Selaöns runinskrifter – en runstensgeografi

This is a study of a small runestone material from the Selaön Island in Lake Mälaren. As an island material, the inscriptions are set apart from their surroundings. They link in with common traits among decorated 11th runestones, but also with the characteristic breadth of middle-sized and well-defined materials. This local diversity may nevertheless be seen as a characteristic in itself of the larger Lake Mälaren area: this region is partly built from local nodes united by the lake. Based on the study three research fields are identified: 1) small-scale runestone geography and chronology, 2) the non-banal and complex relationship between design, text and ornament, 3) a dimension of intent characteristic of Selaön, that is, a local sincerity in the commemorative inscriptions. Micro-geography, complex design and mindset are thus suggested as new fields for a cognitively more rewarding contextual research into the runestone vogue in the Lake Mälaren area.Title in WoS: The runic inscriptions of Selaon Island - a runestone geography</p

Ackulturation och kulturkonflikt : fyra essäer om järnåldersmentalitet

This study consists of four chapters. The first is a source critical analysis of the fragmented poem Rigsþula arguing that the poem, as we know it today, is an excerpt meant to support the editor behind the manuscript Codex Wormianus in his work listing words for male and female peasants that could be used as poetic metaphors in the 14th century on Iceland. The second study seek to demonstrated the parallels between on the one hand the Rigsþula fragment and the poem Fór Skínis and on the other the first four songs of the Hêliand poem, i.e. Song II-V. These essays therefore deal with the upper classes and the way they adjusted to Christianity and Paganism. The two last essays deal with nonsensical runes. The first centres on a group of Viking Age syllabic texts from Uppland. It is argued that they served as a form of galdr or rigmarole. The second deals with the early Iron-Age runes on weapons. They are considered to relate to what Taci-tus termed Barditus, the singing used by the Germans to judge the outcome of a battle. The Viking Age texts are considered to belong to a subculture, and against the background of the older texts they are seen as an example of a lower strata in society trying (in vain) to accommodate both old-fashioned invocations and modern, i.e. strophe-like compositions

Järnåldersarkitekter, universitetsforskare, uppdragsarkeologer och kulturmiljövården

This paper aims mainly to analyse the relationship between university scholars andheritage conservation by means of two examples: Iron Age house types, which ishistory, and the analysis of planned Iron Age architecture, which has not yet benefitedsufficiently from contract archaeology. I recognise the duty of universityscholars to develop research topics that may be useful to contract archaeology aswell as to heritage conservation and university archaeology. As a topic of research,I suggest a cognitively based understanding of Iron Age house planning and construction.I suggest that an important understanding of cognitive history can berelated to a shift in Iron Age building principles: in the Early Iron Age form followsfunction, but in the Late Iron Age construction principles give form

Vad är det Háv hänger på i Hávamál?

Based on an introductory account of the shortcomings of a purely archaeological endeavour to understand the cultural history of the 1(st) millennium ce, this case study begins with an interpretation of the Old Norse word meior. This is followed up by a short comparative analysis of the function of the oe words beam and rod in the Dream of the Rood. Thus, having been inspired by Old Norse and Old English texts, the next step is an analysis of two archaeological excavations in which several constructions seem to qualify as a meior in the everyday sense of the word. Essentially, the word means 'drying rack' and as a construction it consists of two vertical poles with crutches, which support a horizontal rod that joins them together. On this rod more or less anything may hang - even Hav during his rite of passage merging with Ooinn

Askim-tunets kronologi : En tillämpad bayesiansk analys

In order to show its potential, this article introduces a non-intuitive chronological Bayesian analysis of the pre Roman Iron Age settlement site at Askim Church in Østfold, Norway. The archaeological background is provided by an article by Grethe Bjørkan Bukkemoen (2015). The calibration program used to perform the Bayesian analyses is BCal (Buck m.fl. 1999). The analysis suggests that the settlement commences in the early part of the 3rd c. BCE and comes to an end in the early part of the 1st BCE. Presently, its continuation during the Roman Iron Age is unknown. The main part of the analysis concerns the dating of the houses 1:1 and 1:2 which overlap each other – House 1:1 being the older of the two. The time gap between the two buildings seems too large to be filled by the adjacent House 2, which is younger than House 1:1 and older than House 1:2. In the discussion the chronological analysis is used to corroborate and develop Bukkemoen’s discussion on the pre Roman Iron Age farm house as a social agent. It is suggested that the pre Roman Iron Age house, which initially is determined by the subsistence landscape, is replaced by the late pre Roman Iron Age house, which in its turn defines the subsistence landscape