which had the purpose of creating bonds of

loyalty and ﬁctive kinship; liquor was the medium through which one achieved

ecstasy, and thus communion with the supernatural.

The high seat, that is,

the seat with the high-seat posts, served as the channel of communication

with the supernatural world. Since the hall with the high seat served as the

geographical and ideological centre of leadership, it is understandable why the

earls and kings, as the literature tells us, could suppress and ruin each other by

simply destroying their opponent’s hall.

There is a group of ﬁnds which may reﬂect a ritual practice associated with

lordly power, namely the gold foil plaques, ‘guldgubber’: small (max. 1 cm)

pieces of thin gold foil, often depicting a man and a woman although both

men and women also occur as single motifs, as also animals. The pair motif

always shows a loving pair standing in proﬁle, facing one another, ﬁnely dressed

and often provided with jewellery and other requisites such as a staff, beakers,

etc. (see Fig. 7).

Such gold foil plaques occur all over Scandinavia, in several cases in direct

association with places with religious names such as the Danish localities

Gudme on Funen and Gudhjem, Bornholm (home of the gods), and can

be dated from the beginning of the sixth century into the tenth century.

The

ﬁnd circumstances indicate that the foils with the pair motif are associated

Enright (1996), p. 7.

Herschend (1995), p. 221 and (1997b).

Watt (1992).

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Scandinavia 519

with a particularly special building in the Scandinavian Iron Age and Viking

period: the longhouse comprising just one large chamber, the hall. Gold foil

ﬁgures have been found at the foot of the central, roof-bearing posts with

striking frequency: in other words by the posts of the high seats, as at Sl

oinge

in south-western Sweden, Helg

o and possibly Svintuna in the mid-Swedish

alar region, as well as the Norwegian Borre, Mære and Borg in Lofoten.

In all, 2600 gold foil ﬁgures are so far known from thirty-one localities all over

Scandinavia. About 2300 of these are found at Sorte Muld near Gudhjem on

Bornholm, and nearly all depict a single ﬁgure,

while 224 plaques depicting

two ﬁgures are known.

According to Skirnismal in the Edda Poetry, the context of the marriage

between Freyr and Gerr is speciﬁed as the god having taken his place on the

high seat. This mythical scene can be understood as an initiation ritual, the role

of which was to mark the status and power of the new lord.

The foil ﬁgures

with the pair motif are regarded as ritually connected with the high-seat posts

in a similar manner as the hieros gamos in ‘Skirnismal’ is interpreted as being

mythologically linked to the high seat. The deposition of gold foil ﬁgures by

the high-seat post was very probably part of the initiation of a new king or

earl: the symbolic appropriation of the high seat.

Historical and archaeological sources are mutually corroborative of the inter-

pretation of the high seat as the absolute centre of the exercise of special

leadership functions, and of the high-seat posts themselves as sacred.

This

phenomenon is known from a considerable number of traditional cultures,

where posts or stakes in particular are attributed with divine functions.

This

is linked to an understanding of the cosmic order, in which the signiﬁcance and

content of ‘distance’ are crucial.

The cosmic order was physically grounded

in the high-seat posts.

The multifunctional role of the hall thus extended beyond the site itself.

The hall was at the centre of a group of principal farmsteads; it was the

heart of the central places from the later part of the Iron Age.

That such

places existed all over Scandinavia is now increasingly recognised, for example

Gudme/Lundeborg, Sorte Muld, Lejre, Tissø, Tofteg

ard, Boeslunde, Jørlunde,

Kalmarg

ard, Nørre Snede, Stentinget, Drengsted and Ribe in Denmark;

Tr ondheim, Kaupang, Hamar and Borg in Norway; Sl

oinge, Helg

o, Birka,

Nord

en (1938); Lid

en (1969); Munch, Roland and Johansen (1988); Myhre (1992); Herschend (1995);

Lundqvist et al. (1996); Munch, Johansen and Roesdahl (2003).

Watt (1992).

Andr

easson (1995).

Steinsland (1994), p. 627.

Steinsland (1991) and (1994), p. 630.

See, inter alia,Herschend (1994), (1997a), (1997b), (1998) and (1999).

Eliade (1989).

Helms (1988) and (1993).

A possible ranking of these places can be found in N

asman (1999), p. 1; Jørgensen (2003).

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520 lotte hedeager

Upp

akra, V

a, Gamla Uppsala, H

ogum, Vendel and Valsg

arde in Sweden.

Characteristically, many of these sites are located a few kilometres inland, rely-

ing on one or more landing places or ports situated on the coast.

Although

this is still a matter of debate, such central places may have served as a basis

for some form of political or religious control exercised over a larger area; the

radius of their inﬂuence went well beyond the site itself. Furthermore, on sev-

eral of these places a special building seems to have served cultic functions as

a pagan ‘vi’, e.g. Tissø on Sealand, which actually means ‘Tir’s/Tyr’s Lake’.

On the basis of toponymic evidence from Sweden and Norway, it has been

argued that rather than being a precisely deﬁned site, such central places should

be understood as a somewhat smaller or larger area encompassing a number

of different but equally important functions and activities.

Both toponymic

evidence and archaeological ﬁnds suggest that this was a recurrent pattern.

This means that it is inadequate to refer to these sites as ‘trading sites’, ‘cult

sites’, ‘meeting or thing places’, emphasising only one of their many functions.

Instead, these locations should be perceived as multifunctional and composite

sites. In addition to their ‘ofﬁcial’ function as trading and market sites, and as

centres where laws were made and cults were established, the central places were

probably also associated with special functions such as the skilled crafting of

jewellery, weapons and clothing,

and furthermore with special cultic activities

performed by religious specialists. These places were also the residences of

particularly privileged warriors or housecarls. Some of the central places go

back to the fourth century (e.g. Gudme/Lundeborg), but the majority did not

come into being until after 400.Many of these sites remained centres of power

and of economic activity far into the Middle Ages.

scandinavia ad 500–700: emerging kingdoms

and royal centres

In the aftermath of the West Roman Empire, the Merovingians and sub-

sequently the Carolingians gained supremacy over neighbouring kingdoms

by military conquest and networks of long-distance alliances and gift-giving.

Their form of political and economic organisation, with centrally positioned

Munch et al.(1988) and (2003); Duczko (1993); Jørgensen (1995) and (2003); Brink (1996); Callmer

(1997); Larsson and H

ardh (1998); Hedeager (2001); H

ardh and Larsson (2002); Skre (2004).

Fabech (1999).

Tir/Tyr was the war god in the Asir pantheon (Jørgensen (2003)).

Brink (1996). In several articles Fabech has developed this model in archaeological case studies; most

recently Fabech (1998). However, the model of ritual depositions in the cultural landscape, which

plays an important part in this general model, has been the subject of debate: see Hedeager (1999b).

Jakobsson (2003).

Scandinavia 521

production sites, markets and emporia, is reﬂected among the petty kingdoms

of Scandinavia. Kings and nobles developed a great need for luxury goods to

fulﬁl the social and ritual obligations necessary to remain in power. The metal

items, primarily weapons, jewellery and drinking equipment, are well known

in the archaeological record, while carved wood items, luxurious dress and

fur, food, alcoholic drinks and the like are less well preserved and therefore

less recognised. The need for exotic raw material was the background for the

increasingly intensive exploitation of resources in northern Scandinavia

and

for closer contact with the S

ami population of the North. Both are manifested

through the impact on the Norse religion in the late Iron Age.

The emerging

Scandinavian warrior society with its dynamic and changing political conﬁgu-

rations based on alliances and military power demanded extensive agricultural

resources for its social institutions as well. The reorganisation of arable land,

intensiﬁcation in the production process, expansive resource utilisation, a hier-

archical settlement structure, etc. responded to this need. Manors with high

density of buildings and evidence of extensive resource consumption, includ-

ing highly skilled metalworking and imported luxury goods, were developing

during these centuries.

Against this background, however, the burial evidence is remarkably low

key. Generally speaking, during the late Iron Age, cremation graves domi-

nated and usually the grave-goods are therefore so heavily damaged that only

small fragments have been preserved. However, they conﬁrm the impression

of the rich material culture that existed among the Scandinavian elite. Some

impressive grave monuments were constructed during this period, mainly on

the Scandinavia peninsula. They are found in the inner part of south-eastern

Norway, generally in the best agricultural districts, close to rivers and impor-

tant land routes, and at strategic places along the coast. A remarkable site is

Borre in Vestfold, with an impressive burial ground with a number of large

mounds; the earliest were built in about ad 600 and the others in the following

centuries up to about 900. Borre is mentioned in the skaldic poem Ynglingatal,

as the burial place for the royal dynasty of the Ynglingas who, the poem claims,

reigned in Vestfold during the seventh to ninth centuries.

During the same

period comparable mounds were erected in G

otaland, Svealand and Medelpad

in Sweden. They too were situated in the most fertile areas of the cultivated

landscape. Close to the old church of Old [Gamla] Uppsala, three of the largest

mounds in Scandinavia are to be found. They were all cremation graves from

around 500 and the early sixth century and the quality of the fragmented

Myhre (2003); p. 91.

Price (2002); Solli (2002).

Myhre (1992) and (2003). Ynglingatal is ﬁrst mentioned by Snorri Sturluson in 1230, but is probably

from the ninth century (Myhre (1992), p. 301).

522 lotte hedeager

grave-goods conﬁrms the status of the deceased. Old Uppsala, which is known

as the religious and political centre of the Svea kings in the Viking Age, had

probably been so since the Migration period. Close to Old Uppsala two spe-

cial burial grounds, at Vendel and Valsg

arde, contain burial mounds with

unburned boat graves and grave-goods comparable with those of Sutton Hoo,

East Anglia.

The cemeteries are dated from around 500 to 800.

In Denmark, the rich archaeological material comes from Migration-period

hoards and from the sixth-, seventh- and eighth-century rich settlements, while

grave ﬁnds from this period are sparse. No doubt the cremation burial practice

was absolute during these centuries, except in Bornholm, where well-equipped

inhumation graves still survive.

The only impressive burial mound from

Denmark is located in Old Lejre on Sealand, dated to the sixth century. Old

Lejre is mentioned inter alia in the Beowulf poem and in Gesta Danorum by

Saxo Grammaticus from around 1200 as the royal centre of the Skjoldungs, the

dynasty of the Danish kings during the Migration period. A newly excavated

manorial site of extensive size supports Lejre’s special position as royal centre in

early Danish history. At present traces of about ﬁfty houses have been excavated,

dated between the seventh and the tenth centuries. During this period four

large halls (some 50 × 11.5 m) and four smaller ones (some 40 × 6 m) existed.

Approximately 4000 small ﬁnds have been recovered. Tools and implements

can be added to a substantial quantity of high-quality objects such as imported

jewellery, coins, weights, bars of silver and bronze mountings and glass of

Carolingian and Anglo-Saxon origin.

Lejre illustrates the kingly organisation in the late Iron Age. The presumed

royal seat was established and consolidated during the formative period of the

sixth, seventh and eighth centuries, as were the royal centres at Borre and Old

Uppsala. Whether the written evidence contains a core of historical reality or

not, the archaeological evidence points to the establishment of a new political

structure all over Scandinavia around ad 500.Atthe same time, origin myths,

royal genealogies, mythical tales and legends, together with the symbolic lan-

guage of animal style, ought to be perceived as the ideological articulation of

this new warrior elite, and the prerequisite for the emergence of Germanic

royalty. In their own way, they played an organisational role in the establish-

ment of these new kingdoms and served to demonstrate common cultural

codes.

Whilst the myths were the warrior-elites’ political ideology and a type of

legitimisation performed on special occasions, the iconography of animal style

Lamm and Nordstr

om (1983).

Arrhenius (1983), p. 44.

Jørgensen (1990); Jørgensen and Nørg

ard Jørgensen (1997).

Christensen (1991); Jørgensen (2003).