Last modified: 31 Jul 2023 11:19
In their brief 300-year heyday, the peoples of Viking-Age Scandinavia transformed the northern world, and themselves. This course explores the Vikings at home, abroad, and in their new homes overseas in the developing colonies of the diaspora that stretched from the coasts of North America to the Asian steppe. In lectures and seminars students will consider themes such as settlement and social structure, urbanism and commerce, pagan and Christian religion, and the political process that created the modern nation states of Norway, Sweden and Denmark
| Study Type | Postgraduate | Level | 5 |
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| Term | First Term | Credit Points | 30 credits (15 ECTS credits) |
| Campus | Aberdeen | Sustained Study | No |
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Course Aims: This course aims to critically explore the archaeological evidence for the origins, world-view, development and expansion of Scandinavian culture during the Viking Age, c. AD 750-1100. Students will gain an understanding of a major and catalytic period of European history that laid the foundations for many institutions of the modern Western world. As an introduction to the archaeology of the Viking Age, this course will provide students with:
- an insight into the nature of Viking Age Scandinavian society and culture, including settlement and subsistence patterns, material culture, social structures, issues of identity and ethnicity, and world
-views and mentalities from the traditional belief systems of the North to the introduction of Christianity
- an understanding of the political developments in the Viking Age and the transformation from tribal- to state-based societies in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, including the development of urban centres, coinage, and Christian monarchies
- detailed knowledge of the geographical scope of the Viking world, including an understanding of the Viking diaspora and its long-term effects, including the complex patterns of culture contacts and environmental impacts that characterised Scandinavian raiding, warfare, trading, colonisation and settlement activities
- an understanding of how archaeologists combine a range of sources (material, textual and environmental) to achieve a synthetic understanding of a discrete period of history
Content: This course provides students with an overview of the Viking Age peoples of Scandinavia, and their dramatic expansion in the 8th-11th centuries AD. We will review the archaeological evidence for population and settlement patterns, ethnicity and social structure, the development of urban centres and commerce, and Viking Age religion, and will chart the political process that led to the rise of the modern nation states of Norway, Sweden and Denmark. This Scandinavian background will then be set in the wider context of the Viking diaspora, examining Norse contact, conflict, trade and colonisation from Canada in the West to the Asian steppe in the East.
Information on contact teaching time is available from the course guide.
| Assessment Type | Summative | Weighting | 40 | |
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| Assessment Type | Summative | Weighting | 40 | |
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| Assessment Weeks | Feedback Weeks | |||
| Feedback | Word Count | 3000 | ||
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| Assessment Type | Summative | Weighting | 20 | |
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| Assessment Weeks | Feedback Weeks | |||
| Feedback |
Living History Museum Proposal |
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There are no assessments for this course.
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| Factual | Remember | ILO’s for this course are available in the course guide. |
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