Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400-1000

by Lotte Hedeager

Iron Age Myth and an Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400-1000 considers the relationship between myth and materiality in Scandinavia from the beginning of the post-Roman era and the European Migrations up until the coming of Christianity. It pursues an interdisciplinary interpretation of text and material culture and examines how the documentation of an oral past relates to its material embodiment. While the material evidence is from the Iron Age, most Old Norse texts were written down in the thirteenth century or even later. With a time lag of 300 to 900 years from the archaeological evidence, the textual material has until recently been ruled out as a usable source for any study of the pagan past. However, Hedeager argues that this is true regarding any study of a society’s short-term history, but it should not be the crucial requirement for defining the sources relevant for studying long-term structures of the longue durée, or their potential contributions to a theoretical understanding of cultural changes and transformation. In Iron Age Scandinavia we are dealing with persistent and slow-changing structures of worldviews and ideologies over a wavelength of nearly a millennium. Furthermore, iconography can often date the arrival of new mythical themes anchoring written narratives in a much older archaeological context. Old Norse myths are explored with particular attention to one of the central mythical narratives of the Old Norse canon, the mythic cycle of Odin, king of the Norse pantheon. In addition, contemporaneous historical sources from late Antiquity and the early European Middle Age - the narratives of Jordanes, Gregory of Tours, and Paul the Deacon in particular - will be explored. No other study provides such a broad ranging and authoritative study of the relationship of myth to the archaeology of Scandinavia.

Genres: History, Archaeology, Nonfiction

320 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm all for an interdisciplinary approach to Germanic studies and was excited at the thought of reading a book that combined textual study with archaeology.

Unfortunately the book was written by an archaeologist who had little understanding of the literary sources and at times seemed to be manipulating the texts at her disposal in an attempt to construct her own Dark Age fantasy world.

I so wanted to enjoy this work but, I felt I was in very unsafe hands with this author.

[Jenny Kangasvuo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tajunnanräjäyttävä teos. Luin alusta loppuun henkeä pidätellen ja uusia tulkintoja ällistellen. Must-luettavaa Skandinavian rautakaudesta kiinnostuneille.

[Astor Teller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an academic book, but invaluable if you are open-minded and interested in the pre-Viking era in Scandinavia.

The author connects the writings of the Norse with archeological finds, and brings us to what could be the earthly version of Asgard by going to Gudme in Denmark inhabited by the lost tribe of the Wrosnan. The author looks at animal representation in archeological findings and connects them to the well-known berserker, the less known ulfhednar and also to warriors of the boars. She has an interesting and plausible theory of how Odin came to be, connecting him to Attila the Hun and shamanism and she also shows proofs of Hun graves in Sweden.

If you want to delve deeper into the migration period in Europe, this is a must read. And it’s also good to know that the author is a cross-disciplinary archeologist working as a Professor at the Department of Archaeology, University of Oslo who has been working with this era for decades, receiving grants to do so and also a partaker in the large and ambitious project “The Transformation of the Roman World” (initiated by the European Science Foundation).

If you are very stuck in your discipline and hate cross-disciplinarity, this is not the book for you. But Odin who crossed the many disciplines, would certainly have liked this book.

[Dan Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so well written. I am not a scholar and usually hate the sections on methodology but she writes so clear and concisely that I got it without having to struggle. This really helps me to visualize what might have been happening although I think the impact of the huns on how Odin is visualized may be overstated. So worth reading.

[Margaret · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book contains significant number of mistakes, simplifications, speculations and other shortcomings. Nicely looking cover attracts the attention, but the drive for popularity is too obvious.
It is obvious that the author cannot read historical sources in original.Book written from provincional perspective by self-made 'historian'. Hedeager just does not write well, and I guess her editors are third graders.
Good for children however..