Terri’s Search for Vikings in Denmark: An Update

If you know anything about the study of the Viking Age or have listened to our podcast this year, the name Søren Sindbæk will not be foreign to you. A Danish archaeologist and professor at Aarhus University, Søren has been researching and writing about Vikings for many years, particularly about the maritime trade networks and towns that proliferated during the Viking Age. Sure, the Vikings were often farmers, but the urban centers were really where the action was.

Søren is also the project coordinator of the Northern Emporium Project, which since 2017 has been excavating at Ribe, a Viking Age Danish town that was important in the North Sea trading world. The work being done there has proven just how rich the urban experience was in the Viking Age.

In one of our most wide-ranging conversations yet, we discussed why hair combs were the iPhone of the Viking Age, the maritime legacy of the Nordic people, whether C.J.’s salt hypothesis holds any weight, the ethics of archaeology, and how Vikings get interpreted and misinterpreted in the modern era, plus more.

While we meandered around as we tend to do at Vikingology, there was a common thread. In so many ways, the Vikings were simply ordinary people just like us who managed to do some extraordinary things. Though they lived 1,000 years ago, we can still relate to them in many ways.

We hope you enjoy the conversation. We sure did. Mange tak, Søren!

To learn all about the excavations at Ribe and what they reveal about the Vikings, check out the two-volume series edited by Søren (click the book images).

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This time we dive into the economics of the Viking world by chatting with Dr. Tom Horne, an archaeologist and historian in Glasgow, Scotland, who specializes in Viking trade networks. The nuts and bolts of commerce may not sound like the sexiest topic, but we certainly had a laugh and learned a thing or two. Contrary to what most people think about Vikings, it turns out where business tactics were concerned they did some pretty “un-viking” things.

Tom’s work focuses on market “kingdoms” and the silver trade which he writes about in his 2021 book A Viking Market Kingdom in Ireland and Britain: Trade Networks and the Importation of a Southern Scandinavian Silver Bullion Economy.

Also, check out Terri’s article that we mention, How Breaking Bad and a Renegade Economist Can Explain the Viking Age. She was thrilled to see some similar themes argued in her work and Tom’s.

We talk about Tom’s book, but also why Vikings operated in much the same way as all humans throughout history when it came to getting what they wanted, what exactly it was they wanted most, how sophisticated their business operations were, and how remarkably similar they seem to business practices today.

Want to know who the “El Chapo” of the Viking cartel was? Take a listen and find out.

We also touched on Tom’s work in media outreach, at the Govan Stones Museum, and in archaeology podcasting — his is aptly titled The Shindig — and why it’s important to have these avenues for sharing our knowledge about Vikings with everyone interested to learn. We at Vikingology couldn’t agree more and urge you to check out all of Tom’s projects and buy his book.

Thanks Tom! We had a great time and hope to continue the conversation.

You can follow Tom on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram. There you can see lots of cool pictures of Viking stuff he and his colleagues have unearthed.

Enjoy!

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After a 6-week hiatus, Terri and C.J. are finally back together for this podcast with a guest we have been looking forward to speaking with for a long time, Dr. Ben Raffield of Uppsala University. Ben is an archaeologist who also thinks like a historian and anthropologist in his approach to researching conflict, military organization, violence, and warrior culture during the Late Iron Age in Scandinavia, that period many of us know as the “Viking Age.”

Was the Viking world a place rife with violence? What forms might it take? Who was allowed to commit violent acts? Our conversation provides some context for the reputation the Viking Age has as being a particularly brutal time to be alive.

Connected to the theme of violence, there is one image that usually comes to mind for most of us when we think of Vikings — a sword- or axe-wielding warrior. The “badass” quality that many of us ascribe to the Viking Age is due to this stock character who was supposedly rough, tough, and more violent that anyone else in the room. But was this true? Who was a Viking warrior?

Ben helps us answer these questions by discussing what constituted a warrior, the nature of Viking “armies,” how they operated, what their aims were, and just how many resources it took to put large numbers of both men and ships into the field. He also tells us about the massive and complex mobile communities that made up army encampments abroad. These are not your simple hit-and-run Viking farmers.

It turns out some things we have long thought about these topics are now being overturned, while others are being confirmed. The study of Vikings — like the Vikings themselves — is an exciting, fluid, ever-changing story.

We hope you enjoy the chat as much as we did. Hang on to your horned helmets kids….thanks to the ongoing research by Ben and his many colleagues, the Viking ride is gonna get even more interesting in the years to come.

Tusen tack Ben!

If you’d rather watch the interview, you will find it here.

Do check out Ben’s latest book, which he co-authored with Neil Price. You may have read about it in a previous post we did. It’s called The Vikings. It is an excellent, concise introduction to the topic. We at Vikingology highly recommend!

Vikingology Podcast is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.