Rulership in 1st to 14th century Scandinavia : : royal graves and sites at Avaldsnes and beyond / / edited by Dagfinn Skre.

• Superior document: Erganzungsbande zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde ; Band 114
• TeilnehmendeR: Skre, Dagfinn,
• Place / Publishing House: Berlin ;, Boston : : De Gruyter,, [2020]; 2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Series: Erganzungsbande zum Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde ; Band 114.
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (545)

This book discusses the 3rd-11th century developments that led to the formation of the three Scandinavian kingdoms in the Viking Age. Wide-ranging studies of communication routes, regional identities, judicial territories, and royal sites and graves trace a complex trajectory of rulership in these pagan Germanic societies. In the final section, new light is shed on the pinnacle and demise of the Norwegian kingdom in the 13th-14th centuries.

This book seeks to revitalise the somewhat stagnant scholarly debate on Germanic rulership in the first millennium AD. A series of comprehensive chapters combines literary evidence on Scandinavia's polities, kings, and other rulers with archaeological, documentary, toponymical, and linguistic evidence. The picture that emerges is one of surprisingly stable rulership institutions, sites, and myths, while control of them was contested between individuals, dynasties, and polities. While in the early centuries, Scandinavia was integrated in Germanic Europe, profound societal and cultural changes in 6th-century Scandinavia and the Christianisation of Continental and English kingdoms set northern kingship on a different path. The pagan heroic warrior ethos, essential to kingship, was developed and refined; only to recur overseas embodied in 9th-10th-century Vikings. Three chapters on a hitherto unknown masonry royal manor at Avaldsnes in western Norway, excavated 2017, concludes this volume with discussions of the late-medieval peak of Norwegian kingship and it's eventual downfall in the late 14th century. This book's discussions and results are relevant to all scholars and students of 1st-millenium Germanic kingship, polities, and societies.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Preface -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- 1. The History of the Norvegr 2000 BC-1000 AD -- 2. Intraregional Diversity. Approaching Changes in Political Topographies in South-western Norway through Burials with Brooches, AD 200-1000 -- 3. Rulership and Ruler's Sites in 1st-10th-century Scandinavia -- 4. Between Tribe and Kingdom - People, Land, and Law in Scandza AD 500-1350 -- 5. The Ship Graves on Kormt - and Beyond -- 6. The High-Medieval Royal Manor Complex -- 7. The Royal Edifice at Avaldsnes: A Palatium for the King or a Residence for his Canons? -- 8. Avaldsnes' Position in Norway in the 14th Century