The Global North: Spaces, Connections, and Networks before 1600 9781641894906

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THE MEDIEVAL GLOBE The Medieval Globe provides an interdisciplinary forum for scholars of all world areas by focusing on convergence, movement, and interdependence. Contributions to a global understanding of the medieval period (broadly defined) need not encompass the globe in any territorial sense. Rather, TMG advances a new theory and praxis of medieval studies by bringing into view phenomena that have been rendered practically or conceptually invisible by anachronistic boundaries, categories, and expectations. TMG also broadens discussion of the ways that medieval processes inform the global present and shape visions of the future.

Submissions are invited for future issues: please contact the Editorial Board ([email protected]). All articles will be evaluated by the editors and by a double-blind peer review process. For more information about TMG, with further details about submissions and peer review policy, please visit the journal’s website: arc-humanities.org/our-series/arc/tmg. The mark of The Medieval Globe was designed by Matthew Peterson and draws on elements derived from six different medieval world maps.

Executive Editor

Carol Symes, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Editorial Board

James Barrett, University of Cambridge Kathleen Davis, University of Rhode Island Felipe Fernández-Armesto, University of Notre Dame Monica H. Green, Independent Scholar Robert Hymes, Columbia University Elizabeth Lambourn, De Montfort University Yuen-Gen Liang, National Taiwan University Victor Lieberman, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor Carla Nappi, University of British Columbia Elizabeth Oyler, University of Pittsburgh Christian Raffensperger, Wittenberg University Rein Raud, University of Helsinki & Tallinn University D. Fairchild Ruggles, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Julia Verkholantsev, University of Pennsylvania Alicia Walker, Bryn Mawr College

Editorial Assistant Chloe Parrella

Volume 7

THE GLOBAL NORTH Spaces, Connections, and Networks before 1600

Edited by CAROL SYMES

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. © 2021, Arc Humanities Press, Leeds

The authors assert their moral right to be identified as the authors of their part of this work.

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ISBN (HB): 9781641894890 ISBN (PDF): 9781641894906 www.arc-humanities.org

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CONTENTS

Introduction: Exploring the Global North, from the Iron Age to the Age of Sail CAROL SYMES. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Contesting Marginality: The Boreal Forest of Middle Scandinavia and the Worlds Outside KARL-JOHAN LINDHOLM, ERIK ERSMARK, ANDREAS HENNIUS, SAKARIAS LINDGREN, KJETIL LOFTSGARDEN, and EVA SVENSSON . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Archaeological Evidence for Staraya Lagoda as an Early Scandinavian Emporium of the Global North NATALJA V. GRIGORJEVA. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Gunhild’s Cross and the North Atlantic Trade Sphere ROBYN BARROW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 The Far North in the Eyes of Adam of Bremen and the Anonymous Author of the Historia Norwegie TATJANA N. JACKSON. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77

The Multi-Layered Spatiality of the Global North: Spatial References and Spatial Constructions in Medieval East Norse Literature ALEXANDRA PETRULEVICH. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 Military Migration in the Baltic Sea Region, ca. 1400–1620 MARTIN NEUDING SKOOG. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Old and New Land in the North and West: The North Atlantic on the Medieval Globe around 1500 FELICITAS SCHMIEDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures Figure 2.1. Figure 2.2. Figure 2.3. Figure 3.1. Figure 3.2.

A kernel density estimated distribution (KDE) of radiocarbon dates (n=782) from iron production sites (excluding charcoal pits) in southern Norway. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 The furnace during excavation at the bloomery iron production site of Lillbergsgården, Northern Värmland, fourteenth century. . . . . 26 The “heraldic” mount from Skramle. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Fragment of a ceramic vessel of the Badorf type found at Staraya Ladoga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Fragments of clay moulds and crucibles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

Figure 3.3.

Fragments of clay crucibles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Figure 3.5.

Jewellery and dress accessories of Slavic origin, copper alloy . . . . . . . 45

Figure 3.4. Figure 3.6. Figure 3.7. Figure 3.8.

Figure 4.1. Figure 4.2.

Gold and copper alloy objects probably used as raw materials. . . . . . 44 Jewellery and dress accessories of Slavic origin, tin-lead alloy, and a mould for casting limestone . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46 The wattle mat next to a house with central fireplace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Supporting constructions for shelves (Trägerhölzer) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 Profile view of Gunhild’s Cross with runes visible . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 Engraving of the front of Gunhild’s Cross, ca. 1110 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Figures 4.3a–b. Walrus and polar bear amulets from Norse Greenland . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Figure 4.4.

Figure 4.5. Figure 6.1.

Crozier and ring, Garðar Cathedral, Greenland: walrus ivory, wood, and gold, ca. twelfth century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66

Cemetery cross, Herjolfnes, Greenland: wood, ca. early thirteenth century. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 A representation of the three types of non-geographic frames of reference. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98

Figure 8.1. Figure 8.2. Figure 8.3.

Plates Plate 2.1. Plate 2.2. Plate 3.1. Plate 3.2. Plate 4.1. Plate 4.2.

Plate 4.3.

Plate 6.1a–b.

List of Illustrations

vii

Johannes Ruysch’s world map of 1507–1508 (41 × 54 cm): detail showing the North Atlantic. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 Johannes Schöner’s globe of 1515 (27 cm in circumference): detail showing the litus incognitum.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142 “Vinland Map”: New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Library MS 350A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Solitary grave mound on a promontory in the lake of Horrmunden, Dalarna, Sweden: 600–700 CE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

Grave field on a small promontory in the lake of Horrmunden, Dalarna, Sweden: 600–700 CE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Glass objects, raw materials, and waste discovered at a glass workshop of the tenth to eleventh centuries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 Remains of a wooden log-built house with a central fireplace at Staraya Ladoga. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Garðar Cathedral ruins, Igaliko, Greenland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Gundhildskorset (Gunnhild’s Cross): walrus ivory, ca. 1110.. . . . . . . . . 56

“Shaman’s tube,” Tuniit: walrus ivory, ca. 500 CE. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64

An example of the visualization and interactive clustering techniques employed by the “Norse World” resource and an extract of the data used for the visualization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97

Plate 6.2 a–b. Visualization of spatial references in The Chronicle of Duke Erik in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden D 2 as attested in the “Norse World” resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101 Plate 6.3 a–b. Visualization of spatial references in Consolation of the Soul in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden A 108, as collated by the “Norse World” resource. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Plate 6.4 a–b. Visualization of spatial references in the Old Swedish Consolation of the Soul (Search 1) and the Old Danish Sjælens Trøst (Search 2) in the “Norse World” resource. . . . . . . . . . . . 106 Plate 6.5.

Map overlay visualization of attested spatial references in The Chronicle of Duke Erik (Search 1), The Chronicle of Carl (Search 2), and Sture’s Chronicles (Search 3) in the “Norse World” resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

viii

Maps Map 1.1. Map 1.2. Map 2.1. Map 2.2. Map 2.3. Map 3.1. Map 4.1.

Tables

Table 6.1. Table 6.2. Table 6.3. Table 6.4. Table 6.5.

List of Illustrations

“The Eight Circuits of the Thirteenth-Century World System.” Map adapted from Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System (1989). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 “The Medieval World System as of 2021 (?).”. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Map of the Scandinavian Peninsula indicating the general area under discussion and the location of Iron Age burials containing bear phalanges. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Known outland graves in Dalarna and Hedmark and their relation to travel routes and main river systems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Kernel density map showing the distribution of known charcoal pits (32,668). Charcoal pits are closely connected to iron production in the Viking and Middle Ages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Trade and craft settlements connected by cultural and commercial contacts in the ninth to eleventh centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Medieval Greenland and the Walrus Ivory Trade. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 Top ten spatial references attested in The Chronicle of Duke Erik . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100 Top ten spatial references attested in Consolation of the Soul. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Top ten spatial references attested in the Old Danish Sjælens Trøst. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Top ten spatial references attested in The Chronicle of Karl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 Top ten spatial references attested in Sture’s Chronicles. . . . . . . . . . . . 107

INTRODUCTION: EXPLORING THE GLOBAL NORTH, FROM THE IRON AGE TO THE AGE OF SAIL CAROL SYMES

When Janet Abu-Lughod outlined the contours of a medieval “world system” in 1989, she located most of its “circuits” in the southern hemisphere (see map 1.1). In the decades since the publication of this influential work, changing trends in research, novel approaches to evidence, and collaborative methodologies have complicated, enriched, and expanded this picture, geographically and chronologically. We now know that many more networks linked the regions of Afro-Eurasia, and long before the century of the Mongol conquests (ca. 1250–1350). It is also becoming clear that any attempt to apprehend the extent and density of these networks—see, for example, map 1.2—will be inadequate and provisional, given the pace and reach of ongoing scholarship.1 Even this broad hemispheric view is already too limited. For one thing, it does not allow us to follow the ancient movements of colonists from Southeast Asia into the Pacific Ocean and, thereafter, across to the islands of Polynesia—and beyond—in the first millennium of the Common Era. For another, it does not capture the short-lived or seasonal settlements of Norse voyagers on the

Map 1.1. “The Eight Circuits of the Thirteenth-Century World System.” Map adapted from Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: The World System (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), fig. 1.

1  In addition to the contributions featured in this journal since 2014, recent studies include: Pauketat and Alt, eds., Medieval Mississippians; Lambourn, Abraham’s Luggage; Caravans of Gold, ed. Berzock; Toward a Global Middle Ages, ed. Keene; Barker, That Most Precious Merchandise; Radini et al., “Medieval Women”; Green, “The Four Black Deaths.”

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Map 1.2. “The Medieval World System as of 2021 (?).” Map adapted from Joshua Cole and Carol Symes, Western Civilizations: Their History and Culture, 20th ed. (New York: Norton, 2020). © W. W. Norton & Company. Used by permission.

shores of what is now Newfoundland and (perhaps) other sites along the North American coastline; nor the interactions among peoples of both hemispheres. Instead, only an inadequate, interrupted oval around the arctic indicates the documented and potential interconnectivities of the circumpolar North: the contact zone spotlighted in this special issue of The Medieval Globe. In these pages, generous scholars from a range of disciplines have joined to explore the boreal globe from the northern Iron Age (especially from the fourth century ce) to the early seventeenth century, offering fresh perspectives that cross the frontiers of regional and national historiographies, as well as conventional periodizations, in order to present new perspectives on migration, trade, material culture, technology, cultural exchange, global imaginaries and epistemologies, and the interactions of humans with their environments.2 The first article is a remarkable introduction to all of these phenomena. In “Contesting Marginality: The Boreal Forest of Middle Scandinavia and the Worlds Outside,” Karl-Johan Lindholm and colleagues have combined the results of their ongoing pro­ jects to propose a new narrative of historical and technological developments in inland Scandinavia—based entirely on environmental, archaeological, material, and genetic evidence. The developments they document propelled the raw materials and commodities produced by forest communities into centres of global commerce and consumption, transforming local landscapes and ways of life in the process. Beginning in the middle 2  The contributors to this issue were among the dozens of scholars who gathered in Stockholm, on August 12–14, 2019, to begin this shared exploration. We are all grateful to the hosts of “The Global North: Spaces, Connections, and Networks before 1700”: the Department of History and the Centre for Medieval Studies at Stockholm University, and especially the organizer, Professor Kurt Villads Jensen, and his colleagues. The program of events and presentations can be found at: www. medeltid.su.se/Arrangemang/program.htm [accessed April 17, 2021].

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of the Iron Age, as they show, a new phase of “ecological globalization” was driven by an insatiable market for the region’s natural resources, entangling these remote communities in far-reaching webs of transaction and fuelling intensified projects of “resource colonization.” Lindholm and his collaborator Sakarias Lindgren begin by reconstructing the landscapes marked by conspicuous burial mounds which functioned as communication media, with their connecting routes later forming the basis of medieval pilgrimage roads. Erik Ersmark then turns to information derived from the aDNA (ancient DNA) of the arctic brown bear (Ursus arctos), whose surviving remains—notably claws—testify to the prestige of their hides as grave-goods, and in places where these animals had no native presence: making it possible to determine the regions from which the hides were sourced while at the same time using the bears’ genetic profiles to estimate the extent of human impact on declining animal populations and their diversity, due to over-hunting. In the same era, Andreas Hennius shows how small-scale tar production metastasized during the Viking Age, which would not have been possible without the vast amounts of tar needed to coat the hulls of ships and their woollen sails, which had to be recoated regularly at strategically-located emporia. This, in turn, necessitated the reorganization of labour involving entire communities, which also had to engage in long-term forestmanagement to provide adequate fuel for the enormous pits. Meanwhile, Kjetil Loftsgarden shows that a similarly expanded need for iron resulted in the near-ubiquitous establishment of reusable furnaces that augmented the agrarian productivity of many hundreds of farmsteads, in order to produce hundreds of thousands of tonnes of iron bloom—and long before the establishment of industrial blast furnaces. Finally, Eva Svensson describes how coastal elites’ growing encroachment on inland communities, beginning in the twelfth century, and both secular and clerical attempts to control peasant productivity and wealth, were met with open and often violent opposition. Throughout this millennium, the authors remind us, the heterogeneous populations of these inland settlements and shielings worked sometimes in concert, sometimes in competition, but were only divided into discreet ethnic and linguistic entities by the state-building processes of the early modern era. With this revealed landscape as a backdrop, Natalja V. Grigorjeva focuses our attention on one of the commercial hubs that distributed inland commodities to the “world outside.” In “Archaeological Evidence for Staraya Lagoda as an Early Scandinavian Emporium of the Global North,” she presents findings from her own recent excavations of this site, alongside data from earlier studies and the fragmentary evidence of written records, in order to reveal how another seemingly peripheral region played an outsize role in maritime trade. Despite its apparent distance from the Baltic Sea, Staraya Lagoda (now in Russia) was a fully navigable port on the Lower Volkhov River, just south of Lake Lagoda and connected to the Gulf of Finland and the Baltic Sea via the Neva River. As part of the Dnieper and Great Volga networks that connected the North to the Eastern Roman Empire, the Black Sea, the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Khazar Khagnate, it was therefore a crucial component of the medieval world system. From at least the eighth century, it was home to agricultural colonists from Scandinavia and soon became a thriving commercial centre that attracted multicultural artisans

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skilled in the workmanship of both local materials and more exotic goods. Thanks to Grigorjeva’s ongoing work, then, it is becoming clear that Staraya Lagoda was a protourban, multi-ethnic emporium, similar to the better-known ports of Birka and Hedeby. Indeed, this helps to explain why it was the jewel of an independent earldom granted to Inge­gerd Olofsdotter of Sweden at the time of her marriage to Yaroslav the Wise of Kiev, in the first half of the eleventh century. One of the precious materials that passed through entrepôts like Staraya Lagoda is the subject of Robyn Barrow’s article “Gunhild’s Cross and the North Atlantic Trade Sphere”: namely, walrus ivory. The core of her article is an object biography of a single artifact masterfully fashioned from walrus tusks by a craftsman, probably working in Denmark, under the patronage of Gunhild, a daughter of King Sven II. But Barrow is also attentive to the lives of all the animal and human actors who supplied these materials: the walrus populations of the North Atlantic and the Indigenous and Norse communities of Greenland that harvested them, responding to increased demand after the warming medieval climate and overhunting exterminated the walrus herds of Iceland and other polar regions. With careful reference to Indigenous scholarship and lifeways, Barrow seeks to recover the practical, artistic, and spiritual knowledge that Norse colonists would have gleaned from the Tuniit and Early Kalaalit peoples they encountered. At the same time, she shows how this knowledge was melded with pagan Norse traditions and newly-rooted Christian beliefs in the fashioning of Gunhild’s cross. In “The Far North in the Eyes of Adam of Bremen and the Anonymous Author of the Historia Norwegie,” Tatjana N. Jackson explains how the geography of the global North was first described in the writings of medieval Europeans. Drawing on vernacular and Latin sources, as well as her own critical synthesis of often unconnected bodies of Scandinavian and Russian scholarship, she shows how the recording of local, experiential knowledge diverged from the entrenched mythologies of ancient patristic historiography and chorography. While Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum (Deeds of the Archbishops of Hamburg(-Bremen), ca. 1070) was familiar to the anonymous author of the Historia Norwegie, that author replaced the Latin tradition’s Mediterranean-focused fantasies with information derived from personal travels and the oral Norse traditions that were simultaneously finding their way into writing. If the author does borrow from Latin sources, as she notes, he adapts descriptions originally intended to evoke other locales—but only when they apply to the natural phenomena of hitherto undocumented places, such as Iceland. When seeking common ground between these two divergent texts, she suggests, we can instead compare the ways that both are structured to chronicle the progress of Christianity’s expansion into the North, with the deeds of the archbishops, who were instrumental in establishing the first bishopric in Iceland, providing a blueprint for the founding of a see at Nidaros (now Trondheim) in 1152/3. In “The Multi-Layered Spatiality of the Global North: Spatial References and Spatial Constructions in Medieval East Norse Literature,” Alexanda Petrulevich turns to the global mappings revealed by later-medieval vernacular texts. In doing so, she showcases the significant interpretive potential of the data being collected by “Norse World,” an interactive digital platform that enables research on perceptions of space, geography,

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and the construction of worldviews in literature from Sweden and Denmark.3 This resource allows users to quantify, visualize, and map spatial references attested in the corpus: not just place-names and provenances, but indications of directionality, proximity/distance, and (un)familiarity. It therefore delineates the spatial profiles of single texts and—potentially—of entire manuscript compilations. Petrulevich demonstrates the platform’s value by comparing the data derived from two generically different Old Swedish texts, the verse Chronicle of Duke Erik and the prose text The Consolation of the Soul, which reveal distinctive vocabularies and linguistic strategies for conveying spatial information and spatial relations to their audiences. That these two texts would differ is not surprising; but the nature of these differences shows how divergent genres of spatial knowledge were textually encoded across the vernacular corpus based on circumstances of composition, the author’s positionality, the expectations and needs of audiences, and the textual communities’ spatial frames of reference. As she observes, this type of analysis sheds light on “the cognitive underpinnings at the heart of spatial constructions,” reflecting contemporary epistemologies and perceptions of the world. Martin Neuding Skoog’s “Military Migration in the Baltic Sea Region, ca. 1400–1620” maps the movements of mercenaries and other mobile labourers during the same formative period, when neither real nor imagined spaces were governed by fixed geopolitical configurations. As he shows, formal treaties, alliances, and embargoes (even when enforced) did not hinder the circulation of troops, artisans, engineers, commanders, and recruiters who regularly shifted allegiances and paymasters. Indeed, despite the sources’ attempts to identify and label the different ethnic and confessional groups that took service in mercenary armies, the maelstrom of individual and collective mobility indicates, instead, that identities and allegiances could be mobile, too. Only when this complex picture begins to coalesce does it become possible, as Skoog suggests, to discern the beginnings of a new trend toward “military nationalization” in the Baltic, due to Sweden’s dominance in that region by the latter part of the seventeenth century—a dominance that clearly owed much to the Swedish crown’s longstanding success in harnessing these earlier mercenary forces, as well as to more novel forms of coercion, like conscription of citizen-soldiers. Skoog also makes it clear that these late medieval military markets intertwined with, and depended upon, other market forces, as well as larger social, economic, political, and environmental factors. His chronological parameters are thus porous on both ends, with 1400 marking an intensification of older trends and the period after 1620 encompassing the state-building projects and acceleration of transoceanic movements usually considered characteristic of early modern globalization. In our capstone article, Felicitas Schmieder offers an expert summary of the epistemologies available to intellectuals and adventurers in Latin Europe, as they sought to reconcile and adapt received and new cartographic knowledge in an age of intensified explorations that were redrawing world maps and the global imaginary in real time. Woven throughout her survey is a trenchant critique of modern scholars’ own understandings and representations of this knowledge, which often serve anachronistic and teleological agendas. Hearkening back to the Latin texts which (as Jackson shows) had 3  Accessible at https://www.uu.se/en/research/infrastructure/norseworld.

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begun to include the North Atlantic in European chorography in the late eleventh century, Schmieder traces the flows of contemporary information and their impact on traditional Ptolemaic cartography and the making of the first world maps to include Scandinavia, along with other newly identified or hypothesized lands. Having established the parameters of what could be known at the time, Schmieder considers the extent to which the mysterious “Vinland Map” reflects the state of available knowledge at the turn of the sixteenth century. Although her goal is not to pronounce on this artifact’s status as authentic or forged, she shows how any responsible analysis must begin with those parameters in mind. As Schmieder points out, the circuits limned by Abu-Lughod in 1989 do not equally capture all types of connectivity; and as this issue exemplifies, the state of our knowledge is changing rapidly. However, Schmieder is also right to observe that Abu-Lughod’s schema does reflect the flow of cartographic knowledge into Latin Europe before 1500— even if it could not anticipate the much broader reach of the world system that has since been expanded by three decades of scholarship. The medieval globe has started to take shape, and explorations will continue, thanks in no small part to Abu-Lughod’s vision and the work it has inspired.

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Bibliography

Barker, Hannah. That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260–1500. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019. Berzock, Kathleen Bickford, ed. Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa. Princeton: The Bock Museum and Princeton University Press, 2019. Green, Monica H. “The Four Black Deaths.” The American Historical Review 125 (2020): 1601–31. Keene, Bryan C., ed. Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Medieval Manuscripts. Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2019. Lambourn, Elizabeth. Abraham’s Luggage: A Social Life of Things in the Medieval Indian Ocean World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pauketat, Timothy R. and Susan M. Alt, eds. Medieval Mississippians: The Cahokian World. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 2015. Radini, Anita et al. “Medieval Women’s Early Involvement in Manuscript Production Suggested by Lapis Lazuli Identification in Dental Calculus.” Science Advances 5, no. 1 (January 9, 2019): DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aau7126.

Carol Symes ([email protected]), founder and executive editor of The Medieval Globe, is an associate professor of history and medieval studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her current research focuses on the mediated creation, uses, and meanings of medieval texts; the manuscript transmission of ancient and medieval performance practices; the carceral landscape of Shakespeare’s England; and the medievalism of World War I. Her work has recently been supported by the National Endowment for Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. In 2019, she received the Kindrick–CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies from the Medieval Academy of America.

Abstract When Janet Abu-Lughod sketched the contours of a medieval “world system” in 1989, she located most communication networks in the southern hemisphere. In recent decades, however, new trends in research and new forms of evidence have complicated, enriched, and expanded this picture, geographically and chronologically. We now know that vast portions of the world were interconnected throughout the Middle Ages and, moreover, that the entire circumpolar North was a contact zone in its own right. In this thematic collection, scholars from a range of disciplines explore the boreal globe from the late Iron Age to the seventeenth century, offering fresh perspectives that cross the frontiers of national historiographies and presenting new research on migration, trade, cultural exchange, epistemologies, imaginaries, and the interactions of humans with their environment.

Keywords global North, digital humanities, Viking Age, iron, tar, walrus ivory, chorography, mapping, environmental history, indigenous studies, resource colonialism, ecological globalization, mercenaries, migration, “Vinland Map”

CONTESTING MARGINALITY: THE BOREAL FOREST OF MIDDLE SCANDINAVIA AND THE WORLDS OUTSIDE

KARL-JOHAN LINDHOLM, ERIK ERSMARK, ANDREAS HENNIUS, SAKARIAS LINDGREN, KJETIL LOFTSGARDEN, and EVA SVENSSON*

More than half of Scandinavia’s land area consists of boreal forest. This environment is characterized by a hilly and undulating topography interspersed by numerous lakes, rivers, streams, and mires. From the perspective of today´s urban-centred world, or if compared to the major waterways and coastal ports where connectivity and global encounters are clearly apparent, the Scandinavian inlands appear marginal. This mistaken notion, we argue, is one of the main reasons for a general scarcity of research on the history of inland Scandinavia, a fate shared by other so-called marginal landscapes in Europe.1 Although archaeological research has repeatedly demonstrated connections between the exploitation of frontier “outlands,” on the one hand, and agricultural plains and coastal areas on the other, the boreal forests have hitherto been considered of negligible importance for understanding the larger societal developments of the past. Not only do they lack the presence of social elites in the archaeological record and produce little written documentation prior to 1500 CE, the first permanent agrarian settlements have generally been perceived as belonging to the Viking Age (ca. 750–1050 CE) or the central and later Middle Ages (ca. 1050–1520 CE), and their presence has been explained as a result of population growth in the central agricultural regions and the new technologies that facilitated farming in forested areas.2 In consequence, their history has largely been written on the basis of an anachronistic archaeology looking ahead to the historical and ethnographic situation of the early modern and modern eras. This view, however, is now being challenged by a growing body of archaeological data supplemented by an increasing number of studies based on modern methods. For

*  This article represents the findings presented at a session of this title at the conference on “The Global North” convened in Stockholm in August 2019. In that session, the authors presented individual papers addressing the resource colonization of the Scandinavian inland from 500 to 1500 CE. For this special issue, we have chosen to integrate our individual contributions. Andreas Hennius is grateful for financial support from the Berit Wallenberg Foundation. Eva Svensson and Karl-Johan Lindholm have undertaken their research with support from the Swedish Research Council (VR 2017–01483). The authors are collectively grateful to conference organisers Kurt Villads Jensen and Emmy Atterving, and to the editor of this special collection, Carol Symes. In addition, we want to acknowledge two anonymous reviewers and express our gratitude for their constructive comments. 1  Svensson and Gardiner, “Introduction.”

2  See, for instance, Myrdal, Jordbruket under feodalismen, the second volume of Det svenska jordbrukets historia.

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example, recent studies have shown an intensified hunt for terrestrial mammals starting around the fourth century CE, followed by a subsequent exploitation of marine mammals in the following centuries.3 These developments are contemporary with indications of inland agricultural expansion during the late Roman Iron Age, extending along the main river valleys that connected the region with the Gulf of Bothnia in the east and the Atlantic in the west.4 At several places in the boreal forest, palynological studies suggest that agricultural settlements with permanent “field-and-meadow systems” were established during the early or middle part of the Iron Age,5 emerging along with the development of iron production.6 The settlement expansion of the Iron Age seem to have been mediated by an innovative set of developments consisting of livestock herding with shielings, small-scale cereal cultivation, and diversified outland use7 through which resources were transformed into commodities for trade and exchange. These activities shaped a diverse but fairly repetitive record of archaeological sites distributed outside historical villages and related to the use of forest resources such as game, fish, pasture, wood, sources of energy, rock, and minerals.8 Subsistence beyond the traditional spectrum of agriculture and animal husbandry is often considered a necessity when suitable land for cultivation is too scarce. In contrast, we argue that these valuable resources were the driving force behind an intensification of economic activity in this inland region.9 This intensification seems also to have contributed to far-reaching trade networks linking the Atlantic with the Baltic, as illustrated by the trade in whalebone gaming pieces which resulted in large volumes of standardized items being distributed across Scandinavia and the Baltic.10 Made from bones of the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis), these gaming pieces begin to appear in the sixth century and connect northern Scandinavia’s coastal zones with eastern mid3  Ashby et al., “Urban Networks and Arctic Outlands”; Gustavsson et al., “Are Many Vendel and Viking Period Gaming Pieces?”; Hennius et al., “Whalebone Gaming Pieces”; Lindholm and Ljungkvist, “The Bear in the Grave.”

4  Emanuelsson et al., Settlement, Shieling and Landscape; Magnusson and Segerström, “Leva i skogsbygd”; Ramqvist, “Fem Norrland”; Svensson, Människor i utmark.

5  Amundsen, ed., Elgfangst og bosetning; Karlsson et al., “The History”; Kvamme, “Pollen Analytical Studies”; Svensson, Människor i utmark. 6  O. Eriksson, “Origin and Development.”

7  Emanuelsson, Settlement and Land-Use; Svensson, “Innovations in the Rural Edge”; Hennius, “Outland Exploitation.”

8  For instance, Baug, Quarrying in Western Norway; Emanuelsson et al., Settlement, Shieling and Landscape; Hansson et al. Agrarkris och ödegårdar; Karlsson et al., “The History”; Loftsgarden, Marknadsplassar omkring Hardangervidda; Risbøl et al., eds., Kultur och natur; Rundberget, Jernets dunkle dimension; Stene, “Utmarka”; Stene, I randen av taigaen; Svensson, Människor i utmark; Svensson, The Medieval Household. 9  Lindholm et al., “Archaeology of the Commons”

10  Ashby et al., “Urban Networks and Arctic Outlands”; Gustavsson et al., “Vendel and Viking Period Gaming Pieces”; Hennius et al., “Whalebone Gaming Pieces”; Karlsson, Spill; Ljungkvist, “Continental Imports to Scandinavia”; Mikkelsen, Fangstprodukter i vikingetidens; Resi, “Reflections on Viking Age Local Trade.”



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dle Sweden, the � land Islands, and Denmark: all regions with a steady demand for raw materials. Whalebone remained the dominant raw material for manufacturing game pieces until the beginning of the eleventh century, when it was replaced by walrus tusks. Similar patterns have been noted for a variety of different goods. The trade in furs of the brown bear (Ursus arctos) developed in the Roman Iron Age, with the most intense phase dating from centuries before the Viking Age, and the archaeological remains of this trade are mainly associated with prominent burials in the agricultural regions of Scandinavia.11 Wild reindeer antlers from inland Scandinavia were used as raw materials for comb making in the Viking Age towns of Ribe, Aggersborg, and � rhus (Denmark) and in the medieval towns of Norway.12

Ecological Globalization

Although connections between the exploitation of the outlands and the agricultural plains and coastal areas are archaeologically well established, the nature of these dynamic systems are still not fully understood. What was the main driver behind the technological and social innovations observable in the archaeological record and the development of trade networks? A recent study on the medieval trade in Greenlandic walrus has conceptualized similar patterns as “ecological globalization,” a process by which the market for valuable natural resources results in the development of interdependencies between resource-extracting communities and distant centres of consumption.13 The research surveyed above suggests that ecological globalization was already underway in the Scandinavian inland region during the Iron Age, as shown by the intensified extraction of boreal forest resources and the establishment of far-reaching exchange networks. Most likely, this process also involved interdependencies between forest communities and people living in the central agricultural areas, but so far little is known about whether the people of the forested inlands adapted to external demands or if they took advantage of their surroundings in a more proactive way, in order to link their landscapes to the worlds outside. Better known is that the boreal forests of inland Scandinavia constituted a heterogeneous ethno-linguistic environment.14 Over the course of the Iron Age and the medieval period, people were speaking different versions of the languages that became Sámi, Norwegian, Swedish, and Kvääni; from at least the late sixteenth-century there were also Finnish speakers.15 Hence, the ecological globalization of the boreal forests most likely fostered multilingual communities with overlapping identities, land-use systems, alli11  Lindholm and Ljungkvist, “The Bear in the Grave”; Petré, “Björnfällen i begravningsritualenstatusobjekt”; Zachrisson, “Vittnesbörd om pälshandel?”

12  Ashby et al., “Urban Networks and Arctic Outlands”; Rosvold, Hansen and Røed, “From Mountains to Towns.”

13  Barrett et al., “Ecological Globalisation,” 1. See also the article by Robyn Barrow in this collection.

14  Iversen, “Between Tribe and Kingdom,” 250

15  Bergman and Edlund, “Birkarlar and Sámi”; Odner, Finner och Terfinner; Ramqvist, “Fem Norrland”; Welinder, Jämtarna och Samerna.

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ances, and crosscutting relations among families and households, presumably including levels of both cooperation and competition. From the sixteenth century onward, the development of nation-states resulted in the political construction of “fixed” ethnic identities and the drive for economic specialization, so that today the boreal forest is a contested landscape characterized by debates over its past. For the purposes of the present article, a nuanced discussion of identity and ethnic affinity as evinced by archaeological materials is impossible. However, it can still be noted that the available evidence suggests that the Sámi people’s transition from hunting and fishing to domesticated reindeer herding was initiated during the Late Iron Age.16 This change has been explained as resulting from the consolidation of Sámi communities in response to internal tensions at times of dramatic change, with the development of reindeer pastoralism as part of this process. In this period, as discussed below, we also see changes in the trading systems of the forested inland region, which in turn occurred simultaneously with increased indications of livestock herding, the origin of shieling systems, as well as tar and iron production.17 Our presumption is that these patterns were an effect of Iron Age ecological globalization, which resulted in the overexploitation of game (bear, moose, and wild reindeer),18 as well as the transformation of trade networks in relation to the Viking Age diaspora.19

Research Objective and Overview

The main objective of this article is to synthesize archaeological evidence pointing to processes of ecological globalization in forested inland Scandinavia during the time period ca. 500 to 1400 CE. We argue that ecological globalization induced a process that can be conceptualized as “resource colonization” at the local level: that is, the increased exploitation of a surrounding landscape aimed at extracting valued products that could be transformed into commodities through crafts and trade. A crucial component of resource colonization is establishment of the means for communication and exchange. The first part of our empirical discussion therefore focuses on ways of reconstructing networks and contacts by analyzing information from burials. We begin with a distinctive burial tradition of the forested inland region which, in general, is contemporary with indications of increased exploitation of the boreal forests: the so-called hunting-ground or outland burials. These burials will be analyzed in relation to the communication network of landscapes and routes described in later Viking Age and medieval textual sources. We contend that these burials provide insights into local initiatives of hunting and craftsmanship, as well as to pre-Viking Age exchange networks crossing the inland forests and mountains. 16  Aronsson, “Pollen Evidence”; Bergman et al., “Kinship and Settlements”; Storli, “Sami Viking Age Pastoralism.” 17  Hennius, “Viking Age Tar Production”; Lindholm et al., “The Archaeology of the Commons”; Loftsgarden, Marknadsplassar omkring Hardangervidda. 18  Lindholm and Ljungkvist, “The Bear in the Grave.”

19  Jesch, The Viking Diaspora.



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Map 2.1. Map of the Scandinavian Peninsula indicating the general area under discussion and the location of Iron Age burials containing bear phalanges.

Next, we discuss the main ideas behind our ongoing work of extracting and sequencing aDNA (ancient DNA) from remains of the brown bear. Many burials from the mid-Iron Age contain bear claws, which have been interpreted as the remains of entire furs or animals, since the claws were almost never used as pendants on their own. Moreover, in well-preserved inhumation graves, these claws are usually found in distinctive configurations representing each paw of the animal. Since these claws mainly appear in areas that were not suitable for bear habitats, the aim of our aDNA analysis is to determine the regions from which the bears or their hides were sourced: presumably the resource colonized landscapes of the boreal forests. Moreover, the bears’ haplotypes—their genetic profiles—will help us to estimate the degree of their genetic diversity, which in turn may provide valuable insights into the human impact on Scandinavian bear populations due to over-hunting pressure during the Iron Age and the transformation of the boreal forests during the Viking Age. The following part of our discussion will focus on the extraction of tar and iron, commodities that we argue to be especially useful for defining and understanding the changes brought about by resource colonization shortly before, during, and after the Viking Age. During the Viking Age, the scale of tar and iron production clearly grows, and this in turn seems to have been promoted by developments in coordination among communities, landscape reorganization, and advances in technology, seemingly reflect-

14 lindholm, ersmark, hennius, lindgren, loftsgarden, svensson

ing inlanders’ agency in meeting a greater demand for tar and iron. Up to the middle of the medieval period, production seems to have been mainly driven by the needs of the peasants living near these resources. In the twelfth century, however, it is possible to see an increased involvement of external actors in the Scandinavian inlands. The final part of this paper deals with the regression of the peasants’ commodity production and their resistance to external involvement in resource extraction. To conclude, we will discuss some characteristic traits of the landscapes formed by resource colonization, especially the long-term continuity of these landscapes and their dynamic and multifunctional nature: qualities that indicate the presence of well-organized local communities that were able to take advantage of their forest resources.

Outland Burials and the Landscape as a Communicative Tool

Before the emergence of centralized emporia in the late Iron Age, interregional trade seems to have been organized and maintained by rather decentralized networks of exchange.20 Since trade resources were crucial for generating wealth, social status, and political influence, control of such communication routes was essential.21 Especially important were places in the landscape where several communication routes converged. In the central agricultural regions of Scandinavia, an apparent feature of such spaces are concentrations of burials; many of the places that later became central to trade often emerged in such areas.22 Hunting-ground or outland graves comprise low, round, stone settings which are morphologically very similar—although with a distinct boreal flavour—to contemporary Iron Age graves located in the central agrarian areas of Scandinavia during the first millennium CE. The main difference is that the burials are not located near a farmstead or a village, but in outland areas characterized by dense forests or mountains. Excavations of outland graves have often revealed unusually rich grave goods, especially from burials dated to the late Iron Age (600–1050 CE). These objects include spears and arrowheads, iron tools like hammers and chisels, and jewellery in the form of beads and bronze belt buckles.23 These materials link the burials with craft centres located outside the forested inland region.24 Outland graves are mainly found in the regions of Dalarna, Härjedalen, and Jämtland in Sweden; and in the regions of Hedmark and Dalarna in Norway.25 Roughly, they can be divided into two phases. In the early Iron Age (200 BCE–600 CE), they were often arranged in groups, with up to forty graves in the same place. In the late Iron Age (600–1100 CE), outland graves were more commonly constructed in solitude or in smaller groups of two to five. 20  Helgesson, Järnålderns Skåne; Welinder, Jämtarna och Samerna. On the emergence of these emporia, see the article by Natalja Grigorjeva in this volume. 21  Ramqvist, “Utbytessystem under det första.”

22  Andrén, “Från antiken till antiken.”

23  Serning, Dalarnas järnålder; Wehlin, “Fångstmarkens folk.”

24  Christensen, “Reinjeger og kammaker”; Lindholm and Ljungkvist, “The Bear in the Grave.” 25  Gollwitzer, “Yngre järnålder i fjälltrakterna.”



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Plate 2.1. Graves and archaeological remains in outland areas are often very hard to see. The solitary grave mound in the central part of the picture above is only revealed by the small change in elevation and a slight change in vegetation, in the form of white moss growing on the stones (Horrmunden, Dalarna, 600–700 CE).

Plate 2.2. Grave field on a small promontory in the lake of Horrmunden, Dalarna, Sweden. The site has not been excavated, but the location and character of the site indicates an early Iron Age date.

16 lindholm, ersmark, hennius, lindgren, loftsgarden, svensson

Unfortunately, few settlements contemporary to these burials have been identified in the inland region, which makes it difficult to contextualize them. However, they occupy the same geographical settings as other archaeological sites that are more visible in the landscape, for example the wide-ranging pitfall trap systems used for hunting wild reindeer and moose (see below).26 Outland graves were first scientifically described in the 1930s, and since then archaeologists have debated whether the communities constructing the graves were colonists from agrarian areas or a pre-existing population which subsisted on hunting, fishing, and gathering; the latter viewpoint is dominant today.27 However, a strict dichotomy between farming and hunting/gathering communities is problematic; based on archaeological investigations and pollen analysis from the burials, it has been suggested that the hunting and gathering communities in the forested region also practiced animal husbandry to some extent, in some cases as early as the late Bronze Age (ca. 1700–500 BCE).28 A spatial analysis of outland burials from Dalarna and Hedmark indicates that the burials’ early phase is concentrated in low-lying forested areas. Furthermore, the graves are often placed near rivers and lakes: 82 percent of the thirty-four graves in the lowlying areas (defined as below seven hundred metres above sea level) which have been studied are located within one hundred metres from a larger lake or river.29 Transport on watercourses was likely the preferred means of travelling, both during the summer and in the wintertime. Moreover, many of the burials are located on narrow promontories where they would have been visible from all directions. One of the exceptions is the grave at Vidjesundsfjärden, Dalarna, which is located in a small bay with limited visibility from the surrounding area. Its location near the shore may signify its important symbolic role in the burial ritual, perhaps as a boundary between the living world and afterlife. But the general pattern of exposed locations is arguably as significant for understanding the function of these burials as landmarks within communication networks. A similar pattern can be noted for the burials of the later phase, which in general are concentrated in the elevated mountainous terrain at altitudes from about seven to eleven hundred metres above sea level.30 Previous research has suggested that these mountain graves were not placed randomly in the landscape; rather, they were constructed at exposed positions in connection to trade routes.31 An additional argument for relating these burials to communication networks can be made by comparing the distribution of the outland burials in both Hedmark and Dalarna with the medieval pilgrimage route to the shrine of St. Olof at Nidaros (modern day Trondheim in Norway). This route appears in written accounts from the twelfth century onward, but its spatial relationship with outland burials makes it likely that it was based on an older, 26  Lindgren, Mötesplatser i fångstmarken.

27  See for example Bergstøl, Samer i Østerdalen; Bolin, “Två undersökta gravfält”; Hougen, Fra seter til gård; Inger Zachrisson Möten i gränsland; Stig Welinder Jämtarna och Samerna. 28  Wehlin, “Fäbodarnas historia.”

29  Lindgren, Mötesplatser i fångstmarken.

30  Skjølsvold “Refleksjoner omkring jernaldersgravene.” 31  Skjølsvold “En fangstmanns grav.”



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Map 2.2. Known outland graves in Dalarna and Hedmark and their relation to travel routes and main river systems. The map is based on traditional pilgrimage routes to Nidaros (Trondheim, Norway) and maps from the seventeenth century. Reproduced with permission.

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pre-existing path whose origins may go back to the Iron Age. This single example demonstrates the potential for reconstructing the past route systems of the Scandinavian inland region. The material culture of the outland burials and their placement in the landscape are both important for reconstructing contacts and communication in inland Scandinavia. Some of the burial sites reveal continuous use over several hundreds of years, for example the grave fields around lake Horrmunden in Dalarna, Sweden, and the graves at Lilla Solensjøen in Hedmark, Norway. These places are also located in convergence zones of different river networks and in boundary locations between lowland and highland regions.32 These locations and their longevity can be seen as indications of their function as meeting places and hubs for trade and communication. Indeed, the importance of trade between western Dalarna and Norway is also known from written sources.33 Other findings suggest that iron ore artifacts were deposited in the ground there during a time when there was an increase in the construction of trapping pit, or pitfall, systems in Jämtland. This may well reflect changes in the organization of the surrounding com32  Hyenstrand, “Forntid i gränsland.”

33  Hyenstrand, “Forntid i gränsland”; Ljung, Sankt Olof i Dalarna.

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munity to intensify hunting. But further investigations are needed in order to confirm the established patterns and to further our understanding of the networks that linked the inland with the worlds outside.

Tracing Trade through the Ancient DNA of Brown Bears

DNA extracted from old biological remains contains information on the individual organism, as well its broader population and species. With the latest technology, even highly degraded materials can yield sequences of both mitochondrial (mtDNA) and nuclear DNA.34 Even though this research has focused primarily on humans, these methods are increasingly applied to other animal species, both wild and domesticated, as well as to bacteria.35 Most often, aDNA has been used to study phylogeography and demographic processes. However, by assigning individuals to a genetic type or group, the method can also be a tool for estimating provenance within a certain geographical region.36 This application of aDNA is quite recent, but has a significant potential to answer both ecological as well as archaeological questions. A key question for us concerns how humans have affected wild animal populations through harvesting and trade.37 In two recent studies, this approach has been successfully applied to food remains and artifacts traded over long distances during the Viking Age; by assigning haplotypes geographically, it was possible to estimate the region of origin for traded codfish and walrus ivory. For the walrus material, a mitochondrial haplotype exclusively found around Greenland and eastern Canada was used to trace long distance trade from the Norse colony on Greenland to northern Europe.38 An important prerequisite for successfully assigning genetic types to a certain geography is a distinct population structure, preferably delineated by using DNA from contemporary samples.39 One species that has a strong geographic structure based on the mtDNA, and is therefore particularly well suited for studies of geographical provenance, is the Scandinavian brown bear (Ursus arctos). A distinct latitudinal division between a northern and a southern group characterizes its DNA and the two populations meet at a contact zone located in the central Scandinavian Peninsula, in the regions of northern Trøndelag (Norway) and northern Jämtland (Sweden).40 Since females exclusively pass on mtDNA, this structure is believed to be maintained due to female bears not dispersing far from their mother’s home range.41 Despite a recent “demographic bottleneck” in the bear 34  Hofreiter et al., “Future of Ancient DNA.”

35  Brunson and Reich, “Promise of Paleogenomics.”

36  Arndt et al., “Roman Trade”; Hartnup et al., “Ancient DNA.”

37  See also Gifford-Gonzalez, “New Ecological Directions,” for additional applications.

38  Star et al., “Ancient DNA of Walrus Ivory”; Star et al., “Ancient DNA of Viking Age Cod.” 39  Rosvold et al., “From Mountains to Towns.”

40  Taberlet and Bouvet, “Localization of a Contact Zone.”

41  Støen et al., “Inversely Density-Dependent Natal Dispersal.”



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population, the structure seems to have remained intact over the last centuries and is most likely of ancient origin.42 For humans of this region, the brown bear is intimately associated with the boreal forest and has played a prominent role in Scandinavian cultures. Among the Sámi, it is one of the most significant animals and numerous rituals and taboos have characterized their relationship with it.43 Notably, the bear was venerated as a sacred creature and, after consumption of the flesh, the bones were arranged in anatomical order and buried in so-called bear burials.44 In Norse culture, bears are featured in myths and legends and (as already noted) remains of the animal are frequently found in graves, especially during the mid-Iron Age.45 The remaining claws are assumed to originate from furs which covered or supported the deceased. These graves are commonly found in Scandinavia’s central agricultural region, and since bears were likely scarce or completely absent in those areas, the remains of their furs potentially indicate the existence of far-reaching trade networks. Indeed, a significant increase in the occurrence of these bear claws around the sixth and seventh centuries coincides with traces of peaking trade activity in the Scandinavian inland. A recent study shows intensified pitfall trap construction beginning as early as the Bronze Age, but with increased intensification from the end of the Roman Iron Age (ca. 300–400 CE) to the beginning of the Viking Age. The first peak appears in the Vendel period (550–790 CE), several hundred years earlier than previously assumed, and at the same time when bear furs were deposited in large numbers in burials of the central agricultural regions. Although bears were probably not hunted in pitfalls, this revised chronology shows a general increase in the exploitation of terrestrial animals in the middle of the Iron Age and no direct connection to a presumed expansion in the Viking Age. The increase in the use of pitfall traps, as well as the discovery of numerous hordes of Roman coins, attest to intensified hunting and far-reaching networks, presumably through middlemen, trading with Roman colonies.46 Interestingly, these pitfall trapping systems are most densely distributed in Jämtland, geographically overlapping with the contact zone between the two mtDNA-groups of bears. The geographic origin of the bear furs from the Iron Age graves in southern Scandinavia could thus potentially reveal not only an important connection to the forested region of inland Scandinavia, but also to other areas of the global North, providing a unique insight into the provenance of the bears as resources for hunting and trade. Genetic data from prehistoric brown bears has been collected and is currently being used to build a genetic reference map. The sampled bear remains were collected from graves in central and southern Scandinavia, as well as from northern Sweden and the inland regions. We have especially targeted datable remains from Sámi bear burials, 42  Xenikoudakis et al., “Consequences.”

43  Rydving, “‘Bear Ceremonial’.”

44  Zachrisson and Iregren, Lappish Bear Graves. 45  Petré, “Björnfällen.”

46  Lindholm and Ljungkvist, “The Bear in the Grave”; Zachrisson,”Vittnesbörd om pälshandel?”

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sacrificial sites, and human burials capturing a range of cultural contexts. We are thus hopeful that, by using specifically adapted techniques to extract and sequence the DNA,47 we will be able to determine the geographical origins of the bears. In addition, their haplotypes will enable an estimate of their genetic diversity, which can indicate how intensified human hunting affected the Scandinavian bear population; the geographical distribution of the two mtDNA-groups will be viewed in relation to the proposed resource colonization processes of inland Scandinavia. At this time, based on data from burials located in the central agricultural regions, a considerable decrease in bear furs can be noted in the Viking Age, suggesting over-exploitation that is reflected in the chronology of pitfall systems.48 It is also possible to identify a contemporary transformation in the land-use systems of boreal forests, especially in the production of tar and iron.

Forests in Transformation: Viking Age Tar Production

Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, tar produced in kilns or dales was one of the major export commodities of Sweden (then including Finland). The production dominated the international market and was fundamental for maintaining European fleets of wooden ships.49 (Tar has been used for a number of different purposes, but the most important function has been the treatment, protection and sealing of wooden constructions.)50 The method for obtaining tar is to heat green wood in a low-oxygen environment; in Scandinavia, the most commonly used wood is pine. Although the use of resinous products has a very long history, reaching as far back as the Palaeolithic era,51 prehistoric tar production has received little archaeological attention until recently. In Sweden, ancient funnel-shaped tar production pits were first detected by archaeological research in the province of Uppland.52 Because these facilities lack the drawing pipes known from historically described tar dales, they have accordingly been interpreted as remains from a different and older, direct method of tar production. This interpretation has been supported by a combination of archaeological observations, analogies to central European findings, and geochemical analysis. The chronology of the funnels shows an initial phase of construction dating to the Roman Iron Age, characterized by small-scale household production organized at the settlement level. In the late Iron Age, evidence suggests the development of large-scale tar production, marked by a geographical shift in production from settlements to the forested outlands. The change in location also involved a change in size and scale: whereas production in the settlements was based on funnels about a metre in diameter, capable of producing around fifteen litres of tar in every cycle, the outland funnels extended up to ten metres in diameter with an estimated production of around three hundred litres in one production cycle. 47  Ersmark et al., “Genetic Turnovers.”

48  Hennius, “Towards a Refined Chronology.” 49  Villstrand, “En räddande eld.”

50  Persson, Jag väntar vid min mila.

51  Schmidt et al., “Birch Tar Production.”

52  Hennius, “Viking Age Tar Production.”



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Even if it were possible to produce larger amounts of tar through repeated firings in smaller pits, the transition to forest production suggests a major increase in demand contemporary with the emergence of the Viking Age’s intensified maritime culture. Experiments have shown that a single Viking ship required approximately five hundred litres of tar that had to be maintained by repeated coatings. Furthermore, the treatment of sails made from wool also required large quantities of tar, mixed with grease, in order to avoid excess permeability. There are also contemporary indications that tar was becoming a major commodity at emporia around the Baltic. Brushes and buckets found at both Hedeby and Birka indicate the handling and use of tar; at Ribe and Schleswig, finds of containers are evidence for long-distance transports of tar from the early eighth century and onwards.53 The exponential transformation of medieval tar production was almost certainly driven by economic forces as well as a series of societal changes. More important, however, for our purposes, is the fact that the strategic transition to a location near to the raw materials implies a completely different way of organizing production, including long-term planning and forest management. The scale of production means that large numbers of people had to be released from their ordinary tasks in agrarian settlements in order to spend time at tar production, which involved the intense labour of cutting and splitting trees, the construction and maintenance of funnels, the piling of wood, oversight of the extraction process, and finally the transport of several hundred litres of tar to the trade or construction site. There are indications that some of the tar production sites in the later medieval and post-medieval periods evolved into shielings (seasonal settlements) and it could be suggested that these sites were used seasonally, perhaps in combination with livestock herding.54

Steady Supplies of Iron

Increased tar production is not the only evidence for the intensified resource colonization that transformed the boreal forest landscapes of the later Iron Age and early Middle Ages.55 For the last two millennia, iron has been among the most important of resources, needed for agricultural tools, construction, and weapons. A stable and steady supply of iron produced in these inland regions was therefore vital to the central role Scandinavia played in the economy of the Late Iron Age. The iron was produced from bog ore, while the large woodland areas provided plenty of fuel for bloomery furnaces. Thousands of iron production sites are known, and it is likely that this is still just a fraction of the total number of sites that would once have existed. Production became increasingly prevalent from around 500 to 400 BCE.56 In this first phase, slag was solidified in a pit below the shaft furnace, with the consequence being that the furnace needed to be rebuilt after 53  Hennius, “Viking Age Tar Production.”

54  Hennius, “Viking Age Tar Production.”

55  Magnusson, Lågteknisk järnframställning.

56  Hjärthner-Holdaret al., “Blästbruk”; Stenvik, Iron Production.

22 lindholm, ersmark, hennius, lindgren, loftsgarden, svensson

Figure 2.1. A kernel density estimated distribution (KDE) of radiocarbon dates (n=782) from iron production sites (excluding charcoal pits) in southern Norway. The dates are analysed in OxCal v3.4.2. (Ramsey, Methods for Summarizing Radiocarbon Datasets.) Reproduced with permission.

each smelt.57 However, this method was effective provided that production was well organized and could draw on sufficient labour.58 From around 600 CE, there was a gradual change in technology from labour-intensive large-scale sites to smaller sites with reusable furnaces.59 Charcoal was now produced outside the furnace, and this expanded the species of wood that could be used as fuel, including mountain birch, and opened up large, high-lying areas for iron production.60 This change in technology facilitated an integration of iron production alongside the agrarian activities of husbandry and small-scale cereal cultivation. From this time onwards, iron production in Scandinavia was increasingly concentrated in the inland and woodland areas (see Map 2.3). Most sites were quite small, with one or two bloomery furnaces in which the reduction of ore could have been done in just a few days. However, preparations before the actual smelting were more time consuming, involving the collecting, drying, and roasting of the bog ore, forest clearing, and the production of charcoal, before finally collecting clay and building the furnace. The need for careful organization 57  Lyngstrøm, “Slaggeaftapningsovne”; Stenvik, Iron Production.

58  Myhre, “Landbruk.”

59  Larsen, Jernvinneundersøkelser; Rundberget et al., Ovnstopologi og Ovnskronologi.

60  Loftsgarden, “Kolgroper.”



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Map 2.3. Kernel density map showing the distribution of known charcoal pits (32,668). Charcoal pits are closely connected to iron production in the Viking and Middle Ages. In contrast to iron production sites, which are difficult to detect, the charcoal pits are still quite visible in the landscape. The spatial distribution of charcoal pits can hence provide a more representative spatial overview of the core areas of iron production in this period. Data from the Norwegian database for cultural heritage (Askeladden) and the Swedish National Heritage Board’s database for archaeological sites and monuments (Fornsök). Map by K. Loftsgarden. Reproduced with permission.

as well as the number of extant sites suggests that iron production had become an integral part of the forest’s agrarian landscapes and the lives of the people living there.61 Based on metallurgical analyses, one can estimate the ratio between the amount of slag on a given site and the amount of iron produced there.62 In turn, extrapolation from well-surveyed regions allow estimates of the total number of iron production sites that flourished from the Viking and Middle Ages. Multiplying this estimate by the average amount of slag on each site, it is also possible to estimate the total amount of iron produced in these eras. That estimate points to the production of about sixty thousand tonnes of iron from the Hardangervidda region and its surroundings in southern Norway, and about one hundred and ninety thousand tonnes throughout the whole of southern Norway.63 As shown in Figure 2.1, and highlighted above, there was an espe61  Loftsgarden, Prime Movers.

62  Englund, Blästbruk, 288–91; Rundberget, Jernets dunkle dimensjon, 250.

63  Rundberget, Jernets dunkle dimensjon, 253–54; Loftsgarden, Marknadsplassar omkring Hardangervidda, 69.

24 lindholm, ersmark, hennius, lindgren, loftsgarden, svensson

cially high production rate in the period 950–1300 CE.64 These estimates indicate that iron production in this region exceeded both local and regional demand, which in turn indicates that inland farmers did not primarily produce iron for local consumption, but for trade and exchange.65 Three factors contributed to this massive expansion of iron production from the end of the Viking Age: new technology, increased demand for iron, and the existence of stable economic networks and places of trade. As noted above, the introduction of charcoal pits expanded the varieties of wood that could be used as furnace fuel, including mountain birch.66 In addition, production sites became smaller and less labour-intensive. This meant that production became more flexible and could be adapted as a component to any multi-use farm, alongside livestock herding, small scale agriculture, fishing, hunting, and trapping.67 However, an iron production technology suited for skilled inland farmers is irrelevant if they cannot exchange the iron, leading us to the second factor: increased demand. The rise of regional surplus production can thus be seen as a result of supply and demand mechanisms affecting the value of iron, although caution is required when applying modern economic concepts to premodern conditions.68 One important driver was population growth from the Viking and Middle Ages,69 which in turn was linked to the introduction of scythes, iron-shod spades and more effective plows that improved agricultural yields.70 A larger population then further increased the need for iron tools, weapons, and building materials, most likely increasing the value of iron as a resource and a commodity. The expansion of iron production to inland areas suggests that farmers there considered the benefit sufficient for the risk of diverting already scarce resources, such as time and labour, on surplus iron production. A final determining factor for the emergence of regional surplus production was stable economic networks and secure places for trade and exchange. If farmers embarked on extensive iron production, they had to prioritize this work over other ventures with potentially more secure returns. Therefore, they had to be sure that they could trade their surplus iron, which presupposes stable societal structures that allowed trading networks and annual or permanent marketplaces to be maintained over extended periods.71

64  Larsen, Jernvinneundersøkelser, 181–83.

65  Loftsgarden, Marknadsplassar omkring Hardangervidda, 69–72. 66  Loftsgarden, “Kolgroper.”

67  Tveiten and Loftsgarden, “Extensive Iron Production.”

68  Loftsgarden, Mass Production; Skre, Monetary Practices. 69  Lunden, Norge under Sverreætten, 261–62.

70  Myrdal, Jordbruket under feodalismen; White, Medieval Technology, 53; Eriksson, “Origin and Development.” 71  Loftsgarden, Mass Production.



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“The Last Battle”: Defending Commodity Production and Trade Networks

In 1921, a mass grave was discovered in Stora Tuna, Dalarna (Sweden). Recent osteological analyses show that the buried persons had been executed by decapitation with an axe or sword. The event has been dated to the twelfth century,72 which implies that the mass grave is contemporary to a period of growing control of trade hubs and emerging urban centres by royal, ecclesiastical, and aristocratic powers.73 This societal and political development challenged the claims of self-organization and independence maintained by the landed peasants of inland Scandinavia. Not least, the royal demand for increased control of trade posed a threat to the forest agrarian peasants relying on commodity production and trade for their wealth and status. In addition, technological innovations created new competitors for the commodities produced in the outland. The invention of blast furnaces in the Swedish mining district competed with small-scale iron production, while an evident switch from the use of antlers to bones from butchered livestock, as seen in remains from comb-makers’ shops, reduced the demand for commodities produced by forest peasants.74 In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, then, local commodity production and peasant-controlled trade networks seem to have been under severe threat. But the question remains: did the forest peasants accept the developments without a fight, or did they manage to resist? We do not know if the mass grave in Stora Tuna was the result of a vanquished peasant uprising. What we do know is that these findings are contemporaneous, and that forest peasants in the region pursued outland commodity production that generated wealth. Resistance need not have been armed, but could have been enacted in many other ways.75 In order to shed light on what the archaeological record can tell us about peasant resistance in defence of their outland commodity production, we will move from Dalarna to the adjacent region of northern Värmland.76 In northern Värmland, forest peasants had produced bloomery iron at least since the sixth century CE, but from the ninth century onward this practice was transformed to surplus production in combination with more intensified hunting by pitfall systems, as described above. Judging from the spatial organization of Viking Age and medieval sites, the hamlet seems to have been the main production unit for both iron production and pitfall hunting. However, in the early thirteenth century, we see a clear break, first in the production of iron and then, some fifty years later, in pitfall construction and elk hunting. The downturn is radical, and production apparently dwindled to nearly nothing. Then, in the fourteenth century, iron production increases slightly, based on the introduction of new modes of organization and improved technology. At iron produc72  Wehlin et al., “Avrättningar och centralmakt.”

73  See, for example, Lindkvist and Å� gren, Sveriges medeltid.

74  Pettersson Jensen, Norberg och järnet; Vretemark, Från ben till boskap.

75  For instance, Scott, Decoding Subaltern Politics.

76  The following description is based on Emanuelsson et al., Settlement, Shieling and Landscape; Svensson, Människor i utmark, and Svensson, The Medieval Household.

26 lindholm, ersmark, hennius, lindgren, loftsgarden, svensson

Figure 2.2. The furnace during excavation at the bloomery iron production site of Lillbergsgården, Northern Värmland, dated to the fourteenth century. Photo: Eva Svensson. Reproduced with permission.

tion sites, new, more stable, and probably larger furnaces, likely borrowing some traits from the new blast furnaces, were constructed: see Figure 2.2. The work of cleaning the bloom, previously performed at the different farmsteads, was now conducted at the iron production site, which saved both labour and transport. The production of charcoal was also reformed, probably by introducing charcoal stacks similar to blast furnace technology.77 Another novelty was the introduction of a water-powered smithy, which probably operated on a communal level, in contrast to the smithing previously carried out at individual farmsteads or hamlets. New organizational forms based on increased cooperation are also visible in the pitfall hunting systems of this time, as we have already noted, involving the collective ingenuity and labour of several farmsteads and hamlets. When intense pitfall hunting took off in the ninth century, single or several grouped pitfalls became standard, again to be replaced in the fourteenth century by long systems of pitfalls for elk that involved cooperation on a large scale. What do these changes signify? In a time of emerging crisis, involving the threats of authoritative powers and new technologies competing with forest peasants’ com-

77  There has been no systematic survey of charcoal stacks in the area, therefore this is a qualified guess based on the recording of a few sites.



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Figure 2.3. The “heraldic” mount from Skramle. Photo: Bengt Holte. Reproduced with permission.

modity production, local peasants seem to have chosen to draw on older, more cooperative forms of land management. Renewed cooperation and the reestablishment of collective resources aimed not only to be more competitive in commodity production, but was also a form of resistance against the increasing external and hierarchical powers of crown, clergy, and the nobility. The resistance also seems to have included direct challenges to the nobility. The aristocracy sprang, in most cases, from families with considerable wealth, social status, and capacity for conspicuous consumption. The aristocracy invested in symbols, such as coats of arms, to visualize their identity and status as noble lineages.78 Yet the landed forest peasants also owned such resources, especially those from families who had been involved in commodity production and trade for long periods of time. From excavated settlements there is evidence of these peasants possessing horses, weapons, and imported goods. Retrieved accessories indicate that the peasants were also aware of aristocratic fashion and dress codes. They even responded in kind to the introduction of noble symbols, as shown by the thirteenth-century heraldic mount with a homemade coat of arms found in an excavation at the hamlet of Skramle.79 The efforts of the forest peasants failed, however. The improvement of production technologies and increased cooperation to meet the competition of the emerging nobility was not enough. Markets for peasant outland commodities disappeared, and instead the forest peasants focused on the agrarian side of their economy, especially livestock herding and cattle breeding. During the later Middle Ages, the use of shielings grew significantly and, in the early modern period, shielings became a new platform for forest commodity production, fulfilling demands from the expanding Swedish mining districts. Thus, with the loss of their trade networks, the forest agrarian peasants became more closely aligned with what the word “peasant” means today. The archaeological sites, and possibly the decapitated bodies in the mass grave of Stora Tuna, can be understood as memorials of a battle that has not been recorded in written documents, and thus not properly told before.

78  Duggan, Nobles and Nobility.

79  Andersson and Svensson, Skramle; Svensson, The Medieval Household.

28 lindholm, ersmark, hennius, lindgren, loftsgarden, svensson

The Resource-Colonized Landscapes of the Global North

During the first fifteen hundred years of our era, Scandinavian societies became increasingly integrated into global politics and economies. Networks for interregional contact and flows of trade goods were formed and an increased array of imports—from Europe and from the forested outlands of Scandinavia’s inland region—accumulated in the central marketplaces that emerged during this period. In this article, we have presented ongoing archaeological research into Scandinavia’s forested inland region, proposing that its people and communities were socially and economically integrated into systems of trade and in close interaction with the worlds outside. At the local level, this process resulted in intensive resource colonization that shaped landscapes and aimed at the exploitation of valued resources for crafts and trade. An apparent feature of archaeological sites in the forested landscapes is that they appear in clusters which are not randomly distributed.80 These clusters sustained sets of different activities over a longue durée: big game hunting, livestock herding, iron smelting, tar production, and the construction of routes and burial grounds which can be seen as significant for the development of communication networks. The long continuity of these managed landscapes was the result of locally driven enterprises that claimed multifunctional activity areas through collective action and organization, and were already established in the early or middle Iron Age. Their resource colonization by peripheral hunting and/or forest agrarian livestock-herding communities was consequently based on—and also determined by—complex social and economic relations reflecting interrelated socio-economic systems of extraction, production, and consumption. We argue, therefore, that resource colonization and commodity production in the forested inlands of Scandinavia are crucial to identifying and understanding the contours of the premodern global North.

80  Lindholm et al., “The Archaeology of the Commons.”



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Persson, Thomas. “Jag väntar, vid min mila. En studie av förhistorisk träkols- och tjärframställning i Skandinavien.” Bachelor’s (Candidate’s) thesis, University of Lund, 1994. Petré, Bo. “Björnfällen i begravningsritualen-statusobjekt speglande regional skinnhandel?” Fornvännen 75 (1980): 5–14. Pettersson Jensen, Ing-Marie. Norberg och järnet: bergsmännen och den medeltida Industrialiseringen. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2012. Ramsey, Christopher Bronk. “Methods for Summarizing Radiocarbon Datasets.” Radiocarbon 59, no. 6 (2017): 1809–33. Ramqvist, Per H. “Utbytessystem under det första årtusendet e.Kr. Idéer utgående från tre mellannorrländska älvar.” Fornvännen 96 (2001): 1–21. _____. “Fem Norrland: om norrländska regioner och deras interaktion.” Arkeologi i norr 10 (2007): 153–80. Resi, Heid G. “Reflections on Viking Age Local Trade in Stone Products.” In Proceedings from the Tenth Viking Congress, Larkollen, Norway 1985, edited by James Knirk, 95–102. Oslo: Universitetets oldsakssamling, 1987. Risbøl, Ole, Katrine Stene, and Anne Sætren, eds. Kultur og natur i Grimsdalen landskapsvernområde. Sluttrapport fra DYLAN-prosjektet. Norsk institute for kulturminneforsking tema 38. Oslo: NIKU, 2011. Electronic resource. Rosvold, Jørgen, Gitte Hansen, and Knut H. Røed. “From Mountains to Towns: DNA from Ancient Reindeer Antlers as Proxy for Domestic Procurement Networks in Medieval Norway.” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 26 (2019): doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2019.05.025. Rundberget, Berndt. “Jernets dunkle dimension. Jernvinna i sørlige Hedmark. Sentral økonomisk faktor og premiss for samfundsutvikling c. AD 700–1300.” PhD diss., Oslo University, 2013. Rundberget, Bernt, Jan Henning Larsen, and Tom H. Borse Haraldsen, eds. Ovnstypologi og ovnskronologi i den Nordiske Jernvinna: Jernvinnai Oppland: Symposium på Kittilbu. 16.–18. Juni 2009. Oslo: Portal, 2013. Rydving, Håkan. “The ‘Bear Ceremonial’ and Bear Rituals among the Khanty and the Sami.” Temenos: Nordic Journal of Comparative Religion 46 (2010): 31–52. Schmidt, Patrick et al. “Birch Tar Production Does Not Prove Neanderthal Behavioral Complexity.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116, no. 36 (2019): 17707–11. Scott, James C. Decoding Subaltern Politics: Ideology, Disguise, and Resistance in Agrarian Politics. New York: Routledge, 2013. Serning, Inga. Dalarnas järnålder. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 1966. Skjølsvold, Arne. “En fangstmanns grav i Trysil-fjellene.” Viking. Tidsskrift för norrøn arkeologi 33 (1969): 139–201. _____. “Refleksjoner omkring jernaldersgravene i sydnorske fjellstrøk.” Viking. Tidsskrift för norrøn arkeologi 44 (1980): 139–201. Skre, Dagfinn. “Monetary Practices in Early Medieval Western Scandinavia (5th–10th Centuries AD).” Medieval Archaeology 61, no. 2 (2017): 277‒99. Star, Bastiaan et al. “Ancient DNA Reveals the Arctic Origin of Viking Age Cod from Haithabu, Germany.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114, no. 34 (2017): 9152–57. _____. “Ancient DNA Reveals the Chronology of Walrus Ivory Trade from Norse Greenland.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Biological Sciences 285 (2018). Storli, Inger. “Sami Viking Age Pastoralism—or ‘The Fur-Trade Paradigm’ Reconsidered.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 26 (1993): 1–20.



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Stene, Katrine. I randen av taigaen—bosetning og ressursutnyttelse i jernalder og middelalder i Østerdalen. Oslo: Portal, 2014. Stene, Katrine. “Utmarka—en ‘arena’ for samfunnsutvikling i middelalder. Massefangst av villrein og jernproduksjon.” In Landskaparna, edited by Anders Håkansson and Christina Rosén, 225–43. Halmstad: Kulturmiljö Halland, 2011. Stenvik, Lars F. “Iron Production in Scandinavian Archaeology.” Norwegian Archaeological Review 36 (2003): 119–34. Stenvik, Lars F. “Trøndelagsovnen—en studie basert på materielle levninger etter Jernframstilling i Midt-Norge.” In Ovnstypologi og ovnskronologi i den Nordiske Jernvinna: Jernvinnai Oppland: Symposium på Kittilbu. 16.–18. Juni 2009, edited by Bernt Rundberget, Jan Henning Larsen, and Tom H. Borse Haraldsen, 47–54. Oslo: Portal, 2013. Støen, Ole-Gunnar et al. “Inversely Density-Dependent Natal Dispersal in Brown Bears Ursus arctos.” Oecologia 148, no. 356 (2006): http://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-006-0384-5. Svensson, Eva. Människor i utmark. Stockholm: Almkvist & Wiksell, 1998. _____. The Medieval Household. Daily Life in Castles and Farmsteads. Turnhout: Brepols, 2008. _____. “Innovations in the Rural Edge. Inventions and Smart Organisations in the Scandinavian Outland Use.” In Towns and Villages in Medieval Rus: Archaeology, History, Culture. To Mark the 60th Birthday of the Academician Nikolai Makarov, edited by P. G. Gaidukov et al., 69–77. Moscow: Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Archaeology, 2015. Svensson, Eva and Mark Gardiner. “Introduction: Marginality in the Preindustrial European Countryside.” In Medieval Rural Settlement in Marginal Landscapes, edited by Jan Klápště and Petr Sommer, 21–25. Ruralia 7. Turnhout: Brepols, 2009. Taberlet, Pierre, Jon E. Swenson, Finn Sandegren, and Anders Bjärvall. “Localization of a Contact Zone between Two Highly Divergent Mitochondrial DNA Mineages of the Brown Bear Ursus arctos in Scandinavia.” Conservation Biology 9, no. 5 (1995): 1255–61. Tveiten, Ole and Kjetil Loftsgarden. “The Extensive Iron Production in Norway in the Tenth to Thirteenth Century—a Regional Perspective.” In Viking Age Transformations: Trade, Craft and Resources in Western Scandinavia, edited by Zanette T. Glørstad and Kjetil Loftsgarden, 111–23. Oxford: Routledge, 2017. Villstrand, Nils. “En räddande eld. Tjärbränning inom det svenska riket 1500–1800.” In Tjära, barkbröd och vildhonung: utmarkens människor och mångsidiga resurser, edited by Britt Liljewall, 62–77. Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 1996. Vretemark, Maria. Från ben till boskap: kosthåll och djurhållning med utgångspunkt i medeltida benmaterial från Skara. D. 1. Stockholm: Stockholm University, 1997. Wehlin, Joakim. “Fångstmarkens folk.” In Arkeologi i Dalarna, edited by Eva Carlsson, 218–50. Falun: Dalarnas fornminnes- och hembygdsförbund, 2016. _____. “Fäbodarnas historia.” Dalarnas hembygdsbok 89 (2019): 16–30. Wehlin, Joakim, Rebecka Teglind, Sabine Sten, and Eva Carlsson. “Avrättningar och centralmakt i Stora Tuna i Dalarna under den tidiga medeltiden. Nya analyser av benen från Kyrkskolan.” Fornvännen 113 (2019): 196–209. Welinder, Stig. Jämtarna och Samerna kom först. Ö� stersund: Jamtli, 2008. White, Lynn. Medieval Technology and Social Change. London: Oxford University Press, 1964. Xenikoudakis, Georgios, Erik Ersmark, Jean-Luc Tison, Lisette Waits, Jonas Kindberg, Jon E. Swenson, and Love Dalén. “Consequences of a demographic bottleneck on genetic structure and variation in the Scandinavian brown bear.” Molecular Ecology 24, no. 13 (2015): 3441–54. Zachrisson, Inger, ed. Möten i gränsland: samer och germaner i Mellanskandinavien. Stockholm: Statens historiska museum, 1997.

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_____. “Vittnesbörd om pälshandel? Ett arkeologiskt perspektiv på romerska bronsmynt funna i norra Sverige.” Fornvännen 105 (2010): 188–202. Zachrisson, Inger and Elisabet Iregren. Lappish Bear Graves in Northern Sweden: An Archaeological and Osteological Study. Stockholm: Kungl. Vitterhets-, historie- och antikvitetsakademien, 1974.

Karl-Johan Lindholm ([email protected]) is Associate Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University. His main research interest is to bridge the socio-environmental interface through interdisciplinary research and long-term understandings of landscapes and land-use in agriculturally marginal regions. He applies historical ecology, integrated landscape analysis, and critical historical analysis in order to situate current landscape policy in historical contexts with a bearing on current approaches to the sustainable management of biocultural heritage. An additional interest is the combination of archaeology with rural development and landscape studies to aid further understanding of past and present forms of collective action. Erik Ersmark ([email protected]) is a postdoctoral researcher currently working at the Centre for Paleogenetics in Stockholm. He completed his PhD in 2016 at Stockholm University, with a thesis entitled “Large Carnivore Population Turnover and Ecological Change during the Late Quaternary.” His research interests lie in the area of ancient DNA applications, ranging from wet lab methods to ecological implementations, and his work has focused on large carnivores, especially the brown bear (Ursus arctos). He has also taken part in several projects dealing with communicating DNA research, for example giving popular science lectures and teaching implementations of both ancient and environmental DNA.

Andreas Hennius ([email protected]) is a PhD candidate in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University. His research interests are the fundamental societal changes that took place during the Middle Iron Age. His doctoral dissertation, “Outlanders? Resource Colonisation, Raw Material Exploitation and Networks in Middle Iron Age Sweden,” will be published in 2021 and uses an outland perspective to gain a deeper understanding of the developments seen in both agrarian regions and marginal outland areas. By using different types of source materials, he shows the interdependencies between these different types of environments. Sakarias Lindgren ([email protected]) is currently working as field archaeologist for The Arctic University Museum of Norway (UiT). His main research interests concern land use, agrarian history, and exchange networks during the Middle and Late Iron Age (ca. 0–800 CE) in northern Europe. Landscape archaeology and spatial analysis constitute the main foundation of this research.



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Kjetil Loftsgarden ([email protected]) is Associate Professor in the Museum of Cultural History at the University of Oslo. His area of expertise is the Late Iron Age to the early Middle Ages, focusing on iron production, trade, meeting- and market-places, and networks; as well as the consequences of climatic and environmental changes in Iron Age Scandinavia and their effects on population numbers, settlement patterns, agricultural practices, and social structures. He utilizes large-scale archaeological data to develop spatial and statistical analyses and models to broaden our understanding of societal and socio-economic developments in this era. Eva Svensson ([email protected]) is a Professor in the Department of Political, Historical, Religious, and Cultural Studies at Karlstad University. She is an expert in social, ecological, and interdisciplinary approaches to studying forested landscapes in a long-term perspective, with a focus on the Viking Age through the early modern era. She is also doing research on subaltern environments and lifescapes in the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, the role of heritage and nature in community-building and rural development, and the role of heritage and history in realizing The United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Abstract In this article, we present ongoing archaeological research into Scandinavia’s forested inland region, suggesting that its people and communities were socially and economically integrated into systems of trade and in close interaction with the worlds outside, as early as the first centuries of the Common Era. The article presents a range of archaeological evidence, from ca. 500 to 1400 CE, for processes of ecological globalization, manifested by the exploitation of local landscapes and the extraction of valued products that could be transformed into commodities through crafts and trade. These forested landscapes were reliant on—and also shaped by—complex social and economic relations reflecting interrelated socio-economic systems of extraction, production, and consumption. Our main argument is that these landscapes are crucial to identifying and understanding the contours of the premodern global North. Keywords archaeology, boreal forest, Scandinavia, ecological globalization, resource colonization, tar, iron, brown bears, Viking Age, Iron Age, communication networks

ARCHAEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR STARAYA LAGODA AS AN EARLY SCANDINAVIAN EMPORIUM OF THE GLOBAL NORTH NATALJA V. GRIGORJEVA*

One of northeastern Europe’s major medieval historical and archaeological sites is the trading port of Staraya Ladoga, “Old” Ladoga, located on the western bank of the Volkhov River and twelve kilometres from the southern shore of Lake Ladoga in what is now Russia. This settlement remained attractive for Scandinavian traders, craftsmen, and farmers throughout the Viking Age (eighth to eleventh centuries) and probably beyond, because ships could sail from the Baltic Sea through the Gulf of Finland and into Lake Lagoda, seventy-four kilometres inland, via the Neva River. From there, they could proceed to the mouth of the Volkhov, some hundred kilometres along the southern shore of the lake.

Map 3.1. Trade and craft settlements connected by cultural and commercial contacts in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Based on the map of Viking Age ports by Carlsson, Vikingatidens Västergarn (2011), figure 5, p. 13.

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Ladoga is mentioned several times in the Primary Chronicle of Rus’ (compiled in the early twelfth century)1 and in Icelandic sagas, where it is known as Aldejgjuborg.2 In the early eleventh century, the Prince of Kiev, Yaroslav the Wise (Mudry), ceded any regional claim on Ladoga to his wife, Princess Ingegerd Olofsdotter of Sweden,3 creating a separate jarlsriki or earldom.4 After she died, in 1050, Ladoga became part of Novgorod territory at some point; however, this phase of its history is difficult to verify through archaeological evidence alone. In the occupation layers above wooden buildings from the mid-tenth century, glass bracelets and lead seals that are characteristic of the Early Rus’ period (twelfth to thirteenth centuries) have been discovered. Meanwhile, the Chronicle of Novgorod records that, in 1105, the Novgorodians, led by Prince Mstislav Vladimirovich “made war against Ladoga.”5 What, then, was the geopolitical status of Ladoga during the fifty years after Ingegerd’s death? In this article, I will argue that these finds, coupled with the chronicle’s claim, should be interpreted as evidence for the end of the Ladoga jarlskiri and its autonomy, as do the finds of lead seals from Novgorod and the building of a new and larger stone fortress. Prior to that time, and perhaps even under Novogorod influence, Staraya Ladoga functioned as an important emporium of the global North. According to dendrochronological data, the first wooden living structures at Ladoga are dated no later than 753 CE.6 The focal area of the settlement was situated on the lower part of the riverbank, hidden from the Volkhov by a coastal dune. Among the first occupation layers, Slavic, Baltic-Finnic, and Scandinavian objects can be identified, as well as the remains of glass and metal workshops with a set of smith’s tools.7 This set, consisting of twenty-eight pieces, clearly belonged to a jewellery-smith and includes scissors for cutting metal, pliers, drills, a small anvil, three small hammers, chisels, wiredrawing plates, fragments from clay casting moulds and crucibles, and ferrous and nonferrous slags. Such workshops are similar to those common during the Viking Age in Scandinavia, like those found at the island of Gotland8 and in burials in Jutland9 and Nor*  This research was carried out within the framework of the Program for Fundamental Scientific Research of the Russian State Academies of Sciences, State Assignment No. 0184–2019–0006. I wish to express my deep gratitude to Aleksander Musin, of the Institute for the History of Material Culture in the Russian Academy of Science, for his help in writing this paper; and Vyacheslav Kuleshov, of the Stockholm Numismatic Institute at Stockholm University, for the attributions of coins found during these excavations. 1  Russian Primary Chronicle, 233. See Vilkul, “Ladoga or Novgorod,” 272.

2  Jackson, “Islandskiye Sagi,” 20. 3  Melnikova, Drevnaja Rus, 533.

4  Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, ed. Gurevich, 234–35.

5  Chronicle of Novgorod, 8.

6  Kirpichnikov, “Early Ladoga,” 217.

7  Rjabinin, “Novie otkritija v Staroj Ladoge,” 55–64.

8  Stenberger, Vorgeschichte Schwedens, 456; Callmer and Henderson, “Glassworking at Å� hus,” 144. 9  Müller-Wille, “Der frühmittelalterliche Schmidt,” 185.

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way.10 Next to the set of tools on this site was a decorated bronze casting of a male head with two beards, which could be interpreted as a representation of the Norse god Odin.11 The high degrees of correlation between the tool-sets found at Ladoga and these other sites corroborate the frequency of cultural transfers between Scandinavia and the area under study. Indeed, a substantial presence of Scandinavians at Ladoga and close interactions with other peoples of the North since the mid-eighth century would have created the cultural and political background for the region’s transfer to Princess Ingegerd. But how deep and dense were these connections? Based on the analysis of agricultural implements, it is likely that the first Scandinavian agricultural colony from the territory of Central Sweden and Gotland was established in the lower Volkhov region by the third quarter of the first millennium CE.12 By the end of the ninth century, Vikings were travelling from the Baltic, via the Neva and Lake Lagoda, along the Volkhov and Dnieper Rivers to reach the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium). Before this time, part of the Great Volga trade route from Scandinavia to the Khazar khanate and the Muslim caliphate at Baghdad was also connected to river systems south and east of the lake. According to the Primary and Novgorod Chronicles, a stone fortress was built on the coastal cape at the junction of the Volkhov and Ladozhka Rivers at the beginning of the twelfth century, more precisely in 1114 or 1116.13 However, during archaeological excavations in 1974–1975, Anatoly Kirpichnikov found evidence that the first stone fortifications could have been built much earlier, in the tenth century.14 After my own archaeological excavations of 2013–2018, I was able to clarify that the wooden-limestone fortress dates to no later than the middle of the tenth century.15 A stone wall with wooden pillars stood along the coast of the cape, and remains of the walls and the pit from the pillars have been preserved. The occupation layer, located at the level of the first fortress’s walls, preserves several Scandinavian objects with close parallels to finds in Sweden.16 Among these are also fragments of silver coins, probably dating back to the seventh and eighth centuries and struck by the Sassanid and Umayyad rulers in Iran, as well as coins issued by the Abbasid governors of Tabaristan (on the Caspian coast) in the fourth quarter of the eighth century, with some struck in the ninth century. Moreover, a group of small fragments remain from Samanid dirhams dating to the first half of the tenth century. The flood of these coins into northern and eastern Europe was one result of intensive Scandinavian–Khazar contacts along the Lower Volga River, and both Sassanian and Umayyad coins have been found in Swedish gravesites at Uppland, dating to the second 10  Barndon and Olsen, “En grav med smedverktøy”, 69–74.

11  Rjabinin, “Novie otkritija v Staroj Ladoge,” figs. 23 and 11. 12  Eremeev, “On the Question,” 347.

13  Russian Primary Chronicle, 273; Chronicle of Novgorod, 9. 14  Kirpichnikov, Kamennie kreposti, 23–34.

15  See for details Grigorjeva, “New Evidence.” 16  Grigorjeva, “New Evidence,” figs. 5 and 9.

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half of the eighth century.17 The presence of these coins is therefore a sign that Ladoga had already been established as a port within this network during the early Viking Age.18 In the cultural layer at the base of the first fortress’s walls, pieces of handmade pottery have also been excavated, and radiocarbon analysis has obtained a date between 660 and 890 CE (Le–11322) for a burnt-down structure in the same layer at the base of the wall.19 Most probably, the original fortress was destroyed at the end of the tenth century.20 During later periods, the fortifications underwent numerous reconstructions and continue to be the centre of Ladoga up to the present day. In the twelfth century, six stone churches were built;21 one of them, dedicated to St. Clement of Rome, was constructed on the settlement to the south of the fortress in 1156.22 At nearly the same time, or possibly earlier, a cemetery developed around the church.23 By the end of the sixteenth century (1594–1596), a wooden-earth fortification was built to the south of the stone fortress and this area began to be called the “Earthen Hillfort” (Zemlyanoy Gorod or Zemlyanoe Gorodishche). Recent archaeological excavations have also been conducted in this area. But even prior to the construction of the first medieval fortress, the settlement area of Lagoda had expanded significantly, from around five to twelve hectares during the second half of the ninth century.24 Indeed, my analysis of the archaeological finds from the settlement show that Ladoga was already interconnected with Baltic trade and craft centres during the ninth and tenth centuries: hence my argument that this settlement can be defined as an early emporium.25 My new evidence therefore challenges the conclusions of Heidi Sherman who, in her comparison of Ladoga to other European emporia, argued that it was still insignificant prior to the tenth century.26 Even during the very first centuries of its existence, Ladoga was a “gateway community,” a commercial centre of the border area. The finds from Ladoga in this period can be divided into several groups. The first group is represented by evidence of transcontinental commercial connections characteristic of trading and craft settlements throughout the Baltic region: scales and weights, cowrie shells, amber, several types of glass beads, metal raw materials in the form of ingots, and pottery vessels of non-local types.27 However, it can be difficult to 17  Kuleshov, “Numismatic Chronology,” 98.

18  Jonsson, “Viking Age Coins,” 51, 55.

19  This dating was determined at the Institute for the History of Material Culture Laboratory in 2015. 20  Kirpichnikov, Kamennie kreposti, 40.

21  Rappoport, “Stroitelnoe proizvodstvo,” and Rappoport, Building the Churches. 22  Chronicle of Novgorod, 21.

23  Raudonikas, “Staraya Ladoga,” 12.

24  Petrenko, “Raskop na Varjagskoy ulice,” 116. 25  See Pertsev, “On ‘Emporium’,” 98–106. 26  Sherman, “Staraya Ladoga,” 57–59.

27  Goryunova and Plokhov, “Contacts between the Population,” 138–50.

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Figure 3.1. Fragment of a ceramic vessel of the Badorf type. Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga. Excavations by N. Grigorjeva. 2016. Photo: N. Grigorjeva.

say whether any object found in this group came to Ladoga as commercial goods, or was an object for personal use brought there by its owner. The second group certainly comprises household items and items for personal use which could have been accidentally lost or thrown away by their owners. These objects include blacksmith’s tools, textiles, wax candles, jewellery, combs, belts and bridle mounts, amulets, fragments of steatite vessels, and fragments of vessels of the so-called Tating type28 and Badorf type29 produced elsewhere in Europe and brought to Ladoga. The third group clearly consists of the remains of craft activities. Several imported materials can be attested: amber, glass, metal, and bone. A workshop for the production of glass beads made from imported raw materials seems to have been in operation for an extended period of time, from the tenth to eleventh centuries. The finds of tools, parts of casting moulds (Figure 3.2, nos. 1–11), crucibles (Plate 3.1, nos. 12–20; Figure 3.3), and other objects are significant evidence of metalwork production.30 This group also includes production waste, refuse, and ingots with traces of use. Several metal objects have marks of intentional damage that may be interpreted as acts of recycling and reuse. Other objects were more obviously being broken down and recycled: a thin worn metal buttonhole or needle could accidentally break and be lost; but when a massive fibula is found broken in half, it was most likely intentional and intended for reuse (Figure 3.3). The number of broken objects marked by intentional damage in Ladoga is considerable. 28  Goryunova and Plokhov, “Contacts between the Population,” 141, fig. 5.

29  Sanke, Gelbe Irdenware, 286–301.

30  Grigorjeva, Tigli i glinanie litejnie formi, 88.

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Plate 3.1. Glass objects, raw materials, and waste discovered at a glass workshop of the tenth to eleventh centuries. Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga. Excavations by A. Kirpichnikov. Photo: N. Grigorjeva.

Figure 3.2. Fragments of clay moulds (nos. 1–11) and crucibles (nos. 12–20) with the indication of field numbers. Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga. 1 – САЭ–08 no. 520; 2 – САЭ–08 no. 527; 3 – САЭ–08 no. 286; 4 – САЭ–08 no. 134в; 5 – САЭ–08 no. 2591; 6 – САЭ–08 no. 2588; 7 – САЭ–08 no. 2592; 8 – САЭ–08 no. 2593; 9 – САЭ–08 no. 1328; 10 – САЭ–08 no. 1496; 11 – САЭ–08 no. 1510; 12 – САЭ–08 no. 450; 13 – САЭ–08 no. 2297; 14 – САЭ–2008 no. 2471; 15 – САЭ–08 no. 1362; 16 – САЭ–08 no. 2436; 17 – САЭ–08 no. 349а; 18 – САЭ–08 no. 2585; 19 – САЭ–08 no. 1499; 20 – САЭ–08 no. 2587. Excavations by A. Kirpichnikov, 2008. Photos of the Staraya Ladoga archaeological expedition, Institute for the History of Material Culture, St. Peterburg. From the Staraya Ladoga collection at the Historical-Architectural and Archaeological National Park.

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Figure 3.3. Fragments of clay crucibles with the indication of field numbers. Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga. 1 – САЭ–2008 no. 1364; 2 – САЭ–2008 no. 430; 3 – САЭ–2008 no. 396д; 4 – САЭ–2008 no. 202; 5 – САЭ–2008 no. 288; 6 – САЭ–2008 no. 475б; 7 – САЭ–2008 no. 273; 8 – САЭ–2008 no. 1426; 9 – САЭ–2008 no. 429а; 10 – САЭ–2008 no. 396а; 11 – САЭ– 2008 no. 1319; 12 – САЭ–2008 no. 1372; 13 – САЭ–2008 no. 345б; 14 – САЭ–2008 no. 1497; 15 – САЭ–2008 no. 2611; 16 – САЭ–2008 no. 83; 17 – САЭ–2008 no. 464; 18 – САЭ–2008 no. 2604; 19 – САЭ–2008 no. 387д ; 20 – САЭ–2008 no. 349б; 21 – САЭ–2008 no. 2606; 22 – САЭ– 2008 no. 476; 23 – САЭ–2008 no. 490; 24 – САЭ–2008 no. 474; 25 – САЭ–2008 no. 287а; 26 – САЭ–2008 no. 2563; 27 – САЭ–2008 no. 2586. Excavations by A. Kirpichnikov, 2008. Photos of the Staraya Ladoga archaeological expedition, Institute for the History of Material Culture, St. Peterburg. From the Staraya Ladoga collection at the Historical-Architectural and Archaeological National Park.

In addition to these material finds, which indicate widespread trading connections, Ladoga artisans worked with jewellery of different regional and ethnic traditions.31 Temple pendant rings, trapeze-shaped pendants, and jewellery made of fusible tin-lead alloys may be regarded as typical Slavic ornaments (Figures 3.4–3.6), while cast fibulas or brooches, pin fragments, and other objects of cooper alloy and/or silver ribbed wire are usually regarded as typical of Viking styles. Since the presence of non-ferrous metal mines in what is now northwestern Russia has not yet been confirmed, the metal must have been imported. The use of fusible tin-lead alloy ingots with a prevalence of tin indicate a connection with mines in Europe or the British Isles.32

31  Grigorjeva, “Veshi slavjanskoj kulturi,” 123.

32  Eniosova and Kochkurkina, “Old Karelian,” 31.

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Figure 3.4. Gold and copper alloy objects probably used as raw materials (nos. 1–13) with the indication of field numbers. Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga. 1, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13 – fragments of fibulas; 2 – fragment of plates of comb; 3, 6, 9 - fragments of jewellery; 7 – fragment of belts plates; 8 - fragment of bracelet; 11 – ring. 1-10, 12, 13 - copper alloy; 11 - gold, glass. 1 – САЭ–2009 no. 70; 2 – САЭ ГО-2016 no. 124п; 3 – САЭ–2008 no. 2485; 4 – САЭ–2013 no. 418; 5 – САЭ–2008 no. 2529; 6 – САЭ–2007 no. 2246; 7 – САЭ- 2013 no. 180; 8 – САЭ–2012 no. 287; 9 – САЭ–2013 no. 301; 10 – САЭ–2012 no. 1418; 11 – САЭ–2012 no. 166; 12 – САЭ– 2013 no. 59; 13 – САЭ–2005 no. 190. Excavations by A. Kirpichnikov. Photos by N. Grigorjeva. (1, 3, 6, 13 = Staraya Ladoga collection at the Historical-Architectural and Archaeological National Park. 2, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 = Institute for the History of Material Culture, St. Peterburg.

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Figure 3.5. Jewellery and dress accessories of Slavic origin, copper alloy, Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga: 1–7 - temple pendant rings, 8–22 - trapezoid-shaped pendants with the indication of field numbers. 1 – САЭ–2005 no. 150; 2 – САЭ–2003 no. 255; 3 – САЭ–2012 no. 1590; 4 – САЭ–2010 no. 165; 5 – САЭ–2004 no. 361; 6 – САЭ ГО-2016 no. 170п; 7 - САЭ–2013 no. 546; 8 – САЭ–2010 no. 415; 9 – САЭ–2013 no. 567; 10 – САЭ–2013 no. 541; 11 – САЭ–2013 no. 185; 12 – САЭ–2013 no. 272; 13 – САЭ–2010 no. 626; 14 – САЭ–2013 no. 487; 15 – САЭ– 2013 no. 196; 16 – САЭ–2013 no. 242; 17 – САЭ–2013 no. 295; 18 – САЭ–2013 no. 314; 19 – САЭ–2013 no. 378; 20 – САЭ–2013 no. 379; 21 – САЭ–2013 no. 380; 22 – САЭ–2010 no. 108; 23 – САЭ–2010 no. 361; 24 – САЭ–2010 no. 538. Excavations by Anatoli Kirpichnikov. Photos by N. Grigorjeva. 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 13, 22–24 = Staraya Ladoga collection at the Historical-Architectural and Archaeological National Park. 3, 6, 7, 9, 11, 12, 14–21 = Institute for the History of Material Culture, St. Peterburg.

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Natalja V. Grigorjeva Figure 3.6. Jewellery and dress accessories of Slavic origin, tin-lead alloy, and a mould for casting limestone (No. 21) with the indication of field numbers, Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga. 1 – САЭ– 2009 no. 751; 2 – САЭ–2009 no. 912; 3 – САЭ–2009 no. 983; 4 – САЭ–2009 no. 942; 5 – САЭ–2009 no. 344; 6 – САЭ–2009 no. 1603; 7 – САЭ–2009 no. 1674; 8 – САЭ– 2010 no. 539; 9 – САЭ–2010 no. 708; 10 – САЭ–2012 no. 865; 11 – САЭ–2012 no. 1311; 12 – САЭ–2012 no. 1595; 13 – САЭ– 2012 no. 1604; 14- САЭ–2013 no. 65; 15 – САЭ–2013 no. 97; 16 – САЭ–2013 no. 178; 17- САЭ–2013 no. 289; 18 – САЭ–2013 no. 321; 19 – 2013 no. 441; 20 – САЭ–2008 no. 391; 21 – САЭ–2008 no. 167. Excavations by Anatoli Kirpichnikov (1–9, 20, 21 = Staraya Ladoga collection at the HistoricalArchitectural and Archaeological National Park; 10–19 = Institute for the History of Material Culture, St. Peterburg).

Who were the masters producing this jewellery? Were they locals or newcomers to the area? To answer these questions, we can consider different components of medieval Lagoda’s material culture. It has already been noted that many objects have close parallels to the assemblage of finds from Scandinavian settlements. However, in the early years of Lagoda’s settlement, we see that wooden log structures predominate, and of a kind that is usually associated with local Slavic peoples. Yet in the middle of some log buildings, a fireplace or hearth of rectangular shape has been excavated (Plate 3.2). Traditionally, fireplaces were made of clay in contemporary Slavic houses, while the local Finns used small square hearths made of stones. In both cases, these were located in the corner of a house, not in the centre. In addition, we find that special wicker-work mats for protection from the wet ground were used in Ladoga (Figure 3.7). In Scandinavia, similar interlaced wattle mats were often protected with clay and also served as the walls of dwellings. It is notable that large pieces of clay with wood impressions are often discovered in Ladoga within wooden extant structures, suggesting that houses with similar walls were also being built here. Finally, load-bearing structures for suspended shelves have been excavated (Figure 3.8), meaning that the construction of the upper part of roofed of buildings could also be similar to those found in Northern Europe. The similarities in craft activity and other elements of Lagoda’s settlement likewise testify to a close relationship between Ladoga and other northen lands. As I have already noted, Scandinavians participated in the agricultural colonization of the Lower Volkhov

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Plate 3.2. Remains of a wooden log-built house with a central fireplace. Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga. Excavations by A. Kirpichnikov. 2008. Photo: S. Beletsky.

Figure 3.7. The wattle mat next to a house with a central fireplace. Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga. Excavations by E. Ryabinin 1975. Photo: E. Ryabinin.

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Figure 3.8. Supporting constructions for shelves (Trägerhölzer) with the indication of field numbers. Zemlyanoe Gorodishche site, Staraya Ladoga 1 – САЭ–2013 № 479; 2 – САЭ–2013 no. 14. Excavations by A. Kirpichnikov, 2013. From the collections of the Institute for the History of Material Culture, St. Peterburg.

region.33 We find tools from Middle Sweden, as well as similarities in the agricultural implements (such as the iron plow) of the Lower Volkhov region, not only in Ladoga but at the contemporary Lyubsha settlement, situated just two kilometres downstream on the opposite bank of the river.34 There is also a similarity in the kinds of cultivated cereals attested in Ladoga and in Sweden, according to data from carpology35 and pollen analyses. Traces of plots of plowed land, buried under soil, were discovered in an excavation of the Earthen Hillfort in 2013,36 and this also testifies that land could have been cultivated in this area even before the construction of the first building. Further evidence of the Scandinavian presence in Ladoga can be gleaned from analyzing burial rituals in the Plakun area cemetery on the Volkhov River’s right bank. The burial mounds at this site may be dated back to the ninth to tenth centuries and have been considered proof of the long-term residence of Scandinavians in Ladoga. In barrows at this site are remains of a Viking ship cremation.37 The Christian cemetery discovered at the central part of the Earthen Hillfort may also be linked to the Scandinavian community. It has been dated to the late tenth to early twelfth centuries based on stratigraphic data38 and radiocarbon dating. According to physical anthropological analysis, some of those buried there had “Scandinavian” features; more conclusively, isotope analysis of a significant portion of the teeth from the deceased (a 20 percent sample of all the individuals) shows that these were non-local individuals whose isoto33  Eremeev, “On the Question.”

34  The settlement was excavated by E.A. Ryabinin: see Milyayev, “Artifacts.” 35  Chukhina, Radysh, and Grigorjeva, “Comparison.”

36  Kirpichnikov and Kurbatov, “New Evidence,” 132–33. 37  Nazarenko, “Mogilnik v urochische Plakun,” 156.

38  Platonova and Sankina, “Stratigraphy of the Upper Horizons,” 94–95. The C14 chronology was established at the University of Arizona AMS laboratory in 2019, and results are expected to be published soon.

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pic signatures match those of Sweden’s Mälaren region.39 It should also be stressed that other settlements in the Lower Volkhov region display comparable material cultures. For example, household items found in Lyubsha (such as cauldron handles, arrowheads, keys, and gaming pieces) are clearly of Scandinavian origin and leave no doubt of Scandinavian presence in this settlement.40 In sum, archaeological data indicates that, despite its apparent distance from the Baltic Sea, the region of Ladoga Lake and the Lower Volkhov River remained an area closely connected to Scandinavian communities and their elites, at least until the middle of the eleventh century. The clear influence of these cultures affected many areas of the local population’s everyday existence. Moreover, it is obvious that Scandinavians should be counted among local settlers. Going forward, understanding the place of Ladoga in the global North and its web of trade and craft settlements will require additional research into the finds uncovered during recent archaeological excavations. Today, it is obvious that Ladoga was a proto-urban trade and craft settlement in in the eighth to tenth centuries, similar to the important regional centres of Paviken (Gotland), Birka (southwestern Sweden), and Hedeby (Jutland peninsula), which have already been identified. Located on a cultural frontier, these settlements and the area at large were probably politically independent for an extended period of time, until Lagoda’s emporium formed the centre of a new jarlskiri in the eleventh century, making it a regional power-base until the beginning of the twelfth century. Indeed, its centuries-long flourishing prior to that development does much to explain why Ingegerd Olofsdotter of Sweden would have been attracted to it in the first place.

39  Price, Moiseyev, and Grigorjeva, “Vikings in Russia,” 14–15.

40  Milyayev, “Artifacts.”

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Price, Douglas T., Vyacheslav Moiseyev, and Natalja V. Grigorjeva. “Vikings in Russia: Origins of the Medieval Inhabitants of Staraya Ladoga.” Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences 11 (2019): 6093–6109. Rappoport, Pavel A. Строительное производство Древней� Руси (X–XIII вв.) [Building Production of Ancient Russia (10th to 13th centuries)]. Edited by Anatolij N. Kirpichnikov. Sankt-Peterburg: Nauka, 1994. _____. Building the Churches of Kievan Russia. Farnham: Ashgate, 1995. Ravdonikas, Wladislaw I. “Staraya Ladoga” [in Russian]. Sovetskaja archeologija 11 (1949): 5–54. Rjabinin, Evgenij A. “Novie otkritija v Staroj Ladoge” [New Discoveries in Staraya Ladoga]. In Srednevekovaja Ladoga, edited by Vasilij V. Sedov, 27–75. Leningrad: Nauka, 1985. The Russian Primary Chronicle. Laurentian Text. Edited and translated by S. H. Cross and O. P. Sherbowitz-Wetzor. Cambridge, MA: The Mediaeval Academy of America, 1953. Sanke, Markus. “Gelbe Irdenware.” In Handbuch zur mittelalterlichen Keramik in Nordeuropa, edited by Hartwig Lüdtke and Kurt Schietzel, 271–428. Schriften des Archäologischen Landesmuseums Schleswig 6. Neumünster: Wachholtz, 2001. Sherman, Heidi M. “Staraya Ladoga i teoria emporiev” [Staraya Ladoga and Theory of Emporia]. In Староладожскому музею — 40 лет, edited by Adrian A. Selin, 36–59. Staroladogskij sbornik 9. Sankt-Peterburg: Nestor, 2012. Snorri Sturluson. Heimskringla. Edited by A. Gurevich. Moskow: Nauka, 1980. Stenberger, Mårten. Vorgeschichte Schwedens. Translated from Swedish by Hedda and Torsten Capelle. Berlin: Akademie, 1977. Vilkul, Tatiana. “Ладога или Новгород?” [Ladoga or Novgorod?]. In Palaeoslavica 16, no. 2 (2008): 272–80. Westphal, Florian. Die Holzfunde von Haithabu. Die Ausgrabungen in Haithabu 11. Neumünster: Wachholtz, 2006.

Natalja V. Grigorjeva ([email protected]) is affiliated with the Institute for the History of Material Culture at the Russian Academy of Sciences in Sankt-Peterburg, where she is a member of the Department of Slavic and Finnish Archaeology.

Abstract Archaeological data indicates that, despite its distance from the Baltic Sea, the region of the Lower Volkhov River and Lake Ladoga were at the centre of a settlement and trading region of long interest to Scandinavian communities and their elites, at least until the middle of the eleventh century. The influence of Scandinavian culture affected many areas of everyday existence here, and Scandinavians were clearly among the earliest settlers. In addition to being a regional trading post, new archaeological evidence reveals that Ladoga should also be considered an early emporium of the global North. Keywords archaeology, global North, Staraya Ladoga, Middle Ages, emporium, trade and craft settlement

GUNHILD’S CROSS AND THE NORTH ATLANTIC TRADE SPHERE ROBYN BARROW

On a grassy

sheep farm in Igaliku, a small settlement in southern Greenland, reclines a perimeter of red stones. These lichen-covered ruins huddle in view of an inlet of the North Atlantic and craggy, cloud-cloaked peaks. This is the footprint of Garðar Cathedral, the episcopal seat of Norse Greenland. It has been abandoned since the fifteenth century, when a colonial venture spanning five hundred years mysteriously ended. During a period of expansion and success in the settlement during the twelfth century, the older Garðar Cathedral was replaced with a new building, one with a much larger footprint, perhaps to welcome a new bishop and the growing congregation. This second Garðar Cathedral had a differentiated chancel and two chapels. The sandstone used in the church’s twelfth-century construction was quarried locally in the nearby mountains. Dedicated to St. Nicholas, the patron saint of sailors, it had a bell tower and

Plate 4.1. Garðar Cathedral ruins, Igaliko, Greenland. Photo: Dr. Anna Bidgood, 2015.

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windows of coloured glass.1 Though there were at least seventeen other small, privately owned churches in Norse Greenland, the cathedral marked the spiritual centre of the community and signalled the ambitions of the local elite.

The Walruses at the Altar

When Poul Nørland excavated the church in 1929, in addition to the human remains in the churchyard and those in the chapels, he discovered the remains of other Greenland inhabitants, their heads aligned on the East–West axis like all the people interred there. Buried in neat rows, twenty to thirty walrus skulls were discovered along the eastern gable of the cathedral chancel, all with their tusks removed.2 In addition, four to five Narwhal skulls were buried in the sanctified ground of the churchyard beside their settler neighbours.3 Initially, Nørland interpreted these rows of skulls as evidence of an earlier, pre-Christian site, and the team of researchers led by Karin Frei later suggested that these were incorporated into the cemetery when it expanded into nearby refuse heaps.4 However, the dating of these skulls to the late eleventh and early twelfth century, as well as their position in relationship to the church, aligned with the architecture, suggest that their interment was rather part of the ritual dimensions of the Christian site.5 This Arctic intervention within the footprint of the cathedral actualizes an encounter between the imported liturgical space and the nonhuman presence with which it shared the land.6 As these sedimented layers of religious practice and more-than-human remains aptly visualize, the walrus constituted a cornerstone of Norse Greenlandic society. These eloquent remains mark a starting point for my consideration of the roles performed by the walrus in North Atlantic trade systems, which played a part in the larger world economic system in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.7 Another site is located eleven hundred kilometres northwest of Garðar Cathedral, at the walrus hunting 1  Nørland, “Norse Ruins,” 37; Seaver, The Last Vikings, 83–84. A series of archaeological reports published in Meddelelser om Grönland, beginning in 1881, remain touchstone sources for what has been uncovered at Greenlandic sites: Brun, Meddelelser om Grönland; Larson, “The Church,” 179. 2  Nørland, “Norse Ruins,” 138.

3  Pierce, “Walrus Hunting,” 179.

4  Nørland, “Norse Ruins,” 138; Frei, “Was It for Walrus?” 442.

5  Frei, “Was It for Walrus?” 442; Pierce, “Walrus Hunting,” 179

6  In order to engage with both animals and the landscape as active shapers of belief, builders of relationships, and interlocutors with humanity—what European scholars have framed in terms of “agency”—it is essential to acknowledge the work already done in this arena by Indigenous scholars who have been thinking about animals and the environment in these terms for a long time. See Venne, Our Elders Understand; Watts, “Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency”; Todd, “Fish Pluralities.”

7  See Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony. As noted in this issue’s introduction and elsewhere, the North Atlantic was not originally included in Abu-Lughod’s map of thirteenth-century global connections; I argue here for a reconsideration of the Arctic contribution to the medieval world economy. On the even earlier beginnings of this process, see the article by Karl-Johan Lindholm and colleagues in this issue.



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Map 4.1. Medieval Greenland and the Walrus Ivory Trade. Created by Gabriel Moss, 2020.

grounds of Disko Bay, itself two hundred and fifty kilometres north of the Arctic Circle on the Greenland coast. The weeks-long Norse voyage by boat to Disko Bay was a transcultural navigation, putting Norse colonists in contact with the Indigenous communities of Arctic Canada, who were entering Greenland from the West, and who also relied upon the walrus populations for their survival. Such encounters played a key role in the acquisition and transportation of Arctic ivory across Greenland and then, over at least twelve hundred kilometres of sea, to Europe. In this article, I ground my investigation of these encounters in a single object that represents the endpoint of the journey made by two walrus tusks from Greenland: Gunhild’s cross, a twelfth-century carving likely made in the medieval kingdom of Denmark.8 The cross materializes the physical and geographical network sketched above

8  Atlantic walrus tusks can grow to great sizes, up to ninety centimetres in length. The average length for male tusks is fifty centimetres. Female tusks are slightly smaller and straighter. Medieval European carvers were often careful to work around (though also at times innovatively incorporate) the marbled secondary dentine layer in the interior of a walrus tusk, which restricted the amount of usable material per tusk. The long shaft of Gunhild’s cross has a noticeable bend that remembers the natural shape of the tusk from which it was carved. It seems most likely that the second piece used to make the cross piece came from a second tusk.

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Plate 4.2. Gundhildskorset (Gunnhild’s Cross): walrus ivory, ca. 1110. CC–BY–SA Lennart Larsen, National Museum of Denmark.



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and further explored below. Like the walrus skulls buried along the chancel of Garðar Cathedral, Gunhild’s cross subsumes walrus tusks into Christian practice, expressing northern identities inflected by Arctic trade in a shifting political landscape.

The Woman with Two Names

In June 826, Harald Bluetooth, his family, and his retinue agreed to be baptized in Mainz in exchange for Carolingian intervention in Denmark, where the king’s power was under threat.9 The new faith had but a limited anchor for several generations, and only in the mid- to late-eleventh century did Christianity witness a true infiltration into the northlands.10 By the early twelfth century, Christianity was a political tool for Scandinavian nobility navigating their ever-broadening network of relationships with continental Europe. Like walrus ivory, religion in this context was imported into Scandinavia for its value in trade and diplomacy. Christianity was associated with powerful European neighbours and could be used to strengthen political bonds.11 It was in this period that Gunhild, also called Helena, an otherwise unremembered daughter of King Sven II of Denmark and descendant of Harald Bluetooth, commissioned a portable devotional cross made of walrus ivory.12 The front bore a separately-carved corpus, long lost. Four personifications occupy the cross’s terminating roundels: Life at top, Death at bottom, Ecclesia to Christ’s right and Synagoga to his left. On the back, Christ sits in judgment at the crossing, with the bosom of Abraham at the top, a demon dragging a lost soul into hell at bottom, the saved at right and the condemned at left. The cross’s extensive inscriptions reveal a kind of jostling of identities, the cross speaking in both Latin and Old Norse. The object proclaims its patron’s name a total of four times, in two different scripts. While the longest inscriptions, including two mentions of the patron, are carved in a confident Latin hand, Gunhild, Helena’s ver9  Lausten, Church History, 8.

10  Lausten, Church History, 8.

11  Winroth, Conversion of Scandinavia, 138.

12  The provenance of Gunhild’s cross can be traced to Sophie Brahe (b. 1578–1646), who married Holger Rosenkrantz, a Scandinavian nobleman, and spent her widowhood as a religious near Odense. It was included in John Beckwith’s 1972 Ivory Carvings in England, 700–1200, 44, in which the author makes a case for an English attribution, though evidence for this seems limited. Gunhild’s cross was also the subject of Harald Langberg’s 1982 monograph Gunhildskorset. Many of his arguments, including the casting of this Gunhild as King Sven III Grathe’s daughter Lutgard and pushing the date of the cross forward thirty years (after ca. 1140), have recently been reconsidered by T. A. Heslop in his 2020 article “Gunhild’s Cross.” Heslop situates the cross within its stylistic and historical context, connecting the object to the brief era of Danish ecclesiastical autonomy and Christian significance following King Cnut’s canonization. Through groundbreaking archival research and careful stylistic analysis, Heslop makes a strong argument for the artistic skill and continental awareness of the artist, Liutger, potentially an ecclesiastic in Lund as well as the carver of the Roskilde walrus ivory seal matrix. (For more on this object, see Andersen, “Archaeology and Sigillography,” 194, and the cover of Seals.) Heslop theorizes that Gunhild may have been a member of a religious community in or near Odense, the site of her brother Cnut’s martyrdom.

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Robyn Barrow Figure 4.1. Profile view of Gunhild’s Cross with runes visible, Gundhildskorset, walrus ivory, ca. 1110. National Museum of Denmark. Photo: Robyn Barrow, 2019.

nacular name, is carved in medieval runes at the cross base. These runes are positioned along the thick edge of the lower roundel. Shallow and willowy, they are less deeply incised than the Latin inscription, most likely by a different hand. Spatially, however, the runic inscription receives primacy of place and acts as a fulcrum between the two separate Latin inscriptions. One of these Latin phrases, running up the lower shaft of the cross, remembers Helena: “Qui me cernit pro Helena magni Sueonis regis filia Christum oret que me ad memoriam Dominice passionis parari fecerat” (He who sees me shall pray to Christ for Helena, daughter of King Sven the Great, who has had me made in remembrance of the Lord’s suffering). Opposite it, running up the lower shaft of the cross on the other side is the acknowledgement of the artist: “Qui in Christum crucifixum credunt Liutgeri memoriam orando faciant qui me sculpserat […]” (Those who trust in the crucified Christ, shall in their prayers remember Liutger who carved me at the behest of Helena, who is also called Gunnhildr).13 Because the inscriptions dedicated to the artist and patron respectively begin on the roundel bottom and process upwards, a reader must logically begin at the runes. The runes were therefore not an afterthought or an interruption, but integral to the program of inscriptions. How do the runes relate to the iconographic program? The roundel nearest Gunhild’s Old Norse name is also occupied by the personification of Death on the obverse and a damned soul being tormented by a demon on the verso: both figures participating in the 13  Translation from The Skaldic Project, edited by Tarrin Wills: https://skaldic.abdn.ac.uk/m. php?p=ms&i=19229. I thank Dr. Oliver Norris for his help with this inscription. This kind of interplay between Latin and runic scripts can be found in other early medieval examples. The most famous presence of runes on a whalebone object is the Northumbrian Franks Casket, ca. eighth century. In the case of the Franks Casket, the runes combined with Latin represent a playful display of linguistic virtuosity, echoing the mixture of Christian and pagan iconography. Another object featuring this kind of code switching is the Coffin of St. Cuthbert, ca. late seventh century, whose inscription includes both runes and Latin script. Both of these examples from the north of England are obviously much earlier than Gunhild’s cross but fall quite close to one another in time. And like Gunhild’s cross, these examples were made in an environment of exchange and cultural collision, in this case brought about by Viking invasion rather than Christian conversion.



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Figure 4.2. Engraving of the front of Gunhild’s Cross, ca. 1110, from Suhm, Historie af Danmark, ca. 1800. The corpus engraved on the cross here was an imagined replacement. Arrow illustrations meant to demonstrate the directionality of the inscriptions away from the runes at the base.

act of judgment. The damned soul points to its tongue while grasping a scroll running up the back of the lower shaft: “pater Abraham miserere mei et mitte Lazarum ut intinguat extremum digiti sui in aqua ut refrigeret” (Father Abraham have pity on me and send Lazarus so that he may dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue). This inscription comes from Luke 16:24, a parable in which a rich man allows a beggar named Lazarus to suffer unaided at the gates of his home. After his death, the condemned rich man begs Abraham to send the beggar, Lazarus, who is now cared for in Paradise, to soothe the rich man’s burning tongue in Hell. In the parable, the condemned man is rebuffed, and the verse thus becomes a powerful warning to the wealthy. Gunhild’s name in runes lies alongside this blistering condemnation of worldly wealth withheld from the needy. The patron may have hoped to contrast her pious use of worldly riches, through her creation and gifting of this cross, with the actions of the selfish rich man from the parable. For many at or adjacent to the Danish court, Old Norse runes would have been their language and script of literacy, making Gunhild’s name the only accessible portion of the extensive inscription. Gunhild thus ensured that she would be remembered by those who experience this object, whether they read runes, Latin, or understood the complex dialogue played out between the two. Indeed, the cross itself is a bilingual agent, speaking in the first person.14 Gunhild is a traditional dithematic name popular among Scandinavian royalty, while the choice of Christian name, Helena, provides an important link between this Scandinavian noblewoman and the early Christian imperial family.15 In the fourth century CE, 14  Though the dating and identity of Gunhild and her cross have varied depending on scholars’ investments, see n. 12 above, I agree with Heslop’s dating of the cross to ca. 1110 and the identification of Gunhild as a daughter of King Sven II Estridsson. See Heslop, “Gunhild’s Cross,” 442.

15  The name Gunhild is comprised of two lexical elements, the prototheme Gunnr (Old Norse, “battle”) and deuterotheme Hildr (Old Norse, “battle”). There are a number of examples of royal Danish women bearing this name in both history and legend, including the wife of Harald Bluetooth. See Shaw, “Role of Gender,” 151–52.

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Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, embarked on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. As tradition has it, she was inspired by God to recover the True Cross and send it back to Constantinople for veneration. Ambrose of Milan interpreted this success in recovering the relic in his obituary for the Emperor Theodosius in 395: “You [the Devil] were vanquished by Mary who gave the Conqueror birth […]. Today, also, you shall be conquered when a woman [Helena] discovers your snares […]. Just as Mary was visited to liberate Eve, Helen was visited that emperors might be redeemed.”16 In this passage, Ambrose places Helena within a lineage of God’s chosen women, the successor to Mary as a paradigm of motherhood and piety. Helena’s inventio of the True Cross is an act of “unveiling,” a divine revelation made expressly and specifically to a woman of imperial blood. As mother of Constantine, Helena is also particularly associated with the redemption of emperors, and the spread of Christianity through earthly courts.17 In a transitional moment of conversion, then, the discovery of the True Cross by Helena was always enmeshed within very particular religious and political concerns. Helena’s act became emblematic of pilgrimage, imperial devotion, and feminine virtue. Eight centuries later, a second, Danish Helena commissioned a cross, one carved from walrus ivory, and thus inscribed herself as an inheritress of this powerful genealogy. This Helena too, although the daughter of a Danish king rather than the mother of an emperor, was enveloped in a moment of widespread cultural transformation as well as massive territorial expansion. The colonial power embodied in the availability of Greenland walrus ivory is paired with the carefully articulated Christian orthodoxy of a missionary period. On the cross’s surface, we see the overlap and tension between various identities tied up in the expansion of Christianity to the North. Though conversion within the Danish court was becoming more firmly entrenched by Helena’s lifetime, the early twelfth century was still a moment of oscillation between old and new traditions. Despite the 2700 kilometres that separated Gunhild from Greenland, she, like the Greenlanders, had a vested interest in the North Atlantic trading sphere, which provided walrus ivory for art production. For Greenlanders, the network provided subsistence necessities for inhabitants of a land inhospitable for farming. The unbroken thread of the walrus can be useful in teasing out some of the significances embodied by its long journey from Disko Bay to European centres of craft and trade.

The Hunting Ground

Norse sources for walrus ivory existed prior to the settlement of Greenland, both in northern Norway, where trade developed with the Sámi people, and later in Iceland. At the ninth-century Aðalstræti hall, a site excavated in the downtown core of modern Reykjavik, three expertly extracted walrus tusks were discovered within the hall, perhaps representing unused craft material or stand-alone prestige objects.18 Due to over16  Ambrose, De Obitu Theodosii, col. 1400; Ambrose, Oratio, trans. Mannix. 17  See Baert, Heritage of Holy Wood.

18  McGovern, “The Walrus Tusks,” 106; Frei, “Was It for Walrus?” 443; Harrison, “The Zooarchaeology,”



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hunting coupled with a warming climate, the walrus population dwindled in the waters around Iceland, and by the twelfth and thirteenth centuries walrus sightings were unusual enough to be worth noting in texts.19 Recent research conducted by Karin Frei and a team of archaeologists persuasively demonstrates that the demand for ivory in continental Europe was substantial enough to propel Norse expansion to unknown lands, in search of fresh resources, in the tenth century.20 But their expansion to Greenland meant, for the settlers, vast separation from the rest of Scandinavian society. This isolation from exterior authority would persist for the settlement’s duration, making the export of Arctic goods the primary mechanism of European connection. Over the next five hundred years, the Norse established the Eastern, Western, and Middle settlements on Greenland. Much smaller than the Eastern Settlement, the Western Settlement was a convenient outpost for the long trek north to the walrus hunting grounds on Greenland’s west coast. Scholars estimate that the entire Norse population of Greenland in the five hundred years of colonization was a total of twenty-six thousand people, with no more than two thousand resident at a time.21 Though the Greenlanders farmed and kept animals, they depended heavily upon marine food sources to survive in the harsh climate.22 The colony had a strict socioeconomic hierarchy, with a few key families controlling the community’s few short-range sea-faring vessels, and thus controlling the wealth.23 The majority of the population lived at or near subsistence levels. Though no technical testing has been performed on Gunhild’s cross, it is nearly certain that the tusks used to make it came from walruses living in the ice fields and bays around Greenland. In a joint effort between Cambridge University and the University of Oslo, scientific analysis of the mitogenomes of twenty-four archaeological walrus rostra and three tusk offcuts from western Europe, all dated to between 900–1400 CE, has provided substantial evidence that, by the twelfth century, Greenland was very nearly the exclusive source of walrus ivory.24 Within its three Norse colonies, the walrus provided the means for maintaining a strong tie between often-distant neighbours. As with the Indigenous peoples of Greenland, the Tuniit and Early Kalaalit, walrus hunting and processing for the Norse settlers was a community-wide summer affair.25 Norse hunts were generally performed in the midst of walrus summer migrations, when walruses travel in small groups. Single males could also be cornered during the colder months, which is 4. Each of these tusks were upper left canines, meaning that they must have come from three different walruses that, in the Viking Period, likely inhabited the waters of southwest Iceland. 19  A walrus surfacing off the coast of Iceland is mentioned in a passage from Kormàks Saga: Dectot, “When Ivory Came,” 6. 20  Frei, “Was It for Walrus?” 443.

21  Imer, Peasants and Prayers, 17.

22  Arneborg, “Norse Greenland,” 1–39. 23  Imer, Peasants and Prayers, 21.

24  Star et al., “Ancient DNA of Walrus Ivory,” 5. 25  Pierce, “Walrus Hunting,” 172.

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the walrus’ breeding season.26 Hunters, whether armed with blades or projectiles, such as a crossbow or bow and arrow, had to be close enough to these formidable animals for their weapons to drive through their tough hides; the skin and blubber of a male walrus is around ten centimetres thick around its neck, their tusks are fifty cm long on average and slightly shorter and straighter in females, and the average weight of a male Atlantic walrus is 900 kg or 2000 lbs.27 After a season of seven to ten weeks, the Norse hunters could transport dozens, even hundreds, of decapitated heads back to the Norse settlements, likely leaving the rest of these hefty beasts behind.28

Arctic Neighbours

To reach Disko Bay, the Norse would have interacted with other cultures also relying upon the same walrus colonies. A Norse storehouse for ivory found at the Nuussuaq Peninsula, about one hundred kilometres farther north than Disko Bay, indicates that Scandinavian settlers likely ventured beyond even this popular hunting ground.29 By at least the early thirteenth century, and perhaps earlier, some branches of the Early Kalaalit people were entering the same area, moving eastward from Arctic North America, thus joining the Norse and the earlier Tuniit populations of Greenland who inhabited this land.30 The Tuniit and Early Kalaalit may have also brought tusks from farther north or farther west to trade. Three Indigenous sites contemporary with the Norse colonial period have been found in Disko Bay itself.31 Relationships in a shared hunting ground would likely have been mediated by trade and gifts, including tusks.32 It is clearly outside of my own situated positionality to comprehend or convey the richness and complexity of relationships in the more-than-human world among Arctic communities either in the past or today, and the topic is best explored elsewhere by Indigenous scholars.33 But briefly, it is important to stress that walruses are, for many 26  Houmard, “The modus operandi,” 22.

27  Houmard “The modus operandi,” 25. 28  Dectot, “When Ivory Came” 6.

29  Dectot, “When Ivory Came,” 21.

30  I make reference to two separate Indigenous groups here, the Tuniit (otherwise known as the Dorset by anthropologists) and the Early Kalaalit (also Thule or Historic Inuit in the archaeological sources). Dorset and Thule were the names applied to these cultures by white ethnographers in the early twentieth century. Though no term can fully liberate onoing research from Eurocentric academic categories, I have chosen to use Early Kalaalit to refer to the ancestors of today’s Indigenous Greenlanders, and Tuniit as the name given to this group of Paleo-Eskimos in Inuit oral histories. For the earliest anthropological consideration of these cultures, see Matthiason, “Norse Ruins”; Jenness, “A New Eskimo Culture”; Rowley, “The Dorset Culture.” For further reading on these Indigenous cultures present in Greenland by the thirteenth century, see McGhee, Ancient Peoples; Whitridge, “Classic Thule”; Odess, “Archaeology of Interaction.” For Indigenous accounts of the Tuniit in oral histories, see Qitsualik-Tinsley, Tuniit; Laugrand and Oosten, The Sea Woman, 42–44. 31  Gulløv, “The Nature of Contact,” 18.

32  Zságer, “Miniature Carvings,” 22.

33  Todd, “Fish Pluralities,” 221; see also note 6 above.



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Northern communities, sentient and powerful beings in a shared and highly relational environment, rather than “resources” to be exploited; demonstrations of respect play an essential part in Indigenous hunting practices. Arctic cosmology, tied deeply to the land itself, makes this significance plain.34 According to this cosmology, the Sea Woman is the protector and mother of marine animals. A strong-willed woman, she was banished from her home on land to live beneath the sea. It is only by her permission that seals, walruses, and whales appear for hunters, and disrespecting the prey risks her anger. Breaches of the social contract held between Arctic peoples and their animal neighbours could harm the community if the animals removed themselves or were unwilling to be hunted. In times of scarcity, the spirit of the anggakuk, the spiritual leader of the community, would travel under the water to plead with the Sea Woman to return the walruses.35 A key feature of the history shared across Inuit Nunaat (the homeland of the Inuit) and documented since the earliest days of contact with Europeans, the Sea Woman remains a cornerstone of Inuit cosmology.36 For Artic Indigenous communities, walruses were important neighbours. Their tough hides were used in making such indispensable items as tents, snow shoes, and bootsoles. Like that of seals, walrus meat was a key part of Arctic diets. A 675 kg walrus could provide 275 kg of usable meat. And, as in Norse contexts, walrus bone and ivory were significant materials for ceremonial and hunting objects like harpoon heads, masks, and amulets.37 For hundreds of years before the arrival of Norse settlers in Greenland, Tuniit artisans and spiritual leaders made not only an ingenious and complex array of tools from their tusks, but also splendidly carved figurines, maskettes (miniature masks), and other objects of personal and communal enjoyment as well as spiritual power. Discovered in North Baffin Island, a small ivory object now in the Canadian Museum of History reveals the virtuosity of these artisans as well as a complex belief system in which walruses and their tusks played an important part. Only 4.6 cm long, this piece of tusk has been expertly hollowed, one flat side carved with a geometric pattern that might be interpreted as a human face. The minute object is crowned by two naturalistic walrus heads, their extraordinarily delicate tusks joined at the midpoint. Several 34  As has been explained by Indigenous scholars such as Zoe Todd and Vanessa Watts, the careless reproduction of Indigenous histories within European scholarship can often lead to a reinscription of colonial violence. I want to acknowledge here, with deepest respect, the contemporary Inuit communities who are the bearers of this history and emphasize that the Sea Woman cannot be decontextualized from the contemporary international struggles of Inuit for land sovereignty, political autonomy, and justice. I do not evoke the Sea Woman here as a theoretical jumping-off point that merely filters Indigenous cosmology through the Eurocentric nature–culture divide, but rather in the hopes of decentring European perspectives. 35  Laugrand and Oosten, The Sea Woman, 57–74.

36  European accounts of the Sea Woman extend as far back in Greenland as the eighteenth century, when the Danish missionary Hans Egede was told the of Arnarwuashsaaq, one of the names by which she is known: Laugrand and Oosten, The Sea Woman, 34n2. She is known in contemporary accounts as Sedna, which Inuk writer Rachel Attituq Qitsualik has argued is a derivation of the Inuktut word sanna, meaning “down there”: Qitsualik-Tensley, “The Problem with Sedna,” 12. 37  Houmard, “The modus operandi,” 25.

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Robyn Barrow Plate 4.3. “Shaman’s tube,” Tuniit: walrus ivory, ca. 500 CE, 45.9 mm × 33 mm × 17.1 mm. Canadian Museum of History, SiHw– 1:453, S90–2991.

other such objects have been discovered elsewhere in areas of Tuniit occupation, demonstrating a belief system, or at least shared aesthetic practices, that spanned many kilometres and several centuries. Walrus ivory tusks, carvings, and tools were given as gifts among Tuniit groups who relied on continuing long-distance relationships for marriages, trade, and community.38 There is archaeological evidence that the walrus baculum, or penis bone, was often used by Indigenous peoples in the fashioning of weapons.39 Forming harpoons and other blades from both the baculum and the tusk of the walrus would serve to redirect the impressive strength of the animal, adapting its potency for the use of the community. The same pattern is found in Norse sites on Greenland, where the baculum was used particularly in knife handles, wall hooks, and trophies.40 Indeed, this may have been a practice transmitted across cultures. In both Tuniit and Early Kalaalit artistic production, amulets were worn on the bodies of hunters and spiritual leaders.41 Amulets of this type, featuring polar bears and walruses, have also been found at Norse sites.42 We must therefore imagine that the Norse who attended services in Garðar cathedral and nearly two dozen other Christian churches in their settlements, were also invested in the spiritual powers of the Arctic. The walrus, as both a neighbour and a mutually essential resource, was the active instigator of these relationships. Gunhild’s cross, destined for a courtly afterlife in Denmark, emerged from this context.

Journeys and Exchange

Removing walrus tusks from the skull without losing any precious material was a specialized skill. The Norse, like their Indigenous neighbours, learned to leave the skulls for some time before carefully dislodging the tusks with micro-blades. Some walrus ivory was used locally. Excavations at Sandnes, the chief farm of the Western Settlement, have 38  McGhee, Ancient Peoples, 138, 140, 148.

39  Houmard, “The modus operandi,” 21. 40  Pierce, “Walrus Hunting,” 172. 41  Carpenter, Upside Down, 59.

42  Pierce, “Walrus Hunting,” 179.

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Figures 4.3a–b. Walrus and polar bear amulets from Norse Greenland, CC–BY–SA Rikke Margrethe Mølvig Sekkelund, The National Museum of Denmark. Polar Bear, L. 2.4 cm, Farm W51, Sandaaes, Kilaarsarfik, found in dwelling, walrus ivory; Walrus, L. 3.8 cm, Farm W52a, Umiviarsuk, walrus molar.

revealed many small walrus ivory objects. Among them, belt buckles carved from walrus ivory bear striking resemblance to similar buckles in Gunhild’s Danish homeland.43 A twelfth-century crozier buried with a bishop in the North chapel of Garðar Cathedral presents the finest extant example of carving discovered in the Greenland. Because it was constructed of materials all available in Greenland, with a walrus ivory crook and an ashwood staff, this symbol of episcopal power could have been carved in the colony itself, though there are no other examples of such large-scale ivory carving in the settlement. The sale of walrus ivory from Greenland brought in needed goods such as wine, grains, metals (including gold), and stained glass for the Garðar cathedral windows.44 In the period around 1100, when Gunhild’s Cross was commissioned in Denmark, Scandinavians’ trade economy with western Europe was in a period of rapid growth in the wake of Christian conversion. With expanding relationships with European neighbours, Scandinavian ports began to distribute a wide array of specialized marine commodities, particularly stockfish, herring, and cod.45 This growth in markets, demonstrated through the increased number of extant walrus ivory objects found in western Europe, as well as the developing system of tribute and taxation, would have increased demand upon Greenland walrus populations.46 43  Pierce, “Walrus Hunting,” 178.

44  Fragments of stained glass were discovered in the archaeological record of Garðar Cathedral, representing the only evidence of glass windows discovered in the Norse Greenland colony: Nørland, “Norse Ruins,” 37. 45  Perdikaris and McGovern, “Codfish, Walrus,” 85; Nedkvitne, Social Consequences, 6.

46  By the thirteenth century, Greenland was increasingly regulated by both the kings of Norway and the Roman Church, which exacted large payments in walrus materials. On March 4, 1282, a letter from Pope Martin IV confirms that the Norse Greenlanders had paid their crusade tithes using walrus tusks, skins, and ropes; after sale of these confounding items, it orders that, in future, the

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Robyn Barrow Figure 4.4. Crozier and ring, Garðar Cathedral, Greenland: walrus ivory, wood, and gold, ca. twelfth century. CC–BY–SA Lennart Larsen, National Museum of Denmark.

Due to limited timber for shipbuilding, Norse Greenlanders were essentially moored on their outpost by the twelfth century. As a result, Norwegian merchants made the long voyage to Greenland and ferried wares back and forth across the North Atlantic.47 Walrus skins were the Norwegian material of choice in constructing ropes and sails. Due to the network of thickly bundled collagen fibrils in the reticular layer of the dermis layer of the skin, walrus hides are exceptionally strong and durable. 48 The first known written reference to walruses is recorded in the account of the adventurer Ohthere, who told King Alfred of his voyages around 890: “His main reason for going there, apart from exploring the land, was for the walruses, because they have very fine ivory in their tusks […] and their hide is very good for shipropes.”49 A thirteenth-century Norwegian account, Konungs skuggsjá, notes that walrus hide rope is “of such strength that sixty men may pull at one rope without breaking it.”50 Walrus hides were thus a preferred material for Scandinavian sailors making the long and treacherous journey to and from Greenland to obtain walrus tusks. Though, in much of medieval Europe, walruses were largely unknown and the origins of their ivory mysterious, the Arctic mammals were probably better understood in Scandinavia. Local ruling families were tightly intertwined, with Danish and Norwegian relations centrally important to leadership in both lands. Loosely organized governance payments should be made in gold and silver. See Olivier-Martin, Les registres, 44–45: “Subjunxisti quoque quod Gronlandie decima non percipitur nisi in bovinis et focarum coriis ac dentibus et funibus balenarum que, sicut asseris, vix ad competens pretium vendi possunt.” In 1327, a large shipment of walrus tusks helped to fund a Norwegian crusade against Novgorod: Keller, “Furs, Fish, and Ivory,” 3; Christiansen, Northern Crusades, 189–95. The ecclesiastical organization and government of medieval Norway and Iceland has also been explored extensively by historian Joel Anderson: see his articles “Bishop Guðmundr” and “Ecclesiastical Government.” 47  Imer, Peasants and Prayers, 22.

48  Berta et al., Marine Mammals, 134.

49  Two Voyagers, ed. Lund, 19–20: “Swipost he for dider, toeacan pæs lands sceawunge, for pæm horshwæleum, for dæm hie habbad swipe æpele ban on hiore topum […] hiora hyd bid swide god to sciprapum.” This account is part of an Old English translation of the Latin Historiae adversus paganis by Paulus Orosius (fl. ca. 400) in London, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius B.I., fol. 13v.

50  Copenhagen, University of Copenhagen MS Arní� Magnússon 243, fol. B.; Konungs skuggsjá, ed. Larson, 140.



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and intermittent Danish occupation in Norway led to unstable alliances and unification, later broken by conflict. Danish nobility would have been explicitly aware of what walrus ivory was and where it came from. It is unlikely that the tusks used in Gunhild’s cross were shipped directly to their final destination in Denmark from Greenland. More likely, the material passed through ports in Iceland or the Norwegian port of Nidaros, modern Trondheim, along the way.51 In these ports, walrus ivory was quite special, but still recognizable.52 The Old Danish word for walrus is hvalros, derived (like the Old English horshwaleum or horse-whale) from the Old Norse hrosshalvr.53 The tusks were highly desirable for luxury carving. In an Anglo-French chronicle of the life of St. Alban, dating from around 1230, the author describes a plain cross that “was not adorned with gold or other metal, or ivory or rohal [walrus ivory]. Nor were there any applied gems or crystal on it.”54 The author of this passage identifies walrus and elephant ivory as distinct materials from one another, though both appropriate for the decoration of crosses. For northern traders and elite patrons, walrus ivory, as a luxury good exclusively sourced from the Nordic world, was considered an apt gift for kings. Orosius’ chronicle mentions that Ohthere gifted King Alfred a tribute of walrus ivory upon arrival in English port.55 A walrus ivory oliphant of Norwegian provenance from the treasure of SaintChapelle was likely a gift from King Magnus VI of Norway to French king Philip III in exchange for a thorn from the Crown of Thorns.56 To commemorate the reunification of

51  Due to the limitations of tusk size, walrus ivory carvings are the epitome of portable objects, and scholars have historically disputed the provenance of Gunhild’s cross. As Peter Lasko asserts, “Not only are ivories always likely to have travelled easily, but skilled craftsmen also must often have worked both in Britain and on the Continent […] as well as in Scandinavia.” In 1646, Sophie Brahe, a widow in the same Danish noble family to which Helena belonged, owned the cross (see above, note 12). Despite this remarkably stable provenance, a 1974 exhibition on Early English art at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London exhibited the cross as English in origin, arguing that it had been looted from the Abbey of Peterborough or Ely. To support an alleged English provenance, Gunhild’s Cross has also been cited as a forerunner to the Metropolitan Museum’s Cloisters Cross, an object with its own mysterious and problematic history. However, apart from the fact that both crosses were carved in walrus ivory, very little about their iconographies, styles, or even constructions bear out this comparison.

52  It is difficult to say how much the different people handling walrus ivory in various parts of Europe would have known about the material. The etymology of the modern English word “walrus” is not totally clear, and the French morse did not come into usage until the sixteenth century. Medieval French and later English sources use derivations of the Norman derivative rohal. In Middle French literature, rohal was a stone akin to amber that came from the sea, and could refer to either walrus tusk or narwhal horn. Often it was associated with courtly contexts and luxurious inlay. In these continental sources, the association with animal teeth is lost. The hairy whales (hirsutus cetus) that Albertus Magnus speculated about in the thirteenth century would remain shrouded in mystery in most of Europe well into the early modern period. See Sayers, “Lexical and Literary Evidence”; Guérin, “Tears of Compunction,” 52–56; Gilman, “Tale of Two Ivories.” 53  Sayers, “Lexical and Literary Evidence,” 101, 110.

54  Dublin, Trinity College MS 177; La Vie de Seint Auban, vv. 2–6. 55  Two Voyagers, ed. Lund, 19–20.

56  Seaver, “Desirable Teeth,” 277; Gaborit-Chopin, “L’Oliphant.”

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Norway, Sweden, and Denmark in the 1397 Kalmar Union, a carved walrus tusk bearing the insignia of Christian I and his Queen Dorothea, the rulers who had last maintained kingship over the three kingdoms, was gifted to the new ruler, Eric of Pomerania.57 As an emblem of Scandinavian power and luxury, this tusk, inherited by one rule from another, symbolized the kingship of the three unified Nordic realms.58 Just as tusks passed between Indigenous and Greenland Norse groups to solidify trading bonds and mediate shared spaces, Arctic ivory had the potential to signal similar interactions among Scandinavian powers and between Scandinavia and the rest of Europe. As a rare and exceptional commodity, and one on which Scandinavia held an exclusive monopoly, walrus ivory as gift embodied northern prestige.

Material and Meaning

With the provenance, marine crossing, and value of its uncarved tusks mapped, we can now return to the iconography of the cross itself.59 Constructed from two solid pieces of walrus ivory, Gunhild’s cross is held together by a cross half lap joint, meaning a flat “cheek cut” was made halfway through the thicknesses of the two interlocking pieces of planed ivory, so that they securely lock together.60 The long vertical member reveals the natural narrowing of the walrus tusk from proximate to distal end. Traces of red, green, and gold pigments survive, and it is possible that the cross was even more extensively gilded. Examination of the eyes of the surviving figures reveals traces of jet. The corpus of Christ that once hung on the cross face has disappeared.61 It is now known only through the marks of its significant absence: the large vacancy in the cross composition, two of the three ivory pegs that once affixed Christ to the cross, and colour variation where the back of the sculpture once rested. (This figure was approximately 14 cm long and later metal nails recall the position of his open palms.) Today, the only remaining bodily “relic” of Christ is the painted blood that trickles over the ivory from his missing wounds. While this absence is regrettable, what remains is the intersection of other bodily relics, the tusks, and their meaningful conjunction at the crossroads of cultures and of animal-human relations. Though the corpus of Christ is now lost, his sacrificial body was probably also carved from the tooth of a walrus that had had a spear thrust into its side far across the ocean. The red trickle of painted blood that ran from the wounds in Christ’s palms and remains on the 57  Seaver, “Desirable Teeth,” 277.

58  In a similar vein, Mariam Rosser-Owens has elucidated the ways in which elephant ivory oliphants were often given as symbolic objects, or “horns of tenure,” in the transfer or gifting of land: “The Oliphant,” 44–47. 59  I do not extensively address its liturgical or devotional use in this article, but Gunhild’s cross must have been used as a personal cross, a processional cross, and/or an altar cross, and probably functioned in multiple ways through the centuries. There are signs of wear from touching, as well as a large fissure at the cross’s base likely due to internal pressure. The evidence of damage to the lower roundel indicates that Gunhild’s cross was repeatedly inserted into a support—either as an altar cross or as a processional cross. 60  Rogowski, Complete Illustrated Guide to Joinery, 231.

61  Beckwith, Ivory Carvings, 44.



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cross remembers the violent end of the animal the material came from, a mnemonic for the hunting ground where the ivory’s journey began.62 When viewing the cross exclusively from the front, as one would if it sat on an altar, only a limited portion of the carving is visible. From this perspective, the cross functions first as an image, devoid of evident textual intervention. It is only in the perusal of the cross from every angle that the extensive inscriptions reveal themselves along the sides and back. In this way, the apprehension of the text and its iconographic context is bound to the haptic pleasure of feeling its heft, turning the smooth ivory over in the hands. This brings much of the carving into a secondary activation, a drama played out only in relationship to the viewer’s own body. Seen from afar, as it would have been if displayed on a stand, the cross works differently, mysteries of text and image veiled by distance. In this way, it is similar to a seal matrix, an amulet, a knife handle, a chess piece, or a crozier: in each of these cases, the walrus ivory was carved with the expectation of movement and touch. Gunhild’s cross was crafted to require close, physical association with a person to be fully apprehended; even if this kind of interaction was not available to anyone who encountered it, the cross cultivates a desire for a multisensory experience of itself and, through that relationship, an intimate encounter with the worldview it embodies. The patron’s insistence upon naming herself demonstrates the expectation that she would be remembered through prayer by those who saw and experienced this artifact. Whether held in the hand in an intimate encounter or held aloft on a support for the spectatorship of a community, the cross projects a set of beliefs, values, and relationships. Gunhild’s cross was likely commissioned as a donation to a religious community, one for which she held a particular affection or was perhaps even herself a part.63 Gifts of this kind could be appropriate displays of power and wealth for royal women, useful both in creating a material legacy for themselves and in securing their afterlife via prayer.64 Details in the iconography also prompt a viewer to remember the woman who had the cross made: among the redeemed souls to the right of Christ in Judgment is a crowned woman. The female personification of Ecclesia holds a staff topped by a cross, replicating the shape of Gunhild’s cross in another woman’s grip. At the top, the personification of Life (VITA) achieves the same effect with the cruciform branch from the Tree of Life in her hand. In each of these small figures, Gunhild and her gift are remembered. Though each roundel can operate, to an extent, on its own, the full resonance of the cross’s iconography functions through the web of relationships between the carvings across the object’s front and back.65 On the two sides of Gunhild’s cross there is a quadripartite division of space: four satellite images, separated by their roundels and placement, surround the central crossing like spokes on a wheel. Ideological antonyms sit in

62  Examples of such ivory corpora still attached to their crosses include the Crucifix of Ferdinand and Sancha, ca. 1063, in the National Archeological Museum of Spain, Madrid. Like Gunhild’s cross, this object also incorporates jet in the decoration of eyes. 63  Heslop, “Gunhild’s Cross,” 455.

64  Anderson, “Sign of the Cross”; Cohen, “Abbess Uta.”

65  Wolfgang Kemp has considered the symbolic potential of pictorial fields, using cross axes and maps to examine how narrative systems might also contain geographic and cosmological meaning: see his “Medieval Pictorial Systems,” 121–38.

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spatial opposition. Paradise and Hell on one side, and Life and Death on the other, mark the top and bottom of the object like the opposing poles of the globe. In the parable from Luke 16, which is referenced through the pleas of the condemned soul in the lower roundel, the separation between “Abraham’s bosom” (salvation) and Hell is visualized through the distance between the top and bottom roundels of Gunhild’s cross: “Between us and you, there is fixed a great chaos: so that they who would pass from hence to you cannot, nor from thence come hither.”66 Ecclesia sits across from Synagogua, and the redeemed across from the unredeemed. In this sense, Gunhild’s cross can be seen as a map encompassing the Christian cosmos. Iconographically, this program of paired opposites on front and back of the cross is unique, as noted by Sandy Heslop.67 Temporally, the front and back also mirror the moment of Judgment and the moment of Crucifixion. Through all these juxtapositions, there is an elision between temporal, geographic, and eschatological space, the cross arms acting as the sinew connecting these extremes. Everything between these ultimate states of being is held in the dialogic space of the ivory arms, the crossing where the corpus of Christ once hung. Paradise and Hell, life and death, the redeemed and the unredeemed: these outer roundels of the cross visualize the four peripheries, or endpoints, of the Christian worldview. All that lies between, all the living world, is contained on the ivory surface between them. The zone once demarcated by the arms of the crucified Christ represents the distance between these greatest extremes of divine judgment. As a material brought from the very edge of the world, walrus ivory itself performed travel and embodied great distance, making its use yet another articulation of vast conceptual spaces. The space between the left and right roundels of Gunhild’s cross is an ideogram, an image of, to quote Psalm 103, “how far the East lies from the West.”68 It is a spiritual system, a mythography adopted by Gunhild and mapped onto the economic system of the Arctic ivory trade.

Crossroads

Gunhild’s cross, through the combination of its material, form, iconography, and numerous inscriptions, is a unique object in the context of twelfth-century Denmark, where it was probably made. And with the exception of a few comparanda found either far away or in the medium metalwork, it is also unique in twelfth-century Scandinavia and in Europe, writ large. To find cruciform equivalents for the inscription hhonouring its patron, we must retrace the journey of its ivory’s Arctic crossing, back along the marine trades routes to Greenland. Buried in the grassy sheep farm near Garðar Cathedral, a number of wooden crosses bearing runic and Latin inscriptions were discovered in Nørland’s excavations of Greenland churchyards. Made of local juniper and pinewood, probably imported, these humbler portable crosses harmonize with the one commissioned by Gunhild thousands of kilometres away. The 66  Luke 16:26.

67  Heslop, “Gunhild’s Cross,” 441. 68  Psalm 103:12.

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Figure 4.5. Cemetery cross, Herjolfnes, Greenland: wood, ca. early thirteenth century. Herjolfsnes-trækors 8. CC–BY–SA Arnold Mikkelsen, National Museum of Denmark.

runes on two examples read: “Almighty God, protect Gudleifr well”69 and “Pórleifr made this cross to praise and worship almighty God.”70 Though significantly simpler than the inscriptions honouring Gunhild and Liutger on Gunhild’s cross, the parallels between these incised prayers is striking. These are all speaking objects, memorializing their owners and requesting divine protection. Like Gunhild’s cross, and unlike other known comparable objects (such as the Cloisters Cross or the metalwork portable crosses in Denmark), these Greenland crosses are constructed in two pieces, the crossbar and vertical assembled with the same half lap joint. Blown across windy seas by sails and rope made from walrus skins, concepts of both religion and craft circulated through the North Atlantic trade sphere. Gunhild’s cross is an object with a long and complex memory. Embedded in the Arctic ivory, and the journeys that ivory undertook before it was carved, are far more extensive histories than those immediately visible in its courtly European provenance. To fully understand the Nordic medieval world, material witnesses such as this cross must be encountered with full appreciation for the vibrancy and scope of long-distance Nordic trade in the period. Through this exploration, residents of medieval Greenland, human and more-than-human neighbours, are pulled to the fore. Walruses were facilitators of a wide range of connections: their tusks and hides created moments of encounter between Norse and Indigenous groups; between traders and patrons; between kings; between Gunhild, her community, and her god.

69  Imer, Peasants and Prayers, 220.

70  Imer, Peasants and Prayers, 222.

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Robyn Barrow ([email protected]) holds a BA in the History of Art from Rhodes College and MAs in medieval Art History from the Courtauld Institute of Art and the University of Pennsylvania, where she is a doctoral candidate. In Philadelphia, she lives and works in Lenapehoking, the unceded ancestral homelands of the Lenni Lenape people. Her dissertation focuses on material and cultural exchanges in the Nordic world during the medieval period.

Abstract The walrus ivory trade constituted a cornerstone of Norse Greenlandic society, its exchange providing goods essential for the isolated settlement’s survival until the fifteenth century. The journey to the walrus hunting grounds at Disko Bay drew European settlers into encounters with their Indigenous neighbours the and morethan-human world of Greenland. As walrus tusks moved through the North Atlantic trade sphere, from Disko Bay to the Scandinavian Greenland settlements and on over the North Atlantic to Europe, it materialized a particular kind of Nordic prestige, was a gift between traders and kings, and was carved into objects of devotion as Scandinavia converted to Christianity. Tracing the journey of tusks along these trade routes through the case study of Gunhild’s cross, a devotional cross likely carved in Denmark in the early twelfth century, reveals both the depth and complexity of object memory and the vibrancy and scope of Nordic trade in the medieval period.

Keywords Arctic, walrus ivory, Gunhild’s Cross, Scandinavia, North Atlantic trade sphere, global North, Tuniit, Kalaalit Nunaat, Greenland, medieval women patrons, ivory carving, conversion

THE FAR NORTH IN THE EYES OF ADAM OF BREMEN AND THE ANONYMOUS AUTHOR OF THE HISTORIA NORWEGIE

In the twelfth

TATJANA N. JACKSON*

to fourteenth centuries, a genre of specialized geographical literature began to emerge in Scandinavia: a series of descriptions of the inhabited world, or its parts, based on a continental European chorographic tradition—primarily the Etymologiae by Isidorus of Seville and Honorius of Autun’s encyclopaedia Imago mundi—but also on local knowledge of the topography of northern and eastern Europe.1 Alongside these Old Norse writings, geographical descriptions also occur in Old Norse chronicles and sagas. Studying the geographical descriptions in twelfth-century Scandinavian Latin texts, Lars Boje Mortensen concludes that the medieval geographical imagination had been based on older textual predecessors, rather than on personal acquaintance with the territories in question. Indeed, the influence of ancient authors predominated even in the descriptions of lands that had not been familiar to them, as manifested in the structure and presentation of geographical and ethnographic material in these later works. Northern geography was thus subsumed into the learned discourse. At the same time, Mortensen rightly emphasizes that, by the twelfth century, the geography of northern territories was well known in practice, so that the need arose “to explain the region in writing,” mainly in Latin, within the framework of the centuriesold Latin written culture, because the historians who sought to chronicle the northern periphery of Europe aimed at including their region into the common Christian space, and could not do so without the basis of written geography.2 The twelfth-century northern scholars who were the first to write in Latin were the anonymous author of the Historia Norwegie (History of Norway); a Norwegian known as Theodoricus the Monk, author of the Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium (The Ancient History of the Norwegian Kings); a Dane, Saxo Grammaticus, the author of the Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danes); Ælnoth, an Anglo-Saxon monk who, as a Danish transplant, authored the Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eius (Deeds of Sweyn the Great and His Sons); and the Norwegian author of the introduction to Passio Olaui (Passion of Saint Olaf, that is, Olaf II Haraldson, king of Norway from 1015 to 1028). All of them faced the task of creating a textual map of the northern regions, and all had to rely on ancient texts even though ancient authors either did not know anything about *  The author would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research, project no. 18–09–00486

1  Mel’nikova, Древнескандинавские географические сочинения; Simek, Altnordische Kosmographie, 143–211. 2  Mortensen, “Language of Geographical Description.” See also the article by Felicitas Schmieder at the end of this collection.

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the North, or were not at all interested in it. Their models for creating new geographical descriptions of the northern lands were the books of the Old and New Testaments, as well as patristic literature, with their sacred geographies; and the Roman and early medieval geographies represented by the works of Solinus (ca. third century CE), Paulus Orosius (ca. 385–420), Isidore (ca. 560–636), Bede the Venerable (ca. 673–735), Aethicus of Istria (seventh to eighth century), Paul the Deacon (ca. 720–800), and the Irish monk Dicuil (late eighth to early ninth centuries), all of whom were well known to European intellectuals of the time. The key role of bridging ancient knowledge and early Scandinavian historiography and chorography was played by Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae Pontificum (History of the Archbishops of Hamburg–Bremen), composed ca. 1070, the fourth book of which was devoted to the geography of the North. For the first time in history, Denmark with its islands, the Scandinavian Peninsula, the ports of Birka and Trondheim, and many more localities found their place on a Latin-language textual map. In the course of the twelfth century, Adam’s work became known in the north of Germany and in Denmark, but there are reasons to believe that it was known at the beginning of the century even in Iceland.3 Out of the twelfth-century Scandinavian writings listed above, the most complete textual map may be found in the anonymous Historia Norwegie, dating from the third quarter of the twelfth century,4 in which almost two-fifths of the text are devoted to the geographical description of Norway, islands in the ocean to the north of it, as well as neighbouring lands and peoples (chapters I–VIII). This is the first full-scale geographical description of this northern region in all of Scandinavian literature. Moreover, its anonymous author is the only (presumptive) Norwegian in the contemporary written record who is clearly familiar with Adam’s work.5 As such, the Historia Norwegie, and in particular its geographical component, has been exhaustively studied by the modern editors of this text, Inger Ekrem and Lars Boje Mortensen. According to Mortensen, it is “a unique geographical survey of Norway” which “espouses a missionary view of the territory: the far North is included in the realm, but it has not yet been Christianized.”6 In her turn, Ekrem sees in this geographic description of the far North, and especially the tributary islands of Norway, “the Norwegian demand for a separate Norwegian archdiocese” which “should comprise mainland Norway (though not Jämtland), Greenland, the Orkneys (including the Shetlands), the Hebrides and the Isle of Man, the Faeroes and Iceland.”7 These scholars have demonstrated that the chronicle’s main sources were Adam’s Gesta and Honorius’ Imago mundi (composed between 1110 and 1139). According to Mortensen, Honorius “served as a general inspiration for Latin style […] and for our author’s interest in mirabilia and natural phenomena” such that, in Historia Norw3  Mortensen, “Language of Geographical Description,” 110–111; compare Mundal, “Íslend­ingabók.”

4  Ellehøj, Studier; Mortensen, “Introduction.” 5  Mortensen, “Introduction,” 18.

6  Mortensen, “Introduction,” 44.

7  Ekrem, “Essay,” 194; Ekrem, Nytt lys, 29–47.

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egie, “we find a number of phrases and explanations from Imago mundi.” Meanwhile, the geographical introduction to Historia Norwegie “is a correction and an extension of Adam’s missionary map of the North.”8 Mortensen repeats this same thesis in another work of his, arguing that this “learned geographical introduction” reads as “clearly expanding upon and correcting the one given by Adam of Bremen a century earlier.”9 According to Ekrem, much of Adam’s geographical description was “left unused and uncontested,” although “one would have thought that the author of Historia Norwegie would have benefited from Adam.”10 This article is a fresh study of the correlation between the description of Norway by Adam and that of the Historia Norwegie. In comparing the picture of the far North in these two interrelated chronicles, I aim to pinpoint the refinements and changes that were introduced, after about a century, by the anonymous Norwegian author. In so doing, I will demonstrate that the anonymous author of the Historia Norwegie based his geographical description of the North, not on a compilation of ancient sources as Adam did, but on the general geographical lore that he shared with other representatives of the Norwegian-Icelandic cultural milieu. I will prove this by comparing the mental map of the Historia Norwegie’s author with that of the authors of the Icelandic sagas. The fourth chapter of Adam’s work, entitled A Description of the Islands of the North (Descriptio insularum aquilonis), opens with a detailed description of the country of the Danes (IV.1–9) which “is almost all spread out over islands.”11 Then the writer’s gaze turns eastward, and here follows (IV.10–20) his account “about the nature of the Baltic Sea” based “upon the writings of Einhard.”12 Further, the chronicler sends his reader in the northern direction, “beyond the islands of the Danes.”13 According to Adam, another world opens up there, namely: Sueonia and Nortmannia, as he calls Sweden and Norway, the two largest northern kingdoms, which are still almost unknown (IV.21). The ocean near Norway, he writes, contains many considerable islands, almost all of which are currently ruled by the Norwegians (IV.35). His main oral source, as he claims,14 is “the very well-informed king of the Danes,”15 Sven Estridsen, who ruled between 1047 and 1076. However, Adam combines the stories of the Danish king with considerable book knowledge, quoting and mentioning in his description ancient and early medieval 8  Mortensen, “Introduction,” 17.

9  Mortensen, “Historia Norwegie,” 58. 10  Ekrem, “Essay,” 185.

11  Adam, Gesta, IV.1; trans. Tschan, 187; ed. Schmeidler, 226. “Provintia Danorum tota fere in insulas dispertita est.”

12  Adam, Gesta, IV.10; trans. Tschan, 193; ed. Schmeidler, 237–38: “de natura Baltici maris dicere […] ex scriptis Einhardi fecerim.” Einhard (775–840) was a Frankish scholar, a historian, and a biographer of Charlemagne. 13  Adam, Gesta, IV.21; trans. Tschan, 202; ed. Schmeidler, 250: “Transeuntibus insulas Danorum.”

14  According to Jakub Morawiec, Sven should be treated, not as a source of Adam’s information, but as a rhetorical figure necessary for Adam to achieve his goals: oral presentation at the 2nd Jómsborg Conference, November 19, 2020 (to be published in a volume of conference proceedings). 15  Adam, Gesta, IV.21; trans. Tschan, 202; ed. Schmeidler, 250: “scientissimus rex Danorum.”

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authors (Sallust, Horace, Virgil, Lucan, Martian, Solinus, Orosius, Bede, and so forth), sometimes making mistakes in attributing his information, and drawing his own logical conclusions from the aggregate data. He also quotes a story (IV.40) told to him by the archbishop of Hamburg–Bremen, Adalbert (1046–1072), of how (in the days of his predecessor) some noble men from Frisia had sailed to the north, reached the Orkneys, then Iceland, and then had suddenly been lost in the ocean’s dark mist, while on the way back they reached the island of Cyclops and dogs of unusual size. From time to time, he turns to some vague oral information (“It is said that one can sail to them [the Orkneys] in a day from the Norwegian city of Trondheim. They say, too, that from the Orkneys it is just as far whether you steer toward England or set sail for Scotland”)16 or refers to some written sources that he does not name (“We have read that, in addition to other monsters that are there, even griffins are to be found in those Hyperborean mountains”).17 Adam perceives Nortmannia as stretching northward and interprets the name of the country correspondingly: “By moderns it is called Norway [because] in its length that land extends into the farthest northern zone, whence also it takes its name.”18 In spite of his interest in etymologies, Adam does not attribute the derivation of this place-name to Nórr/Nóri, the eponymous mythical king—as do the author of the Historia Norwegie;19 the monk Oddr Snorrason in his Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar (Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, late twelfth century);20 and the authors of two thirteenth-century þættir or “yarns,” Fundinn Noregr (Founding of Norway)21 and Hversu Noregr byggðist (How Norway Was Peopled).22 This almost certainly indicates that Adam was not familiar with Old Norse oral tradition and that his idea of the northern part of Nortmannia was 16  Adam, Gesta, IV.35; trans. Tschan, 216; ed. Schmeidler, 270–71: “Ad quas a civitate Nortmannorum Trondemni per diem ferunt navigari posse. Itemque ab Orchadibus aiunt simile spatium viae, sive in Angliam dirigas, sive in Scotiam flectere velis” (emphasis added).

17  Adam, Gesta, IV.24, scholion 137 (added by Adam himself); trans. Tschan, 206; ed. Schmeidler, 256: “In Yperboreis montibus preter alia, quae ibi sunt, monstra leguntur etiam grifes nasci” (emphasis added). 18  Adam, Gesta, IV.1; trans. Tschan, 210–11; ed. Schmeidler, 263: “Haec a modernis dicitur Noruegia […] longitudine sua extremam septentrionis plagam extenditur haec region, unde et dicitur.” 19  Historia Norwegie I.1, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen; trans. Fisher, 52–53: “Norwegia igitur a quodam re[ge, qui Nor] nuncupatus est, nomen optinu[isse dicitur]”—“Norway is said to have taken its name from a king called Nor.”

20  Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar, ed. Finnur Jónsson, 83: “Sa var konungr forðum er Nori het er fyrst bygþi Noreg”—“Formerly there was a king named Nóri who first inhabited Norway”: trans. Andersson, The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, 71.

21  Orkneyinga saga, ed. Sigurður Nordal, 5: “Þaðan sneri Nórr aptr til rí�kis þess er hann hafði undir sik lagt, þat kallaði hann Noreg; rèð hann því� rí�ki meðan hann lifði, en synir hans eptir hann”— “From there Nórr returned to the kingdom he had conquered, which he called Norway; he ruled that kingdom while he lived, and his sons after him” (my translation). 22  Flateyjarbók 1, 22, ed. Guðbrandr Vigfússon and Unger: “Þetta land allt lagdi Norr vndir sik […] Þetta land er nu kalladr Noregr”—“Nórr conquered all this land […] This country is now called Norway” (my translation).

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formed solely on the basis of prior written texts. According to his description, its main mountain ridge is bent toward the north and, “after following the course of the shoreline of a raging ocean, it finally has its bounds in the Riphean Mountains, where the tired world also comes to an end.”23 Adam claims that this mountainous region, terrifying with its perpetual snows, was “named by Roman writers the Riphean range.”24 Mentioned already by representatives of the Milesian school of thought founded in the sixth century BCE, the Riphean Mountains got firmly established in the ancient worldview as the northern outskirts of the oecumene, most often the north/northeastern frontier of Europe. This largely mythological concept had remained relevant for many centuries.25 On Adam’s textual map, the Riphean Mountains therefore occupy the place assigned to them from antiquity—and yet his North is situated much further north than the one which ancient authors had in mind, having moved to the remote outskirts of Sweden and Norway. All the inhabitants of Norway are, as Adam puts it, “thoroughly Christian,” except those living in the far northern regions by the ocean, who are “superior in the magic arts and incantations.”26 The Scritefingi (whom he also calls the Hyperboreans) who dwell in those mountains cannot live without frosty snows and surpass even wild beasts in their speed of movement through the snow. Adam has no doubt that, beyond Nortmannia, there is not a single human habitation, “nothing but ocean, terrible to look upon and limitless, encircling the whole world.”27 Almost all these islands lying in this ocean are now, according to Adam, under the rule of the Norwegians. He goes on to describe them in detail, referring to both ancient authors and contemporary eyewitnesses. There are the Orkney Islands (Orchades insulae, IV.35), the island of Thule which is now called Iceland (Thyle nunc, Island, IV.36), the large island of Greenland (Gronland, IV.37) and Hålogaland, which Adam thinks to be an island (Halagland, IV.38). For the sake of objectivity, however, Adam adds here a scholium where he cites a different opinion: “others say Halagland is part of the farthest Nordmannia, lying very near the Skritefingi and inaccessible by reason of the rugged mountains and the cold.”28 With reference to the king of the Danes, he names still one more island, Winland (IV.39), which we now know 23  Adam, Gesta, IV.31; trans. Tschan, 211; ed. Schmeidler, 263: “postquam frementis occeani marginem suo circuit ambitu, tandem in Ripheis montibus limitem facit, ubi et lassus deficit orbis.”

24  Adam, Gesta, IV.32; trans. Tschan, 213; ed. Schmeidler, 266: “Eadem montana Romani auctores Riphea iuga nuncupant, perpetuis horrida nivibus.” 25  See Jackson, Konovalova, and Podossinov, Ripeĭskie gory (and references therein).

26  Adam, Gesta, IV.32; trans. Tschan, 212; ed. Schmeidler, 265: “Omnes vero sunt christianissini, qui in Norvegia degunt, exceptis illis, qui trans arctoam plagam circa occeanum remoti sunt. Eos adhuc ferunt magicis artibus sive incantationibus in tantum prevalere.”

27  Adam, Gesta, IV.35; trans. Tschan, 215; ed. Schmeidler, 269: “nihil inveniens habitacionis humanae nisi terribilem visu et infinitum occeanum, qui totum mundum amplectitur.”

28  Adam, Gesta, IV. 38, Schol. 159; trans. Tschan, 219; ed. Schmeidler, 274: “Alii dicunt Halagland esse partem Nordmanniae postremam, quae sit proxima Scritofingis, asperitate montium et frigoris inaccessa.”

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to have been described by Icelandic sagas as Vínland: the territories beyond the Atlantic Ocean, notably Newfoundland, visited and temporarily settled by Norsemen around the year 1000.29 In sum, Adam skilfully applies his extensive knowledge of ancient literature to those cases where he lacks the oral and experiential knowledge of his northern contemporaries. His description of the North, compiled from different sources, is designed to outline the future targets of missionary projects. Here, the Riphean Mountains come in handy: they appear in his text as a boundary between the two worlds, Christian and pagan. By resorting to long-established geographic tropes and ethnic stereotypes, Adam vividly characterizes the horrors of life among uncivilized (that is unconverted) northern peoples. Let us turn now to the Historia Norwegie, in which (as noted above) almost twofifths of the text are devoted to a description of Norway, islands in the ocean, northern lands and peoples. Here, the location of Norway (as in Adam’s text and in numerous works of Old Norse literature)30 stretches toward the north. “It starts in the east from the Great River [that is, Göta älv] but bends towards the west and so turns back as its edge circles round northwards.”31 But in contrast to Adam, the author of the Historia Norwegie does not rely on classical sources but uses either oral tradition or his personal knowledge to describe northern Norway, and his text has a lot in common with the works of Old Norse–Icelandic literature. Thus, in order to describe the northernmost regions, the anonymous author mentions neither the Riphean Mountains nor the Hyperboreans: instead, he calls this land Halogia [Hålogaland] and notes that its “inhabitants dwell a good deal with the Finns [that is, the Sámi], so that there are frequent transactions between them.”32 People knew about Hålogaland already in the late ninth century, when the Anglo-Saxon King Alfred caused the words of a certain Ohthere to be put into writing; Ohthere had told him “that he lived furthest north of all Norwegians,” and that “the district where he lived is called Halgoland,” and that “the land extends very far north beyond that point, but it is all uninhabited, except for a few places here and there where the Finnas have their camps, hunting in winter, and in summer fishing in the sea.”33 Hålogaland (Hálogaland) is also named as a territorial unit within Norway in a number of Icelandic sagas: for instance, in the descriptions of 29  See Gí�sli Sigurðsson, “The Vinland Sagas”; Sverrir Jakobsson, “Vinland”; Egeler, Islands in the West. 30  See Jackson and Podossinov, “Norway in Old Norse Literature.”

31  Historia Norwegie I.3, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 52–53: “Que in oriente [ab Albia], magno flumine, incipit, uersus occidentem u[ero uergit] et sic circumflexo fine per aquilonem regirat.” 32  Historia Norwegie II.8, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 56–57: “Halogia, cuius incole multum Finnis cohabitant, et inter se commercia frequentant.”

33  Two Voyagers, ed. Lund, 18, 21: “þæt he ealra Norðmonna norþmest bude”; “sio scir hatte Halgoland þe he on bude”; “þæt land sie swiþe lang norþ þonan, ac hit is eal weste, buton on feawum stowum styccemælum wiciað Finnas, on huntoðe on wintra & on sumera on fiscaþe be þære sæ.”

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Finnmǫrk, the land of the Sámi, in Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar by Oddr Snorrason,34 and in Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar.35 When telling about “the three inhabited zones” of the country, the author of the Historia Norwegie identifies a very long and fairly wide “seaboard tract,” an “inland area” (also known as the mountain region) and, finally, “an immense wilderness” wooded and populated by the Finni36 but not cultivated. Halogia—in his understanding—is the northernmost land in the coastal area and “the northern boundary of Norway next to Vegestav, which separates it from Bjarmaland.”37 Thus, without resorting to the ancient and early medieval Riphean Mountains that occupied this place in Adam’s text, the author of the Historia Norwegie defines the northern border with reference to Vegestav (Latin: Wegestaf; Old Icelandic: Vegistafr), as a point that marks the northernmost border of Norway. In this capacity, Vegestav is mentioned in two more Old Norse sources: an Icelandic geographical treatise of the last quarter of the twelfth century38 and the Legendary Saga of St. Olav from the early thirteenth century,39 although they do not contain enough information that would help to unambiguously localize this point.40 As for the islands “that are subject to tribute,”41 the anonymous author—in contrast to Adam of Bremen—does not mistakenly place Hålogaland among them. In addition to the Orkney Islands (Orcades insulae, VI) and Iceland, “the Island of Ice” (Glacialis insula, VIII), he 34  Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar, ed. Finnur Jónsson, 84: “norðr fra Noregi er Finnmork. Noregr er vaxinn með iij oddum. er lengð lanzins or utsuðre i norðr ætt fra gautelfi oc norðr til Ueggestafs. En breiddin oc uiddin or austri oc iuestr fra Eiðascogi oc til Englandz sioar. En landit er greint oc callat þessum heitum Vik. Horðaland. Uplond. Þrondheimr. Halogaland. Finnmork”—“North of Norway lies Finnmǫrk. Norway is shaped with three promontories. The length of the land from the southwest northward is from the Gautelfr [Göta älv] north to Vegistafr. The breadth and width from east to west is from the Eiðaskógr to the English Sea. The land is divided and known by the following names: Ví�k, Hǫrðaland, Upplǫnd, Þrandheimr, Hálogaland, Finnmǫrk”: The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason, trans. Andersson, 71. 35  Egils saga, ed. Nordal, 36: “Finnmǫrk er stórliga ví�ð; […] en fyrir sunnan er Nóregr, ok tekr mörkin náliga allt it efra suðr svá sem Hálogaland it ýtra”—“Finnmark is a vast country […]. To the south lies Norway, but Finnmark stretches southwards through the mountains as much as Halogaland does by the coast”: Egil’s saga, trans. Hermann Pálsson and Edwards, 44.

36  Historia Norwegie II–IV, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 54–59: “De tripartition incolatu Norwegie”; “zona itaque maritima”; “mediterannea zona”; “uastissima solitudo.” 37  Historia Norwegie II.9, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 56–57: “Que patria in aquilonem terminat Norwegiam iuxta Wegestaf, qui Biarmoniam ab ea dirimit.”

38  Alfræði Íslenzk, ed. Beckman and Kålund, 1:11: “Noregr er kalladr nordan fra Vęgistaf, þar er Finnmork, þat er hia Gandvik, ok sudr til Gaut-elfar”—“Norway is called north from Vegistafr— there is Finnmǫrk, that is near Gandví�k—and south up to the Gautelfr” (my translation). On this text (preserved in Reykjaví�k, Stofnun Á� rna Magnússonar MS AM 736 I quarto) see Mel’nikova, Drevneskandinavskie geograficheskie sochinenii͡a, 72–84.

39  Olafs saga hins helga, ed. Johnsen, 27: “Olafr […] hafðe nu æí�nn allan noreg undir sic lagðan næst […] fra ægestaf norðan oc allt til ælvar austr”—“Ó� láfr […] has now laid the whole of Norway under his rule […] from Vegistafr in the north and all the way to the [Gaut]elfr in the east” (my translation). 40  See Jackson and Podossinov, “Norway in Old Norse Literature,” 87.

41  Historia Norwegie V.26, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 64–65: “tributariae insulae.”

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names the Faroe Islands which he calls “the Islands of Sheep” (Insulae quium, VII). In the case of Greenland (Terra viridis, II.12), the author does not follow Adam in calling it an island at all. In his understanding, Greenland is part of the continental mainland, although separated from the populated areas “by rocks covered with ice.” It stretches from somewhere in the region of the Kola Peninsula (now northwestern Russia) and “almost touches the islands off Africa.”42 In fact, his text reflects the idea—common in the West Scandinavian (or Icelandic–Norwegian) worldview—that land does not end beyond the northern tip of Norway. In many works of Old Norse–Icelandic literature, Greenland is presented as part of the European mainland stretching across to Vínland43 and as far as Africa.44 The description of Iceland in the Historia Norwegie is also quite different from the one given by Adam of Bremen. Adam claims that the island of Thule, now called Island, is “situated far off in the midst of the ocean, [and] is—they say—barely known. About it the Roman writers as well as barbarians report much that is worth repeating.”45 In just one paragraph and several scholia, Adam refers to, quotes, and retells (without reference) information derived from Sallust, Pliny, Lucan, Solinus, Martianus Capella, Paulus Orosius, and Bede the Venerable (with his quotation from Pytheas of Marseille), as well as the biblical Book of Numbers, the Acts of the Apostles, the First Epistle of Paul to Timothy, and the Epistle to the Romans.46 He does so to draw a traditional picture of the island of Thule47 which is six days’ sail north of Britain and is near the frozen sea, which is farthest north, where the day does not end during the summer solstice and the night constantly lasts during the winter. Explaining the origin of its name, Adam states that it is called Island “from the ice which binds the ocean” and which “on account of its age is so black and dry in appearance that it burns when fire is set to it.”48 Thus, Adam simply uses the standard technique to present those lands of which he has little knowledge: he makes a compilation of learned information. However, being close to the Hamburg–Bremen archbishops Adalbert (r. 1053–72) and Limar (r. 1072–1101), Adam knows that the inhabitants of the island have since adopted Christianity. He even knows the name of the Icelandic bishop: he calls him Isleph. And indeed, at the time when Adam was writing, the bishop at Skálholt (the first local bishop) was Í�sleifr Gizurarson (r. 1056–80).49 42  Historia Norwegie I.10–11, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 64–65: “Ab istis uero Viridis Terra congelatis scopulis dirimitur”; “fere contingens Affricanas insulas.” 43  See note 29 above.

44  See Simek, “Elusive Elysia”; Jackson, “On dal imi͡a.”

45  Adam, Gesta, IV.36; trans. Tschan, 216; ed. Schmeidler, 271: “Insula Thyle, quae per infinitum a ceteris secreta longe in medio sita est occeano, vix, inquiunt, nota habetur. De qua tam a Romanis scriptoribus quam a barbaris multa referuntur Digna predicari.” 46  Adam, Gesta, IV.36 and Schol. 152, 153; trans. Tschan, 216–18nn121–32.

47  See Jackson, “Ultima Thule.”

48  Adam, Gesta, IV.36; trans. Tschan, 217; ed. Schmeidler, 272: “Haec itaque Thyle nunc Island appellatur, a glacie, quae oceanum astringit”; “[…] eadem glacies ita nigra et arida videatur propter antiquitatem, ut incense ardeat.”

49  Íslendingabók, ed. Benediktsson, 20: “Í�sleifr Gizurarsonr ens hví�ta var ví�gðr til byskups á dǫgum

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The author of the Historia Norwegie does not, in any way, follow Adam of Bremen in his description of Iceland (chapter VIII). He reports that this large island was “called by the Romans Ultima Thule”50 but he does not retell any of the well-established myths concerning it. On the contrary, his story betrays actual knowledge of the island gained by the author himself or his informants. Iceland—he says—lies in the ocean west of the Faroe Islands. He says that “it was given the name Iceland by the Norwegians” and translates this name as glaciei terra (“the Land of Ice”) because “the island contains innumerable mountains overlaid with unmelting glaciers, so that mariners at sea, far distant from land, can perceive them glittering, and customarily take note of a convenient harbour, using them as seamarks.”51 Until the advent of portolan charts in the late thirteenth century, “navigation depended almost entirely on the pilot’s stored experience” and on “a mental chart of the regions they frequented,” as Tony Campbell has observed.52 In the sagas, too, we find confirmation that accumulated navigational experience was passed through generations from person to person. One of the heroes of Grænlendinga saga (Saga of the Greenlanders), while planning his trip from Iceland to Greenland, is concerned that neither he nor his fellow travellers have any experience of sailing in these waters: “Imprudent will appear our voyage since none of us has been to the Greenland Sea.”53 Scandinavian sailors used visual landmarks and transmitted their knowledge orally. A mental chart of this kind has been preserved, luckily, in a written form, thanks to the Icelandic Landnámabók (Book of Settlements), in a version produced by the lawman Haukr Erlendsson in the first decade of the fourteenth century. It states that “From Hennøya off the coast of Norway one should sail all the way west to Hvarf on Greenland, and then the voyage will pass north of the Shetland Islands, so that they were clearly visible from the sea, and south of the Faeroes, so that the sea was between the mountain slopes, and further south of Iceland, so that they could see birds living there and whales.”54 Haralds Norvegskonungs Sigurðarsonar, Halfdanarsonar, Sigurðarsonar hrí�sa, Haraldssonar ens hárfagra”—“Í� sleifr, son of Gizurr the White, was consecrated bishop in the days of King Haraldr of Norway, son of Sigurðr, son of Hálfdan, son of Sigurðr Bastard, son of Haraldr the Fine-Haired”: Íslendingabók, trans. Grønlie, 10.

50  Historia Norwegie VIII.10–11, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 68–69: “magna insula, que ab Italis ‘ultima Tile’ dicta est.”

51  Historia Norwegie VIII.4–5, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 70–71: “Que a Norwagensibus igitur Islandia, quod interpretatur ‘glaciei terra’, nuncupatur. Habet namque eadem insula innumerabiles montes, uerum continuaglacie contectos, unde illis resplendentibus naute longe a terra in salo positi portum sibi oportunum per hos denotare solent.” 52  See Campbell, “Portolan Charts,” 386–87.

53  Eyrbyggja saga, ed. Sveinsson and Þórðarson, 250: “Ó� vitrlig mun þykkja vár ferð, þar sem engi vár hefir komit í� Grænlandshaf.” 54  Landnamabók, ed. Benediktsson, 33: “Af Hernum af Nóregi skal sigla jafnan í� vestr til Hvarfs á Grœnalandi, ok er þá siglt fyrir norðan Hjaltland, svá at því� at eins sé þat, at allgóð sé sjóvar sýn, en fyrir sunnan Færeyjar, svá at sjór er í� miðjum hlí�ðum, en svá fyrir sunnan Í�sland, at þeir hafa af fugl ok hval” (my translation).

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The author of the Historia Norwegie knows that the island is “today inhabited by a great host of settlers” and is sure that once it was “a vast wilderness and unknown to mankind right up to the days of Harald Fairhair [r. ca. 872–930].”55 Indeed, this statement echoes the initial words of the Íslendingabók by Ari the Wise (fl. 1122–32): “Iceland was first settled from Norway in the days of Haraldr the Fine-Haired”56—as well as a similar remark in Landnámabók.57 This might have been a common knowledge. The anonymous author also knows the names of those who had discovered this island. Claiming that “within about fifty years every district was populated, in accordance with the present distribution,”58 he is close to another statement by Ari (chapter 3): “Wise men have also said that Iceland was fully settled in sixty years, so that no further settlement was made after that.”59 The author of the Historia Norwegie is not only well acquainted with the history of the island, but also has an idea of its natural features—volcanoes, geysers, and so forth. Although Mortensen and Ekrem have demonstrated that some of these descriptions were borrowed from another source, the Imago mundi by Honorius,60 it is important to notice that only the wording matches, not the landscape it is meant to describe. In the work of Honorius, this wording refers to Sardinia, Africa, and other locales, or to natural phenomena in general. When adapted by the anonymous author to Iceland, they perfectly match its natural marvels, of which he could have learnt from oral stories of Old Norse–Icelandic origin.61 To sum up: one of the main sources for the anonymous Historia Norwegie was Adam of Bremen’s Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, written about a century earlier. Adam’s work not only provided the anonymous author with specific information, but also determined the plan of his work as a whole: in an attempt to show the current state of Christianity and paganism in Norway, the anonymous Norwegian author drew a clear parallel between the missionary tasks of the archbishopric of Trondheim and the previous ones of the Hamburg–Bremen archbishopric as they were described by Adam. Even if the writing of the Historia Norwegie was not directly related to the establishment of the archdiocese in Nidaros (Trondheim) in the winter of 1152/3,62 it was ideologically 55  Historia Norwegie VIII.1, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 68–69: “nunc quam magna frequencia colonum culta, quondam uasta solitude et usque ad tempus Haraldi Comati hominibus incognita.”

56  Íslendingabók, ed. Benediktsson, 4: “Í� sland byggðisk fyrst ýr Norvegi á dǫgum Haralds ens hárfagra”; Íslendingabók, trans. Grønlie, 4. 57  Landnamabók, ed. Benediktsson, 33: “Þá er Í� sland fannsk ok byggðisk af Nóregi […] þá var Haraldr hárfagri konungr yfir Nóreg”—“When Iceland was found and settled from Norway […] then Haraldr the Fine-Haired was king over Norway” (my translation). 58  Historia Norwegie VIII.3, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 70–71: “Et in quinquaginta fere annis ubique inhabitata, ut nunc est distribute.” 59  Íslendingabók, ed. Benediktsson, 9: “Svá hafa ok spakir menn sagt, at á sex tigum vetra yrði Í�sland albyggt, svá at eigi væri meirr sí�ðan”; Íslendingabók, trans. Grønlie, 5. 60  See Historia Norwegie, ed. Ekrem and Mortensen, trans. Fisher, 129–33: commentary on chapter VIII.1–22. 61  For details see Jackson, “O prirodnykh chudesakh Islandii.”

62  This is the dating of Inger Ekrem, to which Mortensen objects arguing in favour of dating to the 1160s or 1170s: Mortensen, “Introduction,” 15.

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connected with its missionary tasks in the northern regions. The geographical introduction to Historia Norwegie thus presented an updated map of the northern mission. But what attracts our attention is that the Historia Norwegie does not follow Adam’s geographical description of the North. The author worked, as has been demonstrated here, within a completely different tradition, namely the Icelandic–Norwegian one. Whereas Adam’s idea of the North was formed only on the basis of previous authors who had not been familiar with the region in question, the anonymous author of the Historia Norwegie, living in Norway and writing a century later, knew these territories well: if not from personal experience, then from local oral tradition.

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Bibliography

[Adam of Bremen.] Magistri Adam Bremensis Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum. Edited by Bernard Schmeidler. 3rd ed. Monumentis Germaniae Historicis, Scriptores rerum Germanicarum in usum scholarum 2. Hannover and Leipzig: Hahn, 1917. _____. History of the Archbishops of Hamburg–Bremen. Edited by Timothy Reuter. Translated by Francis J. Tschan. 2nd ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Alfræði Íslenzk. Islandsk Encyklopædisk Litteratur. Edited by Natanael Beckman and Kristian Kålund. Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur 37, 41 and 45. 3 vols. København: Møller, 1908–18. Campbell, Tony. “Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500.” In Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, edited by J. B. Harley and David Woodward, 371–463, vol. 1 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Crumlin-Pedersen, Ole. “Schiffe und Schifffartswege im Ostseeraum während des 9.–12. Jahrhunderts.” Bericht der Römisch-Germanischen Kommission 69 (1988): 530–63. Egeler, Matthias. Islands in the West. Classical Myth and the Medieval Norse and Irish Geographical Imagination. Medieval Voyaging 4. Turnhout: Brepols, 2017. Egil’s saga. Translated by Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976. Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar. Edited by Sigurður Nordal. Í�slenzk fornrit 2. Reykjaví�k: Hið í�slenzka fornritafélag, 1933. Ekrem, Inger. Nytt lys over Historia Norwegie. Mot en løsning i debatten om dens alder? Bergen: Universitetet i Bergen, IKKR, Seksjon for gresk, latin og egyptologi, 1998. Ekrem, Inger. “Essay on Date and Purpose.” In Historia Norwegie. Edited by Inger Ekrem and Lars Boje Mortensen. Translated by Peter Fisher, 155–225. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003. Ellehøj, Svend. Studier over den ældste norrøne historieskrivning. Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana 26. København: Den Arnamagnæanske Kommission, 1965. Eyrbyggja saga; Brands þáttr örva; Eiríks saga rauða; Grænlendinga saga; Grænlendinga þáttr. Edited by Einar Ó� l. Sveinsson and Matthí�as Þórðarson. Í�slenzk fornrit 4. Reykjaví�k: Hið í�slenzka fornritafélag, 1935. Flateyjarbók. En Samling af norske Konge-Sagaer. Edited by Guðbrandr Vigfússon, and C. R. Unger. 3 vols. Christiania: Malling, 1860–68. Gí�sli Sigurðsson. “The Vinland Sagas and the Modern Quest for Vinland.” In Vikingite: moreplavateli, otkrivateli, sŭzdateli / The Vikings: Navigators, Discoverers, Creators. Papers from an International Conference Held at “St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia (May 15th–17th 2000), edited by Elizarii͡a Ruskova, 179–203. Sofia: “St. Kliment Ohridski” University of Sofia, 2001. Historia Norwegie. Edited by Inger Ekrem and Lars Boje Mortensen. Translated by Peter Fisher. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003. Íslendingabók. Edited by Jakob Benediktsson. Í�slenzk fornrit 1. Reykjaví�k: Hið í�slenzka fornritafélag, 1969. Íslendingabók, Kristnisaga / The Book of the Icelanders, The Story of the Conversion. Translated by Siân Grønlie. London: Viking Society for Northern Research, 2006. Jackson, Tatjana N. “Ultima Thule in West European and Icelandic Traditions.” Northern Studies. The Journal of the Scottish Society for Northern Studies 39 (2005): 12–24. _____. “О природных чудесах Исландии” [About the Natural Wonders of Iceland]. In Земля наша велика и обильна: сборник статей� посвященных 90-летию А. Н. Кирпичникова [“Our Land is Great and Abundant”: A Collection of Articles Dedicated to the 90th Birthday of A.N. Kirpichnikov], 84–90. Sankt-Peterburg: Nevska, 2019.

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_____. “Он дал имя этой� земле и назвал ээ Гренландией� , и сказал, что людям скорее захочется туда поехать, если у земли будет хорошее название” [He gave a name to this land and called it Greenland, and said that people would like to go there if the land has a good name]. Историческая география 4 (2019): 1–26. Jackson, Tatjana N., I. G. Konovalova, and A. V. Podossinov. Рифейские горы в представлениях античных и средневековых географов [The Riphaean Mountains as Seen by Ancient and Medieval Geographers]. Moscow: Akvilon, 2019. Jackson, Tatjana N. and Alexander V. Podossinov. “Norway in Old Norse Literature: Some Considerations on the Specific Character of Scandinavia Spatial Orientation.” Skandinavistik 27 (1997): 85–97. Jesch, Judith. Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age: The Vocabulary of Runic Inscriptions and Skaldic Verse. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2001. Landnámabók. Edited by Jakob Benediktsson. Í�slenzk fornrit 1. Reykjaví�k: Hið í�slenzka fornritafélag, 1969. Mel’nikova, E. A. Древнескандинавские географические сочинения. Тексты, перевод, комментарий� [Old Norse Geographical Treatises: Texts, Translation, Commentary]. Moscow: Nauka, 1986. Mortensen, Lars Boje. “Introduction.” In Historia Norwegie. Edited by Inger Ekrem and Lars Boje Mortensen. Translated by Peter Fisher, 8–47. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2003. _____. “The Language of Geographical Description in Twelfth-Century Scandinavian Latin.” Filologia mediolatina. Studies in Medieval Latin Texts and Their Transmission 12 (2005): 103–21. _____. “Historia Norwegie and Sven Aggesen: Two Pioneers in Comparison.” In Historical Narratives and Christian Identity on a European Periphery: Early History Writing in Northern, East-Central and Eastern Europe (c. 1070–1200), edited by Ildar H. Garipzanov, 57–70. Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe 26. Turnhout: Brepols, 2011. Mundal, Else. “Íslendingabók vurdert som bispestolskrønike.” Alvíssmál 3 (1994): 63–72. Olafs saga hins helga. Efter pergamenthaandskrift i Uppsala Universitetsbibliotek, Delagardieske samling nr. 8II. Edited by O. A. Johnsen. Kristiania: Dybwad, 1922. Orkneyinga saga. Edited by Sigurður Nordal. Samfund til udgivelse af gammel nordisk litteratur 40. København: Moller, 1913–16. Saga Óláfs Tryggvasonar av Oddr Snorrason munkr. Edited by Finnur Jónsson. København: Gad, 1932. The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason by Oddr Snorrason. Translated by Theodore M. Andersson. Islandica 52. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. Simek, Rudolf. “Elusive Elysia or Which Way to Glæsisvellir? On the Geography of the North in Icelandic Legendary Fiction.” In Sagnaskemmtun. Studies in Honour of Hermann Pálsson on His 65th birthday, 26th May 1986, edited by Rudolf Simek, Jónas Kristjánsson, Hans Bekker-Nielsen, 247–75. Wien: Böhlau, 1986. _____. Altnordische Kosmographie. Studien und Quellen zu Weltbild und Weltbeschreibung in Norwegen und Island vom 12. Bis zum 14. Jahrhundert. Berlin: de Gruyter, 1990. Sverrir Jakobsson. “Ví�nland and Wishful Thinking: Medieval and Modern Fantasies.” Canadian Journal of History / Annales canadiennes d’histoire 47 (2012): 493–514. Two Voyagers at the Court of King Alfred: The Ventures of Ohthere and Wulfstan Together with the Description of Northern Europe from the “Old English Orosius. Edited by Nils Lund. Translated by Christine E. Fell. York: Sessions, 1984.

Tatjana N. Jackson ([email protected]) graduated from Moscow State University (Philological Faculty, English Department) in 1973. She defended her PhD (candidate) thesis in 1978 and the habilitation (doctoral) thesis in 1995. She is currently a Chief Research Fellow at the Institute of World History of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is the author of more than ten books and nearly four hundred papers on Old Norse–Icelandic literature and Icelandic kings’ sagas, in particular; and also on medieval Russian and Scandinavian relations, medieval Scandinavian constructions of space, place-name studies, and historical geography. She published Eastern Europe in Icelandic Sagas (2019) in the Beyond Medieval Europe series from Arc Humanities Press. Abstract The anonymous chronicle Historia Norwegie (ca. 1160–1175) contains a unique geographical description which is believed to have been based on Adam of Bremen’s missionary map of the North (ca. 1070). This comparison of these two texts demonstrates that the anonymous Norwegian author actually did not rely much on Adam’s geography, since he knew these territories, if not from personal experience, then from local oral tradition. Keywords global North, Adam of Bremen, Historia Norwegie, sagas, geography, spatial constructions

THE MULTI-LAYERED SPATIALITY OF THE GLOBAL NORTH: SPATIAL REFERENCES AND SPATIAL CONSTRUCTIONS IN MEDIEVAL EAST NORSE LITERATURE ALEXANDRA PETRULEVICH*

The interdisciplinary endeavour

of mapping literature has produced multiple anthologies, articles, and infrastructure resources addressing a variety of research questions on literary cartography and spatiality.1 A more specific inquiry into the geographies and spatiality of medieval narrative, especially romances, has likewise gained much scholarly attention.2 Interestingly, these two groups of scholars have arrived at almost identical conclusions: spatial descriptions within medieval romance and other literary genres are best described as geographically opaque and vague. 3 Moreover, such descriptive maps, for the most part, represent strings of place-names arranged in a linear fashion and thus have much in common with the mapping tradition of contemporary itineraries.4 In this article, I argue that it is necessary to analyze all kinds of spatial references, not only place-names, in order to gain a proper understanding of spatiality across medieval literary corpora.5 Furthermore, any such analysis has to include spatial constructions: that is, descriptions of the relations between spatial references, however scarce these might be, because the relational aspects of geo*  The author would like to express her gratitude for the input of project participants Simon Skovgaard Boeck, the Society for Danish Language and Literature, Denmark; and Jonathan Adams, Department of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University; as well as the anonymous reviewers of this essay.

1  To name just a few: Tally, Literary Cartographies; Travis, Abstract Machine; Borin, Dannélls, and Olsson, “Geographic Visualization”; Cooper, Donaldson, and Murrieta-Flores, Literary Mapping; Piatti, “Mapping Fiction”; Murrieta-Flores and Howell, “Towards the Spatial Analysis of Vague and Imaginary”; and the following three online resources: “Ein Literarischer Atlas Europas,” “Icelandic Saga Map,” and “Norse World.” 2  Cooper, The English Romance; Rouse, “What Lies Between?”; Murrieta-Flores and Howell, “Towards the Spatial Analysis of Vague and Imaginary”; Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Medieval Macrospace”

3  Cooper, The English Romance, 68–70; Howe, Writing the Map, 3; Rouse, “What Lies Between?” 16–20; compare Murrieta-Flores and Howell, “Towards the Spatial Analysis,” 40 who challenge this view, but who base their criticism on their own identification of named localities with presentday counterparts without addressing the question of how the localities are defined or represented within the medieval narrative.

4  Compare Harvey, “Local and Regional,” built upon in Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Medieval Macrospace.”

5  As opposed to most of the earlier scholarship: see Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Medieval Macrospace.”

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graphical descriptions give unique insight into the texts’ coordinate systems and wider medieval perceptions of geography and the surrounding world. Thus, the present article complements the existing scholarship on literary spatiality which has been heavily focused on landscapes, topography, and/or named places (especially within the literary GIS tradition) and offers a more nuanced, theoretically and methodologically informed way of approaching spatiality in a text, with or without employment of GIS (Geographic Information Systems), through the investigation of multiple categories of spatial references and spatial constructions. This article also aims to show how geographical space is linguistically rendered in medieval texts of different genres, and what this linguistic information can reveal about perceptions of geography and space in medieval narrative. To fulfil its purpose, it will answer two research questions. First, what language resources (spatial references and spatial constructions) are used to convey spatial information in two Old Swedish texts: an original vernacular composition, Erikskrönikan (The Chronicle of Duke Erik); and a translation, Själens tröst (Consolation of the Soul)? Second, in what ways do the spatial profiles of these texts differ, and why? Are these differences persistent in other texts belonging to the same genres in the East Norse literary corpus, rhymed chronicles and devotional works respectively? By “linguistic rendering” of space, I mean the specific choices, among a range of language resources, used to express spatial information and relations: the relative geographic positions of landscape features and other entities (people and objects) with regard to one another.6 The spatial linguistic repertoire of Old Swedish is quite extensive and includes spatial references such as place-names, inhabitant designations (that is, names identifying ethnic identity or geographic provenance), landscape features, and so forth. Other types of constructions, for instance spatial words denoting cardinal directions and adverbs of place, are also included.7 For this case study, I have chosen to compare the spatial profiles of two manuscript versions of the two medieval Old Swedish texts named above: the rhymed chronicle henceforth called The Chronicle of Duke Erik (composed ca. 1320–1330 and preserved in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden MS D 2), and the devotional work Consolation of the Soul (translated ca. 1420–1442 and preserved in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden MS A 108).8 By employing spatial data referring to places outside East Scandinavia (Sweden and Denmark), the region where these texts and their manuscripts were produced, this study introduces a global perspective complemented by a survey of generically comparable texts. In my analysis, the spatial profile of The Chronicle of Duke Erik is mapped against the rest of the extant rhymed chronicles in Old Swedish, while the spatial information in Consolation of the Soul is compared with that of the Old Danish version of the text. The multi-layered spatial representations of these texts can be understood in many ways. Much scholarly effort has been put into investigating how linguistically expressed 6  Compare the definition of spatiality at “Spatiality – hypergeo.”

7  See Söderwall, Ordbok öfver svenska medeltids-språket and the examples below.

8  See below for the rationale behind the choice of these texts.



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spatial relations interplay and even merge with aspects of time.9 Spatial and temporal settings have been claimed as key generic markers across disciplines such as literary studies and philology.10 Another important, but scarcely researched, aspect is the materiality of spatial references and constructions, particularly place-names, in manuscript traditions.11 An example of this approach are studies that highlight the interplay between the manuscript’s representation of place-names and name variation regarding, for instance, orthography and place-name formation. Investigating the material origins of variation is the first step in establishing the likely catalysts of misinterpretation, such as line and page brakes.12 More significantly, however, is that the spatial profiles of different manuscript versions of the same work do not have to be identical. For instance, the scribe of the manuscript Stockholm, National Library of Sweden D 5 has re-interpreted the Old Swedish expression hosin skoder (“with leg plates,” attested in the rest of the medieval witnesses of The Chronicle of Duke Erik) as holsten skogher, which can be understood as a place-name: the Old Swedish Holstenskogher, “Holstein forest.” Draft versions of texts containing multiple contemporaneous revisions, such as the version of Karlskrönikan (The Chronicle of Karl) in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden D 6 are especially challenging to work with when it comes to mapping spatial references.

Data: Spatial References and Spatial Constructions

In this article, I delimit the notion of multi-layered spatiality to strictly linguistic categories of spatial information, which together give the text a unique spatial profile; but they can also be analyzed separately as different layers of spatial information.13 The data collected for my primary analysis is of two kinds. Firstly, it includes spatial references from manuscripts of The Chronicle of Duke Erik and Consolation of the Soul retrieved from the “Norse World” digital resource: an interactive spatio-temporal platform for research on worldviews in medieval literature from Sweden and Denmark.14 Secondly, I have complemented this material with linguistic constructions that describe geographic spatial relations. (These spatial constructions have been collated manually: see below.) The Chronicle of Duke Erik is the oldest surviving rhymed chronicle in Old Swedish.15 It recounts political events from 1229 to 1319 and focuses specifically on the life of its protagonist, Duke Erik Magnusson (ca. 1282–1318), and the years 1250 to 1319. The chronicle survives in no fewer than seven medieval manuscripts, with the text under 9  Compare Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of literary chronotope and its implementations in literary studies and linguistics, for instance in Bemong et al., Bakhtin’s Theory.

10  Bemong et al., Bakhtin’s Theory; Bampi, “Genre”; Bampi, Larrington, and Rikhardsdottir, A Critical Companion. 11  Touched upon in Petrulevich, Ortnamnsanpassning som process, chapters 2 and 5.

12  See, for instance, Petrulevich, Ortnamnsanpassning som process, chapter 5; and the discussion of name variation in Hjorth, Filologiske Studier. 13  Compare Kretzschmar Jr. and Petrulevich, “GIS for Language Study.”

14  Available at https://www.uu.se/en/research/infrastructure/norseworld. 15  Pipping, Erikskrönikan

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investigation here (hereafter D 2) being the oldest surviving witness. Its components are dated to a span of more than a hundred years, from 1400 to 1523; however, the quires containing The Chronicle of Duke Erik have a somewhat tighter dating, 1400–1500.16 D 2 also includes multiple other texts—notably Gutasagan (Guta Saga), Karlskrönikan (The Chronicle of Karl), Hertig Fredrik av Normandie (Duke Frederick of Normandy), and Olav den heliges saga (The Saga of Saint Olaf)—and is associated with the episcopal city of Norsholm. It is a folio manuscript, written on paper with two vellum folios at the beginning and end. The Chronicle of Duke Erik occupies 46 folios of the 250 (1r–46v), measuring approximately 29.5 × 10.5 cm.17 The Consolation of the Soul is a translation of the Middle Low German Seelentrost, dated to ca. 1420–1442.18 The work is centred on the Ten Commandments but contains other types of material, such as saints’ lives, legends, prayers, and confessional works. The Swedish translation is a larger compilation and incorporates narratives from a variety of Old Swedish sources, including the Pentateuch Paraphrase and some saints’ lives.19 In addition to the manuscript studied here (hereafter A 108), a fragment is preserved in Copenhagen, Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection AM 191. A 108 is a single-text vellum manuscript comprising 166 folios and measuring 30 × 22 cm. No details of its provenance are known.20 Assigning fixed generic labels to textual entities with complex transmission histories and material backgrounds, as in this case, is naturally a challenging and at times controversial exercise. Nevertheless, generic categories tend to differ depending on the scale of a given investigation; while focused studies of single texts and their dissemination can be elaborate and reveal nuanced generic concepts with fuzzy boundaries, overviews of literary corpora as a whole tend to rely on more traditional definitions.21 I strongly support the dynamic applications inspired by Hans-Jürgen Jauss, rooted in manuscript evidence, which have been under discussion in recent studies of both Old Norse and East Norse texts; however, at the moment, it is both infeasible and impractical to convey genre hybridities and heterogeneities when approaching larger literary corpora from a macro-perspective. In this case, I have adopted the taxonomy of the “Norse World” project that underlies the genre filter of the project’s interactive platform. This taxonomy goes back to the distinctions introduced and reinforced through influential editions, introductions, and commentaries on East Norse literature: for instance, the editions of Old Danish texts published by Samfund til Udgivelse af Gammel Nordisk Literatur (stua-

16  In addition to D 2, these manuscripts are: Stockholm, National Library of Sweden D 4a, D 3, and D 5; Uppsala, Uppsala University Library C 62; Lund, Lund University Library, Medeltidshandskrift 32; and Linköping, Linköping Diocesan Library H 131. 17  See the full description and digitized manuscript at “Manuscripta.Se.” 18  Henning, Siælinna thrøst; Thorén, Studier över Själens Tröst.

19  Thorén, Studier över Själens Tröst. See also Johansson, “Birgittines.”

20  See the full description and digitized manuscript at “Manuscripta.Se.”

21  Jauss, “Theory of Genres”; for an overview of genre in Old Norse studies, see Bampi, “Genre”; and Bampi, Larrington, and Rikhardsdottir, A Critical Companion, with further references; Bampi, “Yvain i dansk dpråkdräkt” is an example of an ongoing genre discussion in East Norse studies.



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gnl) and the Universitets–Jubilæets danske Samfund, as well as the principal series of Old Swedish editions produced by Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Here, though, the project’s traditional approach to genre serves as a point of departure for a journey towards a more nuanced discussion of spatiality in generically different in traditional terms, as well as generically similar, texts. The primary texts chosen for this case study thus differ in their genre, length (46 folios against 166 of a slightly larger format), mode of composition (a versed chronicle and a prose devotional work), “originality” (an original composition and a translation), and material setting. Accordingly, multiple factors need to be accounted for when comparing the spatial profiles of these works. At the same time, this study has the potential to uncover quite striking differences in their linguistic construction of spatiality and thus inspire further exploration across the entire corpus of the East Norse literature. In other words, it is not a question of whether the spatial profiles of these two texts differ, but rather of how and why they differ.22 As noted above, my analysis of the data derived from The Chronicle of Duke Erik and Consolation of the Soul is complemented by a quantitative investigation of spatial references attested in texts attributed to the same genres. Thus, the former is compared to the other extant Old Swedish rhymed chronicles, Karlskrönikan (The Chronicle of Karl, composed 1430–1452) in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden D 6; and Sturekrönikorna (Sture’s Chronicles, composed 1470) in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden D 5: the first named after its principal character, the Swedish king Karl Knutsson Bonde and preoccupied with political events between 1390 and 1452;23 the second taking off where The Chronicle of Karl finishes, continuing the story of the Swedish high nobility from 1452 to 1496 and named after their main protagonist, Sten Sture the Elder (1440–1503).24 To date, Consolation of the Soul is the only Old Swedish devotional work included in the “Norse World” database, since the project is still ongoing. For this reason, I have turned to the similar Old Danish prose text, Sjælens Trøst (1415–1435) in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden A 10925 for comparable devotional material. The remaining Old Danish devotional texts available, Digte (Poems) in Copenhagen, Arnamagnæan MS 76 8vo and Mariaklagen (The Lament of the Virgin Mary) in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden A 120 contain just a handful of spatial attestations, seventeen and two respectively. It is of course not ideal to introduce another parameter into this comparison; however, the Old Danish Sjælens Trøst (albeit a fragment) is a translation of the Old Swedish Consolation of the Soul, which makes it generically similar. 22  I have worked very closely with both texts as a result of my involvement with the Norse Perception of the World project, which was responsible for producing the Norse World gazetteer of East Norse literature: IN16–0093:1, funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, 2017–2020. 23  Klemming, Svenska medeltidens rimkrönikor. D. 2; Adams, “Karlskrönikan.”

24  Klemming, Svenska medeltidens rimkrönikor. D. 3; Adams, “Sturekrönikorna.”

25  Stockholm, National Library of Sweden, A 109; there is one more manuscript witness of the work, Uppsala, University Library, C 529, but only the A 109 version of the text is analyzed in this study.

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“Norse World” is an interactive platform for research on spatiality that applies a global perspective to medieval literature from Sweden and Demark. The primary aim of the project is to track “foreign” spatial references in the East Norse literary corpus.26 “Norse World” data includes two types of spatial references, place-names and nonnames. Place-names include, for instance, the Old Swedish Rom (Rome) and Ryzaland (Russia). Non-names is a capacious and heterogeneous onomastic category comprising: adjectives, like the Old Danish thythisk, “Teuton” or “German”; adverbs, like the Old Swedish utlændis “outland” or “abroad”; types of foreign coins, for instance the Old Swedish floren for the Florentine florin; inhabitant designations, for instance Old Danish vende “Wende,” referring to a person from Wendland (the southern shore of the Baltic); references to foreign languages, like the Old Swedish greska, “Greek”; proper names derived from places, like Ascolonita “of Ascalon, or Ashkelon”; words indicating geographic provenance, like the Old Danish nerdisk, “a type of cloth from Nérac” in Bordeaux; and other words that convey spatial meanings. Although the ambition of the resource has always been to provide data from the close reading of original manuscripts, modern editions still constitute the primary sources since most of the East Norse manuscript collections are still unavailable in digitized form or have been digitized only recently.27 The “Norse World” project divides the corpus of East Norse literature into two major categories, religious and secular works. Religious works include devotional texts, such as saints’ legends and miracle narratives, as well as dreams, visions, and revelations; while romances, encyclopaedic and didactic works, chronicles and histories, and travel tales belong among secular works.28 Spatial references in these texts are extracted and aggregated into an open-source relational database that forms the core of the “Norse World” infrastructure.29 The database is mapped via a user interface that employs a clustering plugin to quantify the data, to visualize how frequently spatial references are attested in the corpus. The “Norse World” resource thus offers a unique opportunity to quantify literary references to specific locations and other spatial signifiers, outlining the spatial profiles of single texts and entire manuscript compilations, as well as offering a much-needed complement to any kind of qualitative data analysis. The dots shown in Plate 6.1, for example, provide the number of spatial references associated with a given locale in the corpus, accompanied by the dataset used for that visualization, indicating how attestations are linked to actual locations.30 “Norse World” also offers a variety of download options; for instance, it is possible to filter the data according to the user’s preferences and retrieve the dataset from the platform. Work on the resource is ongoing; the database now contains more than 6,000 attestations and is still under construction. 26  Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Medieval Macrospace”; “Norse World.”

27  For more details see Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams; Petrulevich, “Med ortnamnsvarianten i centrum.”

28  For a complete presentation of the genre taxonomy see Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Data and Metadata – Norse World.” 29  Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Medieval Macrospace.”

30  For more details on visualization including a critical discussion of using standard gazetteers see Petrulevich, “Data Visualisation – Norse World.”

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Plate 6.1a–b. An example of the visualization and interactive clustering techniques employed by the “Norse World” resource and an extract of the data used for the visualization, based on a dataset comprising more than 6,000 attestations of spatial references downloaded on August 13, 2020. © 2020 Norse World, © Leaflet, © OpenStreetMap, © CartoDB.

Spatial Frames of Reference and Spatial Constructions Languages have a number of ways to account for and express spatial cognition. For instance, people frequently use spatial metaphors to describe positive or negative emotions, where feeling “happy” or “unhappy” is to feel up or down, or to be experiencing the ups and downs of life; moreover, spatial metaphors help us understand abstract domains, such as time: a day can be imagined as far in the future or coming near.31 Researchers have identified a set of linguistically-anchored frames of reference that people invoke 31  Lakoff and Johnson, Metaphors We Live By; Boroditsky, “Metaphoric Structuring.”

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Figure 6.1. A representation of the three types of non-geographic frames of reference adapted from Majid et al., “Can Language Restructure Cognition?”

when they talk about spatial relations.32 These frames are the abstract coordinate systems that we use to locate objects in physical space with respect to other objects.33 And they are also used in studies on spatial cognition and the linguistic constructions used to describe spatial relations in non-geographic space.34 For example, Asifa Majid and colleagues distinguish between three types of such non-geographic frames of reference.35 The relative frame of reference takes the viewer’s perspective and is based on purely egocentric coordinates: in Figure 6.1, the spatial relations between the two objects would be “the fork is to the left of the spoon.” The absolute frame of reference takes an external coordinate system as its point of departure: accordingly, the same spatial relation can be described as “the fork is to the north of the spoon.” Finally, the intrinsic frame of reference is based on object–centred coordinates and functions without reference to the viewer or an external coordinate systems. An appropriate description of the spatial relations in accordance with this frame of reference would be “the fork is at the nose of the spoon.” Obviously, the frames of reference presented above are always relative with respect to certain reference points, but the terms relative, absolute, and intrinsic make it easier to distinguish among the different types. Medieval literary texts include descriptions of geographic space that clearly indicate the use of these particular frames of reference. In the following diplomatic transcriptions of examples from The Chronicle of Duke Erik and Consolation of the Soul, respectively, place-names are underlined, while spatial words and constructions are marked in bold. 32  O’Meara, “Spatial Frames”; Burenhult and Levinson, “Language and Landscape”; Majid et al., “Can Language Restructure Cognition?”; Levinson, Space in Language. 33  Levinson, Space in Language, chapter 2.

34  For instance, Shusterman and Li, “Frames of Reference”; O’Meara, “Spatial Frames”; Majid et al., “Can Language Restructure Cognition?” 35  Majid et al., “Can Language Restructure Cognition?,” 109.



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(1) swa at nya hon raan sunnan wider | ok swærto aa ran nordan husit nider = “so that the Neva (Nya) ran closely to the south and the Okhta (Svartbäcken) ran down to the north of the castle” [passage describing the location of the Swedish fortification Landskrona].36

(2) Ther æpter wardh sancte pether bidhin at han skulde fara til ena øø som laa siex wiku sio længer bort j mærith = “After that Saint Peter had to travel to a certain island that lay six sea-miles longer away in the Mediterranean Sea” [that is, from Antioch].37

The first example describes spatial relations based on the absolute frame of reference, because the adverbs of place incorporate the cardinal directions.38 The description of the island’s location in the second example illustrates the intrinsic framing of spatial relations, which takes Antioch on the Orontes as its point of reference. According to the hypothesis of this case study, The Chronicle of Duke Erik uses linguistic resources to convey spatial information in a different way than Consolation of the Soul and, more importantly, incorporates absolute frames of reference into its spatial descriptions. The translated devotional text, however, uses an intrinsic frame of reference. Why do I attach such importance to spatial constructions suggesting the use of absolute frame of reference? Spatial descriptions utilizing cardinal directions are attested in a wide range of older Scandinavian sources, East Scandinavian runic inscriptions from the Viking Age, Scandinavian place-names, and Old Icelandic literature. For instance, the runic inscription Ö� g 83 in the province of Ö� stergötland, Sweden, reads “* þura * sati * stin * þasi * aftir * suin * sun * sin * rs * urstr * o * ualu *.”39 The transliteration can be normalized as Þora satti stæin þannsi æftir Svæin, sun sinn, es vestr a : “Þora placed this stone in memory of Svæinn, her son, who died in the west in .” Here, the place-name (unfortunately, not yet identified)40 is complemented with information on the locale’s whereabouts, in this case “the west,” or the western quarter of the world known to Scandinavians. In the same way, the place-name Norrby in Hallsbergs parish (Kumla hundred, Sweden) contains the adverb norr “north” (Old Swedish nordher) and the generic -by that can be interpreted as “farmland” and even “new settlement.”41 The adverb therefore indicates a cardinal direction and describes the relative position of the newer Norrby with respect to the older settlement in the area, Berga.42 Directional adverbs are also quite frequent in medieval West Norse: for instance, Knýtlinga saga (Saga of Cnut’s Heirs) contains 172 instances of such words.43 I see these spatial descriptions as traces of a much-debated Scandinavian system of orientation based on external absolute coordinates.44 For this reason, we may expect to see 36  D 2, fol. 16v.

37  Consolation of the Soul in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden, A 108, fol. 23v. 38  Söderwall, Ordbok öfver svenska medeltids-språket, 2:116, 2:553.

39  “Scandinavian Runic-Text Database,” pt. Ö� g 83.

40  An investigation is underway: see Petrulevich and Williams, “Ö� g 83.” 41  Hellberg, Kumlabygden, 175–76; 431.

42  Hellberg, 175–76; 431.

43  Jackson, “Spatial Orientation,” 2.

44  Earlier scholarship never reached a consensus on how such abbreviated geographical descriptions in Old Norse literature and related sources should be interpreted. According to one

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Standard form

Place-name or non-name

Russian Norwegian Norway German Foreign47 Germany Karelian Oslo Foreign land48 Neva River

Non-name Non-name Place-name Non-name Non-name Place-name Non-name Place-name Place-name Place-name

Type of locality

Country Country

City Country River

Type of non-name

Frequency

Inhabitant designation Inhabitant designation

38 25 17 13 5 5 5 5 3 3

Inhabitant designation Adjective

Inhabitant designation

Table 6.1. Top ten spatial references attested in The Chronicle of Duke Erik in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden D 2. For definitions of the terms, see Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Definitions – Norse World.”

a continuing usage of this absolute frame of reference in descriptions of spatial relations in East Norse medieval sources, at least in original compositions.

Spatial Profiles in The Chronicle of Duke Erik and Consolation of the Soul

In order to determine the spatial profiles of these two manuscript texts, I have compared spatial references and spatial constructions with special emphasis on words indicating an absolute frame of reference. The raw data downloaded from the “Norse World” resource has been processed by a Python script to calculate frequencies of spatial references for further quantitative and qualitative analyses. The Chronicle of Duke Erik contains 165 spatial attestations. These can be divided into 98 attestations of non-names (59 percent) and 67 of place-names (41 percent). The absolute majority of non-name attestations, 93 of 98, are inhabitant designations: “Russian” (38 attestations) and ”Norwegian” (25 attestations), as well as the place-name line of argumentation, the system of orientation in Scandinavia was deflected by 45 (or even 60) degrees clockwise from the absolute cardinal directions. However, as has since been shown by Einar Haugen and Alvar Ellegård, “anomalies” in the descriptions of spatial relations are better explained as pertaining to different modes of orientation: the proximate orientation used at sea and the ultimate orientation associated with coastal travel, where the former utilizes cardinal directions while the latter is heavily influenced by the itinerary model that recognizes only two directions, towards the goal and away from it. Compare Simek, Altnordische Kosmographie, 148; Ellegård, “De gamla nordbornas väderstrecksuppfattning”; Haugen, “Semantics of Icelandic Orientation”; Ellegård, “Old Scandinavian System of Orientation”; Jackson, “Spatial Orientation.”



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Plate 6.2 a–b. Visualization of spatial references in The Chronicle of Duke Erik in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden D 2 as attested in the “Norse World” resource. The visualization is based on a dataset of 165 spatial attestations downloaded on January 31, 2020. © 2020 Norse World, © Leaflet, © OpenStreetMap, © CartoDB.

“Norway” (17 attestations), closely followed by “German” (13 attestations), constitute the top three spatial references in the text: see Table 6.1 and Plate 6.2.45 The quantified data for Consolation of the Soul presents a different picture: 580 attestations divided into 460 place-name attestations (79 percent) and 120 attestations of non-names, mostly inhabitant designations (21 percent). The top three spatial references are “Rome” (71 attestations), “Egypt” (56 attestations), and “Jerusalem“ (53 attestations). 46 There are only two inhabitant designations, “Judean” (45 attestations) and “Roman” (16 attestations), on the list of top ten spatial references: see Table 6.2 and Plate 6.3. 45  For more details on visualization, including a critical discussion of using standard gazetteers, see Petrulevich, “Data Visualisation – Norse World”; Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Medieval Macrospace.” 46  For more details on visualization, including a critical discussion of using standard gazetteers, see Petrulevich, “Data Visualisation – Norse World”; Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Medieval Macrospace.”

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Standard form

Place-name or Type of non-name locality

Type of non-name

Rome Egypt Jerusalem Judean Israel Mediterranean Sea Paradise50 Roman Babylon Temple in Jerusalem

Place-name Place-name Place-name Non-name Place-name Place-name Place-name Non-name Place-name Place-name

71 56 53 Inhabitant designation 45 24 20 16 Inhabitant designation 16 12 11

City Country City

Country Sea Region City Church

Frequency

Table 6.2. Top ten spatial references attested in Consolation of the Soul in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden A 108.

The quantification of this data yields two major findings. First, The Chronicle of Duke Erik is preoccupied with the Baltic Sea region and especially the neighbours of the Swedish crown: Russians, Norwegians, and Germans (usually acting as mercenaries in Swedish military forces).47 Consolation of the Soul is, in its turn, centred on the territories surrounding the Mediterranean Sea. This is perhaps the least surprising result, given that the texts are generically different. Second, spatial information is conveyed differently in the two texts. The Chronicle of Duke Erik mostly makes use of inhabitant designations that constitute about 60 percent of the dataset; the linguistic rendering of geographic space in the text thus prioritizes agency and animate actors. By contrast, the major source of spatial information in Consolation of the Soul is place-names (80 percent of the entire dataset). This difference is more surprising and may suggest that different ways of encoding spatial information can be seen as a genre-specific feature. In this way, the chronicle can be labelled as a dynamic actor-oriented spatial narrative, while the agenda of the devotional work, spiritual edification, resulted in a more place-oriented text. Most scholars would agree that temporal and geographical narrative frames constitute a fundamental point of departure for any discussion of a text’s genre.48 Interrogating the narrative’s spatiality is thus a complementary procedure, and is by no means limited to place-names; authors, scribes, compilers, and others responsible for shaping the text have access to a wide range of linguistic resources for conveying spatial information. Central to the spatial analysis of medieval narrative is the question of which spatial markers are used and why, not only what locations these spatial markers represent or evoke. It is therefore significant that our two primary texts, attributed to differ47  See the article by Martin Neuding Skoog in this issue.

48  See, for instance, Bemong et al., Bakhtin’s Theory; Bampi, “Genre”; Kedwards, “Geography”; Bampi, Larrington, and Rikhardsdottir, A Critical Companion.



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Plate 6.3 a–b. Visualization of spatial references in Consolation of the Soul in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden A 108, as collated by the “Norse World” resource. The visualization is based on a dataset of 580 spatial attestations downloaded on January 31, 2020. © 2020 Norse World, © Leaflet, © OpenStreetMap, © CartoDB.

ent genres, demonstrate a clear difference in their construction of geographies and the choice of spatial linguistic resources. However, a survey of the complementary texts in each generic corpus only partially supports these findings and thus raises a few issues regarding genre definitions and expectations. The frequency of place-names and non-names in the Old Danish Sjælens Trøst is consistent with the pattern revealed by the analysis of its Old Swedish counterpart. Although only a fragment, Sjælens Trøst still shows a clear dominance of named places: 114 out of 133 attestations or 86 percent. The inhabitant designations “Auvergnat” and “Roman,” mentioned five times each, are the only representatives of the nonnames category in the list of the top ten spatial references in the text: see Table 6.3. At the same time, the geographical frame of the Old Danish translation is somewhat less focused. The map overlay of spatial references attested in both the Old Swedish and Old Danish versions (see Plate 6.4) shows that the Mediterranean Sea and the surrounding areas still predominate; in the latter, however, the geography includes multiple mentions of France and the French region of Berry, as well as of India. The fact that the Old

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Standard form

Place-name or non-name

Type of locality

Type of non-name

Egypt Rome Berry France India Jerusalem Auvergnat Paradise Roman Mediterranean Sea

Place-name Place-name Place-name Place-name Place-name Place-name Non-name Place-name Non-name Place-name

Country City Region Country Country City

21 15 7 7 6 6 Inhabitant designation 5 5 Inhabitant designation 5 4

Region Sea

Frequency

Table 6.3. Top ten spatial references attested in the Old Danish Sjælens Trøst in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden, A 109.

Danish text is a fragment provides the most likely explanation for these differences. In the A 109 manuscript of Consolation of the Soul, the spatial patterns not discernible in the quantified data of the manuscript A 108 come to the fore; this supports the point that manuscript evidence and transmission should always be taken into consideration in any nuanced genre discussion. Overall, the evidence from the rest of the available rhymed chronicles does not fully support the hypothesis of persistent functional connections between the types of spatial references and traditional genre affiliations. In The Chronicle of Karl, featuring 219 attestations, place-names prevail (127 attestations, or 58 percent); non-names in the dataset are nevertheless almost as frequent (92 attestations, or 42 percent). Moreover, non-names in general and inhabitant designations in particular dominate the list of the top ten spatial references in the text. While not being too close to The Chronicle of the Duke Erik in its choices of spatial markers, the spatial profile of The Chronicle of Karl also does not match the characteristics established for the two devotional texts in the “Norse World” corpus, since the Old Swedish and Old Danish versions of Consolation of the Soul only include a couple of frequently-used inhabitant designations each (see above). Sture’s Chronicles is the work that contradicts my analysis of the primary texts the most. On the one hand, the majority of its 229 spatial references (158 or 69 percent) refer to named places, while only a third refer to non-names (71 attestations or 31 percent). Moreover, there is only one inhabitant designation among its top ten spatial references. On the other hand, the share of non-names in the chronicle is still larger than that in the devotional texts (21 percent and 14 percent respectively). The most frequent spatial reference in the chronicle, furthermore, is the inhabitant designation “Russian,” with 59 mentions. In other words, Sture’s Chronicles is more similar to Consolation of the Soul in its communication of spatial information. The geographical settings of the chronicles remain, for the most part, stable: spatial references pertaining to neighbouring regions



The Multi-Layered Spatiality of the Global North

Standard form

Place name or non-name

Type of locality

Norway

Place-name

Country

Vyborg German Turku Castle (Abo Castle) Norwegian German Bavarian Foreign Lubeck Foreigner

Place-name Non-name Place-name

Non-name Non-name Non-name Non-name Place-name Non-name

Castle

Castle

City

Type of non-name

Inhabitant designation Inhabitant designation Adjective Inhabitant designation Adjective

Inhabitant designation

105

Frequency 17

17 14 14

12 11 10 7 7 6

Table 6.4. Top ten spatial references attested in The Chronicle of Karl in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden, D 6.

and the region around the Baltic Sea still dominate the list of the most frequent spatial items in the texts dating from the 1470s as in the text from the 1330s. However, a closer look at the data indicates a clear temporal development in the granularity of spatial information. In The Chronicle of Duke Erik, the names of countries and their inhabitants constitute the majority of the most frequent attestations, with Oslo and the Neva River being the only exceptions (see above, Table 6.1). This pattern is still evident in the text’s continuation, The Chronicle of Karl, with the addition of a couple more spatial references that denote exact locations: Vyborg, Turku Castle, and Lübeck (Table 6.4). The final chapter of the story of the Swedish nobility, Sture’s Chronicles, offers much more precision, by repeatedly naming castles in Finland and Russia that outnumber other types of spatial references (Table 6.5). These results suggest that the spatial characteristics of texts belonging to the same genre (in a traditional genre taxonomy) are not necessarily compatible. A reasonable interpretation of these findings would instead require a dynamic concept of genre and an analysis of variation in the types of spatial markers as a possible consequence of temporal as well as cross-genre developments within the corpus of the East Norse literature. Central to such dynamic approaches is the idea that genres are best understood “as groups or historical families” rather than “genera (classes),”49 a stance that presupposes descriptive rather than deductive formalistic methodologies. The present case study has identified substantial differences in the ways that spatial information is conveyed in the oldest of the chronicles and the Old Swedish Consolation of the Soul. While the choice of spatial markers remains stable in the two devotional texts, the action-oriented spatial profile of the oldest chronicle gradually gives way to 49  Jauss, “Theory of Genres,” 131; compare Bampi, “Genre,” 7.

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Plate 6.4 a–b. Visualization of spatial references in the Old Swedish Consolation of the Soul (Search 1) and the Old Danish Sjælens Trøst (Search 2) in the “Norse World” resource. Search 1 is based on a dataset of 580 spatial attestations downloaded on January 31, 2020. Search 2 is based on a dataset of 133 spatial attestations downloaded on August 14, 2020. © 2020 Norse World, © Leaflet, © OpenStreetMap, © CartoDB.

a narrative dominated by named places. The Chronicle of Karl occupies an intermediary position in this process, while the assumed development seems to reach its final stages in Sture’s Chronicles. This explanation is indirectly supported by a similar temporal development towards more differentiated, precise geographies in the more recent chronicle. It is beyond the scope of this article to consider cross-genre influences as another possible line of interpretation for the tendencies outlined above, since such a discussion would require a detailed analysis of the manuscript transmission of all these texts within entire compilations. In other words, additional research across the corpus of the East Norse literature is needed to deepen the argument and test the plausibility of these suggested explanations. As for spatial constructions, close reading of these two primary texts reveals that the absolute (cardinal) frame of reference is used quite rarely, if at all. The Chronicle of Duke Erik contains only six such passages, while Consolation of the Soul lacks spatial descriptions of this sort altogether. Indeed, this translation does not include detailed spatial descriptions of any kind, which is even more surprising given its length and great inter-



The Multi-Layered Spatiality of the Global North

Standard form Russian Vyborg (Viborg) Finland Norway Olofsborg Turku Castle (Abo Castle) Raseborg Castle Aland Islands Hameenlinna (Tavastehus) Ivangorod Fortress

Place-name or non-name Non-name Place-name Place-name Place-name Place name Place-name

Castle Country Country Castle Castle

Place-name

Castle

Place-name Place-name Place-name

Type of locality

Type of non-name Inhabitant designation

Castle Island Castle

107

Frequency 59 25 19 18 11 11 8 8 4 4

Table 6.5. Top ten spatial references attested in Sture’s Chronicles in Stockholm, National Library of Sweden, D 5.

est in places. Instead, an intrinsic frame of reference is used, whereby the geographical locales are related to each other. In the following examples, place-names are underlined, while cardinal directions are marked in bold. Example 3 below from The Chronicle of Duke Erik contains two adverbs of place, østan sunnan “in the east–southern direction of” and norþan “to the north of,”50 that describe the locations of Russia and Karelia with respect to Lake Ladoga. In example 4 from Consolation of the Soul, the place-names Rom (Rome), Mæret (Mediterranean Sea), and Edissa (Edessa) follow each other in a linear fashion. (3) hwita træsk er som eth haaff | swa som bokin sigher här aff | rytzland ligger østan sunnan til | ok karela nordhan swa at sion them skiil = “Lake Ladoga (Hvita þræsk) can be compared to a sea, as it is told in the book; Russia (Ryzland) lies in the east-southern direction from it, while Karelia is to the north so that the lake lies between them.”51

(4) Oc gig [Alexius] swa genstan sama nattena fran sinne brudh | aff sins fadhers gardh vth aff room | ok oc kom sik medh skip ofwer mærit til een stadh som kalas edissa = “and [Alexius] went right away the same night from his bride and out of his father’s house, out of Rome and went by boat over the Mediterranean Sea to the city called Edessa (Sanliurfa).”52

These examples differ not only regarding the chosen frame of reference but also the amount of spatial detail. The Chronicle of Duke Erik delivers a precise description of the 50  Söderwall, Ordbok öfver svenska medeltids-språket, 2:116; 2:1183.

51  D 2, fol. 17r.

52  A 108, fol. 33v.

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Plate 6.5. Map overlay visualization of attested spatial references in The Chronicle of Duke Erik (Search 1), The Chronicle of Carl (Search 2), and Sture’s Chronicles (Search 3) in the “Norse World” resource. Search 1 is based on a dataset of 165 spatial attestations downloaded on January 31, 2020. Searches 2 and 3 in are based on datasets of 219 and 229 spatial attestations respectively downloaded on August 14, 2020. © 2020 Norse World, © Leaflet, © OpenStreetMap, © CartoDB.

location of Ladoga and the two surrounding regions in absolute terms. Recent findings on linguistic frames of reference suggest that spatial descriptions invoking absolute frames require the computation of direction by means of a “mental compass”;53 in other words, the speaker has to know where their fixed reference points are. By analogy, the description in the chronicle suggests a solid, most probably empirical knowledge of the places and their whereabouts on behalf of the text’s informants, author(s), and/or audiences. In this respect, the spatial narrative of Consolation of the Soul is rather vague. Indeed, the linearity of the protagonist’s movement from one place to the other is reminiscent of both medieval romances and medieval itineraries, as noted above. It is tempting to suggest that such chosen frames of reference could also be interpreted as a generic marker. At least, all the rhymed chronicles in Old Swedish include examples of the absolute frame.54 However, a survey of some of the other texts in East Norse shows that other factors might be at play, as well. As expected, spatial constructions in Euphemia’s lays, versed translations of Yvain or the Knight of the Lion, Duke Frederick of Normandy, and Floris and Blancheflour, seem to lack cardinal directions.55 In the same way, saints lives’ in Old Swedish, in a collection of devotional texts, include only some.56 Nevertheless, there are a few instances of cardinal terms in the Romance of 53  Majid et al., “Can Language Restructure Cognition?” 109.

54  Klemming, Svenska medeltidens rimkrönikor. D. 2, for instance, 43, 49, 51, 76, 200, 208; Klemming, Svenska medeltidens rimkrönikor. D. 3, for instance, 47, 123, 128, 139. 55  Olson, Flores och Blanzeflor; Noreen, Herr Ivan.

56  Stephens, Ett Fornsvenskt Legendarium, 2: 155–56, 2: 238–39.



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Alexander, a rhymed Old Swedish translation of a Latin prose text, and it is possible that they are utilized for alliteration purposes in this case. 57 Interestingly, the Old Swedish version of Consolation of the Soul includes a prose version of the Alexander legend, but without directional terms.58 So whether the chosen frames of reference has potential as a generic marker, or as a marker of vernacularity, in medieval narrative will remain an open question until the East Norse literary corpus is analyzed in its entirety by future scholarship. However, the findings of this study make it evident that an assessment of medieval literature’s spatial characteristics of should build on the analysis of a wide range of linguistic resources that complement landscape- and topography-oriented surveys of named places.

Conclusions

This case study shows that the original Old Swedish composition, The Chronicle of Duke Erik, and the translation, Consolation of the Soul, use different language resources to convey spatial information and spatial relations. The rhymed chronicle employs inhabitant designations as its most frequent type of spatial reference and thus applies an actororiented perspective to geographic space. By contrast, the devotional text can be seen as static and place-oriented, since place-names comprise almost eighty percent of the spatial dataset. Furthermore, the chronicle is the only text that includes spatial constructions based on an absolute frame of reference, while detailed descriptions of spatial relations occur very rarely in Consolation of the Soul. If the relations in the constructed geography of the narrative are explicated, the intrinsic frame of reference is preferred. Analysis of the complementary texts in each of these genres only partially supports these findings; while the spatial profiles of other devotional texts remain similar, the spatial characteristics of the rhymed chronicles indicate a possible temporal development from an action-oriented to a place-oriented narrative, indirectly supported by a gradual change in the accumulation of geographical information in the same texts. Although this study uses a traditional genre taxonomy as its point of departure, a more dynamic perspective better accounts for these differences and enables a more nuanced interpretation of the empirical data. The differences in the ways spatial information is encoded in the texts under study can possibly be explained as genre-specific features and/or markers of vernacularity. And yet only the most frequent spatial references have been considered thus far and there is a need for more research on spatiality in medieval narrative based on the entire corpus of the East Norse literature in order to further substantiate the arguments introduced in this study. Moreover, as noted in my introduction, the study of geographical descriptions in medieval literature has revealed that spatial knowledge was textually rather than visually coded.59 The descriptive maps of medieval narrative are further characterized by 57  Klemming, Konung Alexander, 311–12.

58  Henning, Siælinna thrøst.

59  Cooper, English Romance; Howe, Writing the Map; Rouse, “What Lies Between?,” 18–19, 26; Petrulevich, Backman, and Adams, “Medieval Macrospace through GIS.”

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vague spatial descriptions and structural linearity. This article showcases that linguistic renderings of geographic space differ across the corpus of medieval literature based on the circumstances of their composition, amount of detail, and, most importantly, their underlying spatial frames of reference. Further study of the cognitive underpinnings at the heart of spatial constructions across medieval literary corpora can, therefore, help us to access the medieval audience’s knowledge and perception of geographic space and the surrounding world.



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Manuscripts Stockholm, Kungliga biblioteket / National Library of Sweden: A 108, A 109, D 2, D 5, D 6. “Manuscripta.Se: A Digital Catalogue of Manuscripts in Sweden, A 108.” Accessed January 30, 2020. www.manuscripta.se/ms/100239. “Manuscripta.Se: A Digital Catalogue of Manuscripts in Sweden, D 2.” Accessed January 30, 2020. www.manuscripta.se/ms/100346. “Manuscripta.Se: A Digital Catalogue of Manuscripts in Sweden, D 5.” Accessed August 14, 2020. www.manuscripta.se/ms/100351. “Manuscripta.Se: A Digital Catalogue of Manuscripts in Sweden, D 6.” Accessed August 14, 2020. www.manuscripta.se/ms/100352.

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Adams, Jonathan. “Karlskrönikan (The Chronicle of Karl).” https://norseworld.nordiska. uu.se/index.php?type=work&id=119 [accessed August 14, 2020]. _____. “Sturekrönikorna (Sture’s Chronicles).” https://norseworld.nordiska.uu.se/index. php?type=work&id=119 [accessed August 14, 2020]. “Ein Literarischer Atlas Europas.” Accessed January 10, 2020. https://norseworld.nordiska. uu.se/index.php?type=work&id=119 [accessed August 14, 2020]. “Norse World.” https://norseworld.nordiska.uu.se/index.php?type=work&id=119 [accessed August 14, 2020]. Petrulevich, Alexandra. “Data Visualisation – Norse World.” https://norseworld.nordiska. uu.se/index.php?type=work&id=119 [accessed August 14, 2020]. Petrulevich, Alexandra, Agnieszka Backman, and Jonathan Adams. “Data and Metadata – Norse World.” https://norseworld.nordiska.uu.se/index.php?type=work&id=119 [accessed August 14, 2020]. _____. “Definitions – Norse World.” https://norseworld.nordiska.uu.se/index.php?type=work &id=119 [accessed August 14, 2020]. “Scandinavian Runic-Text Database.” https://norsworld.nordiska.uu.se/index.php?type=work &id=119 [accessed August 14, 2020]. “Spatiality – hypergeo.” https://norseworld.nordiska.uu.se/index.php?type=work&id=119 [accessed August 14, 2020].

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Bampi, Massimiliano. “Genre.” In The Routledge Research Companion to the Medieval Icelandic Sagas. Routledge, 2017: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315613628.ch1. _____. “Yvain i dansk språkdräkt: Hövisk litteratur i det senmedeltida Danmark.” In A Copenhagen Miscellany. Studies in East Norse Philology, edited by Simon Skovgaard Boeck and Seán D. Vrieland, 215–34. Universitets–Jubilæets danske Samfund. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2019. Bampi, Massimiliano, Carolyne Larrington, and Sif Rikhardsdottir, eds. A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre. Cambridge: Brewer, 2020. Bemong, Nele, Pieter Borghart, Michel De Dobbeleer, Kristoffel Demoen, Koen De Temmerman, and Bart Keunen, eds. Bakhtin’s Theory of the Literary Chronotope: Reflections, Applications, Perspectives. Gent: Academia, 2010.

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Borin, Lars, Dana Dannélls, and Leif-Jöran Olsson. “Geographic Visualization of Place Names in Swedish Literary Texts.” Literary and Linguistic Computing 29, no. 3 (2014). Boroditsky, Lera. “Metaphoric Structuring: Understanding Time through Spatial Metaphors.” Cognition 75, no. 1 (2000): 1–28. Burenhult, Niclas, and Stephen C. Levinson. “Language and Landscape: A Cross-Linguistic Perspective.” Language and Landscape: Geographical Ontology in Cross-Linguistic Perspective 30, no. 2 (2008): 135–50. Cooper, David J., Christopher Donaldson, and Patricia Murrieta-Flores, eds. Literary Mapping in the Digital Age. London: Routledge, 2016. Cooper, Helen. The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Ellegård, Alvar. “De gamla nordbornas väderstrecksuppfattning.” Lychnos (1954/55): 1–20. _____. “The Old Scandinavian System of Orientation.” Studia Neophilologica 32, no. 2 (1960): 241–48. Harvey, P. D. A. “Local and Regional Cartography in Medieval Europe.” In Cartography in Prehistoric, Ancient, and Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, edited by J. B. Harley and David Woodward, 464–501, vol. 1 of The History of Cartography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Haugen, Einar. “The Semantics of Icelandic Orientation.” Word 13, no. 3 (1957): 447–60. Hellberg, Lars. Kumlabygdens ortnamn och äldre bebyggelse, vol. 3 of Kumlabygden: forntid, nutid, framtid, edited by Jonas L:son Samzelius. Kumla: Dohlwitz, 1967. Henning, Samuel. Siælinna thrøst. Første delin aff the bokinne, som kallas Siælinna thrøst. Efter cod. Holm. A 108 (f.d. Cod. Ängsö). Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Serie 1, Svenska Skrifter 59. 3 vols. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1954–1956. Hjorth, Poul Lindegård. Filologiske studier over Karl Magnus’ Krønike. Universitets–jubilæets danske samfunds skriftserie 416. København: Schultz, 1965. Howe, Nicholas. Writing the Map of Anglo-Saxon England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkvwx. Jackson, Tatjana N. “Spatial Orientation in Knýtlinga Saga.” Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 13 (2017): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1484/J.VMS.5.114349. Jauss, Hans Robert. “Theory of Genres and Medieval Literature.” In Modern Genre Theory, edited by David Duff, 127–47. London: Longman, 2000. Johansson, Karl G. “The Birgittines and the Bible. On the Use of the Pentateuch Paraphrase at Vadstena Abbey.” In Saint Birgitta, Syon and Vadstena. Papers from a Symposium in Stockholm 4–6 October 2007, edited by Claes Gejrot, Sara Risberg, and Mia Å� kestam, 188–99. Stockholm: Royal Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities, 2010. Kedwards, Dale. “Geography.” In A Critical Companion to Old Norse Literary Genre, edited by Massimiliano Bampi, Carolyne Larrington, and Sif Rikhardsdottir, 127–44. Cambridge: Brewer, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvxhrjd9.15. Klemming, Gustaf Edvard, ed. Konung Alexander: en medeltids dikt. Från latinet vänd i svenska rim omkring år 1380. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Serie 1, Svenska Skrifter, 23, 25 and 39. 3 vols. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1855–1862. _____. Svenska medeltidens rimkrönikor. D. 2 Nya eller Karls-Krönikan: början av unionsstriderna samt Karl Knutssons regering, 1389–1452. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter, 17:2. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1866. _____. Svenska medeltidens rimkrönikor. D. 3 Nya krönikans fortsättningar eller Sturekrönikorna: fortgången af unionsstriderna under Karl Knutsson och Sturarne, 1452–1520. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter, 17:3. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1866. Kretzschmar Jr., William A., and Alexandra Petrulevich. “GIS for Language Study.” In Routledge International Handbook of Research Methods in Digital Humanities, edited by Kristen Schuster and Stuart Dunn, unpag. London: Routledge, 2020.



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Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003. Levinson, Stephen C. Space in Language and Cognition: Explorations in Cognitive Diversity. Language, Culture and Cognition 5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. www. loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam024/2002067212.html. Majid, Asifa, Melissa Bowerman, Sotaro Kita, Daniel B.M. Haun, and Stephen C. Levinson. “Can Language Restructure Cognition? The Case for Space.” Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8, no. 3 (2004): 108–14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2004.01.003. Murrieta-Flores, Patricia, and Naomi Howell. “Towards the Spatial Analysis of Vague and Imaginary Place and Space: Evolving the Spatial Humanities through Medieval Romance.” Journal of Map & Geography Libraries 13, no. 1 (2017): 29–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 15420353.2017.1307302. Noreen, Erik, ed. Herr Ivan. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 164–66. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1930. _____, ed. Hertig Fredrik av Normandie: kritisk upplaga på grundval av Codex Verelianus. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 163. Uppsala: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1927. Olson, Emil, ed. Flores och Blanzeflor: kritisk upplaga. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 157. Lund: Berling, 1921. O’Meara, Carolyn. “Spatial Frames of Reference in Seri.” Language Sciences 33, no. 6 (2011): 1025–46. Petrulevich, Alexandra. “Med ortnamnsvarianten i centrum: presentation av ett teoretiskt och metodologiskt verktyg för att analysera namn i skrift.” Meijerbergs arkiv för svensk ordforskning 44 (2020): 291–398. _____. Ortnamnsanpassning som process: En undersökning av vendiska ortnamn och ortnamnsvarianter i Knýtlinga saga. Uppsala: Institutionen för nordiska språk, Uppsala universitet, 2016. Petrulevich, Alexandra, Agnieszka Backman, and Jonathan Adams. “Medieval Macrospace through GIS: The Norse World Project Approach.” The Cartographic Journal 57, no. 1 (2019): 1–10. Petrulevich, Alexandra, and Henrik Williams. “Ö� g 83.” In preparation. Piatti, Barbara. “Mapping Fiction: The Theories, Tools and Potentials of Literary Cartography.” In Literary Mapping in the Digital Age, edited by David J. Cooper, Christopher Donaldson, and Patricia Murrieta-Flores, 88–101. London: Routledge, 2016. Pipping, Rolf. Erikskrönikan enligt Cod. Holm. D.2 jämte avvikande läsarter ur andra handskrifter. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 68. Uppsala, 1963. Rouse, Robert Allen. “What Lies Between?: Thinking through Medieval Narrative Spatiality.” In Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative, edited by Robert T. Tally, 13–29. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Shusterman, Anna, and Peggy Li. “Frames of Reference in Spatial Language Acquisition.” Cognitive Psychology 88 (2016): 115–61. Simek, Rudolf. Altnordische Kosmographie, Studien und Quellen zu Weltbild und Weltbeschreibung in Norwegen und Island vom 12. bis zum 14. Jahrhundert. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012. Söderwall, K. F. Ordbok öfver svenska medeltids-språket. 2 vols. in 3. Lund: Berling, 1884. Stephens, George, ed. Ett fornsvenskt legendarium : innehållande medeltids kloster-sagor om helgon, påfvar och kejsare ifrån det 1:sta till det xiii:de århundradet, efter gamla handskrifter. Samlingar utgivna av Svenska fornskriftsällskapet. Serie 1, Svenska skrifter 7:1–3. 3 vols. Stockholm: Norstedt, 1847–1874.

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Tally Jr., Robert T., ed. Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Thorén, Ivar. Studier över Själens Tröst: Bidrag till Kännedomen om den litterära verksamheten i 1400-talets Vadstena. Nordiska texter och undersökningar 14. Stockholm: Gebers, 1942. Travis, Charles B. Abstract Machine: Humanities GIS. Redlands: Esri, 2015.

Alexandra Petrulevich ([email protected]) is a historical linguist and holds a PhD in Scandinavian languages from the Department of Scandinavian Languages at Uppsala University. Her doctoral thesis investigated the use of placenames and linguistic contacts among Norse, Low German, and Slavic languages in the early Middle Ages. Her main research interests include onomastics, language history, Scandinavian philology, and digital humanities. She has coordinated GIS for language study (LanGIS), a two-year network initiative in spatial humanities at the Faculty of Languages, Uppsala University. Currently, she is managing the Norse Perception of the World project responsible for the Norse World gazetteer of East Norse literature. Abstract This article investigates how geographical space is linguistically rendered in two Old Swedish texts, an original vernacular composition, Erikskrönikan (The Chronicle of Duke Erik), and a translation, Själens tröst (Consolation of the Soul), and what this linguistic information can reveal about perceptions of geography and space in medieval narrative.

Keywords East Norse, Norse world, spatiality, spatial constructions, frame of reference, spatial humanities, Scandinavian philology, medieval literature, Consolation of the Soul, Chronicle of Duke Erik, place names, inhabitant designations

MILITARY MIGRATION IN THE BALTIC SEA REGION, CA. 1400–1620 MARTIN NEUDING SKOOG*

How global was the premodern North? I intend to address this question from a

military point of view and to discuss whether a global perspective is applicable to the period and region in that respect. In the premodern era, warfare was a central pursuit among many European polities, and the expansion of the early modern military market is often associated with the growth of centralized states. Knut J. V. Jespersen argues that, before the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), wars in the Baltic Sea region had been “fought in splendid isolation” and that it was not until this conflict that the region was really connected with the international European military–political system.1 Given that the subsequent decline of mercenary armies in the eighteenth century seems connected to state consolidation and the development of standing national armies, the global window of military migration in the Baltic region is largely associated with the seventeenth century. In this essay, however, I want to investigate whether a global perspective on the Baltic region is also valid during the preceding period of military migration. For my purposes, this region comprises the territories and polities touching on the shores of the Baltic Sea, although the Holy Roman Empire, Poland, Lithuania, and Muscovy also had vast inland territories, which I do not include. During the early Middle Ages, centrifugal forces in the Baltic region promoted the outward migration of Vikings and other warriors. Danes and Norwegians travelled to western Europe and the British isles. Swedes travelled along the eastern rivers to the Caspian Sea, the Black Sea, and further south to Constantinople, where the Varangian guard served the Byzantine emperor.2 The rich early findings of Arab coin and ceramics in Scandinavia testify to the intensive connections with distant regions.3 Some hypotheses also locate the geographic origins of Goths, Lombards, and other migrating military federations of late antiquity to the southern Baltic.4 It is unknown whether these military migrations were due to social, economic, or political push-or-pull factors, but the centrifugal trend is quite clear: many more warriors left the Baltic region than arrived there. During the later Middle Ages, however, the tide turned and centripetal forces drew soldiers back into the region. The earliest cause was the Northern Crusades, which *  This essay is part of a larger research project, “Contracts of War: Sweden and the Military Market in Sixteenth-Century Northern Europe,” funded by the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, the Delegationen för Militärhistorisk forskning, the Torsten Söderbergs Stiftelse, and the Å� ke Wibergs Stiftelse. 1  Jespersen, “Warfare and Society,” 180–81.

2  Bjerg et al. From Goths to Varangians; Larsson, Vikingar i österled.

3  Roslund, “Muslimskt Medelhav.”

4  Santosuosso, Barbarians, Marauders, 42–43, 140–41.

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enticed knights from western Germany, the Low Countries, and Denmark to Pomerania, Prussia, and Livonia.5 In 1377, as documented by Peter Suchenwirt, even Duke Albrecht III of Austria undertook an expedition to Prussia and Samogitia with a knightly retinue.6 In the early sixteenth century, Sigismund von Herberstein wrote that the Germans in Livonia were mainly drawn from Jülich, Geldern, and Münster in Westphalia, whence new soldiers were regularly sent to replace others who had died or served their time there.7 Due to this movement, the southern and eastern Baltic became populated with German-speaking elites. The Northern Crusades chiefly ended when the Lithuanians were finally christened in the 1380s. Nevertheless, military migration within and into the Baltic Sea Region continued and actually increased during the following period. According to Sven Ekdahl, this was partly due to the changing policies of the Teutonic Order: crusaders had been willing to fight heathens in exchange for absolution, but when the wars were increasingly directed against the Christian realm of Poland, men could no longer be persuaded to fight without monetary reimbursement. Consequently, the Order had to resort to the enlistment of mercenaries.8 This generated an increased influx of foreign soldiers into this region, such that the centripetal trend of military migration into the Baltic region continued even after crusading activity had ceased. In this article, I examine this trend and discuss the possible explanations for it. Even though the main empirical concern here is the tracing of soldiers’ and armies’ movements, this is not a subject of mere military interest. The fact that large bodies of foreign men—with strange fashions, customs, and mores—were regularly accommodated among the local population must inevitably have generated cultural traffic between centres and peripheries. This study is therefore an attempt to map out the directions of military migrations in the Baltic region between the fifteenth and early seventeenth century. From what regions or nations did these soldiers come, and why? Moreover, this period also saw an increased circulation of soldiers and military groups within the region, which allows us to estimate how rigid or flexible the military market really was. Several scholars, such as Mary Elizabeth Ailes, James Miller, Steve Murdoch, and Alexia Grosjean have shown quite intensive migration from the British Isles into the Baltic; however, they largely focus on the seventeenth century.9 In this study, I will complement their research with a wider geographical and chronological scope.

5  Transehe-Roseneck, Die ritterlichen Livlandfahrer; Paravicini, Die Preussenreisen; Lind et al., Danske korstog; Christiansen, The Northern Crusades; Bartlett, The Making of Europe. 6  Peter Suchenwirt’s Werke.

7  Von Herberstein, Moscouiter wunderbare Historien, cxxviii. 8  Ekdahl, “The Teutonic Order,” 345–61.

9  Ailes, Military Migration; Miller, “The Scottish Mercenary”; Grosjean, An Unofficial Alliance; Murdoch, Network North.



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Circulation of Mercenaries within the Baltic Sea Region

The largest category of early mercenaries in the Baltic region were Germans and the main recruitment markets the port cities of Bremen, Hamburg, Lübeck, Danzig, Riga, and Reval. In the late Middle Ages, the Hanseatic trade network drove the circulation of soldiers and also stimulated large-scale piracy and systematic military measures to protect the trade.10 At the end of the fifteenth century, the Danish Oldenburg kings enlisted increasing numbers of Germans and soon became the largest buyer on the mercenary market. On his campaign to Stockholm in 1497, for instance, the Danish king Hans contracted the Black Guard from western Germany, a standing mercenary unit comprising of three thousand Landsknechte—a German type of professional infantry soldiers.11 In fact, Bjørn Poulsen convincingly argues that the need to finance the growing numbers of mercenaries gave rise to early modern fiscal states in Scandinavia.12 Even though Sweden was much less economically developed than Denmark, its rulers regularly contracted small numbers of German and Livonian mercenaries from the 1490s onward.13 Throughout the wars of the sixteenth century, such units continued to serve the Swedish crown. After it had acquired its dominion over Estonia in 1561, the presence of Livonian soldiers serving the Swedish Crown in this region is therefore unsurprising. During the Nordic Seven Years’ War (1563–1570), however, several squadrons of Livonian cavalry as well as Estonian infantry were also transferred to Sweden proper, where they were deployed against the Danish army.14 Still, even though there was a regular circulation of foreign soldiers in Swedish service during the sixteenth century, the Swedish enlistment of mercenaries seldom exceeded a few thousand men. It was only during the reign of Karl IX (1599–1611) that numbers truly rose to continental standards. In 1604, the Swedish Diet granted the king the right to enlist nine thousand mercenaries in his service, and henceforth a substantial proportion of the army was recruited abroad.15 During his reign, the number of foreign officers even exceeded the number of native commanders.16 Throughout the sixteenth century, despite Sweden’s increasing use of mercenaries, the principal northern buyer on the German market was still the Danish crown. In 1563, Frederik II enlisted twenty-four thousand German soldiers for his war against Sweden. As Jason Lavery points out, such numbers match those of the Germans deployed in the parallel religious wars in France, which illustrates the increasing importance of the Northern market.17 This regional market was certainly integrated into the larger European market. 10  Ekdahl, “Schiffskinder”; Kreem, “The Business of War”; Puhle, Die Vitalienbrüder.

11  Poulsen, “Med harnisk og hest”, 50; Christensen, Dansk statsforvaltning, 348–49; Lammers, Die Schlacht, 62; Jahn, Danmarks politisk-militaire historie, 364; Larsson, Kalmarunionens tid, 379–80. 12  Poulsen, “Kingdoms on the Periphery,” 116119.

13  Skoog, I rikets tjänst, 186–211.

14  Mankell, Öfversigt af svenska krigen D. 2, 9, 51; Tidander, Nordiska sjuårskrigets historia, 391. 15  Frost, The Northern Wars, 64.

16  Nilsson, På väg mot militärstaten, 10–12.

17  Lavery, Germany’s Northern Challenge, 22.

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Already in 1518, a German merchant reported to the Swedes that the Danish king Christian II was able to muster a large mercenary army for his anticipated invasion of Sweden, because neither German nor Italian princes were then enlisting, due to a general lack of provisions on the Continent.18 The large number of units enlisted by the Danish king in the 1560s consequently diminished the pool of military manpower available in the Holy Roman Empire and was a real cause of concern to German princes.19 Conversely, in 1542, the Swedish royal counsellor Per Brahe argued that the large body of German Landsknechte, who had just entered the service of King Gustav Vasa, should be grateful that the king catered for their needs, because no German prince presently required their services.20 These examples testify to the interconnectedness of regional European military markets. The continental supply and demand of troops and employers thus hampered or propelled the migration of soldiers into the Baltic Sea Region long before the Thirty Years’ War. The Swedish army also contributed to the circulation of soldiers within the larger region. As soon as the Swedish crown had acquired dominion over northern Estonia in 1561, Swedish and Finnish army units were sent there to garrison the key towns and fortresses. During Sweden’s prolonged wars with Russia and Poland, Swedish soldiers continued to serve regularly in Livonia well into the seventeenth century. During Gustavus Adolphus’ Polish war (1621–1629), Swedish soldiers were also present in the garrisons of Prussia. Meanwhile, written sources and printed leaflets testify to the Germans’ perception of the Finns, Lapps, Livonians, and Irish as exotic mercenaries brought there by the Swedish army in 1630–1648.21 The townsfolk in Livonia responded in a similar way to foreign soldiers in 1556, when the threat of civil war loomed. This area had been spared from serious conflict for a lengthy period and the chronicler Balthasar Russow makes a point of remarking on the German Landsknechte in the service of the Livonian Order. When these men with their strange manners and fashions of costume arrived in local society, he observes, the townsfolk gaped in astonishment as if they had seen some great sea monster.22 When German Landsknechte came to Sweden in the early sixteenth century they were perceived in a similar way, but the conservative rural society also viewed them as godless and utterly depraved.23 In more urbanized areas, the residents seems to have been more tolerant in this respect. The cultural encounters generated by military migration thus differed between places and contexts.

Military Migration into the Baltic Sea Region

A case for the global context of military migration into the Baltic region is strengthened by examining the influx of soldiers from a wider arena: in particular, the ubiquitous presence 18  Handlingar till Nordens historia 1515–1523, del 1, no. 530.

19  Lavery, Germany’s Northern Challenge, 22–23. 20  Per Brahe den äldres krönika, 35–36.

21  Pleiss, Bodenständige Bevölkerung, 62–65, 243–47.

22  Urban, Bayonets for Hire, 46–47.

23  Skoog, “‘Wie die huren auff ein kirchweich’,” 135–36.



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of the Scots as mercenaries serving many different polities around the Baltic.24 In more than half of the registered instances of recruitment for foreign armies in Scotland between 1552 and 1656, as recorded by James Miller, the soldiers were destined for the Baltic in the employ of Denmark, Sweden, or Poland.25 Indeed, Scottish mercenaries were already prevalent there at the beginning of the sixteenth century, serving the Danish Oldenburg kings on their frequent military campaigns in Sweden.26 During King Christian II’s great invasion of Sweden in 1520, the army was largely composed of auxiliary troops put at his disposal by the French and Scottish kings and German allied princes.27 Given this regional reliance on Scottish soldiers, it is surprising that it took several generations before Scots also entered Swedish service. In 1534, Gustav Vasa considered contracting with a Scottish privateer and, in 1556, he received an offer from the Scottish gentry for two thousand cavalry troops.28 But it was not until 1563 that we can ascertain that Scottish units served the Swedish crown and continued to do so throughout the Nordic Seven Years’ War.29 During the same war, a number of Scottish units also served the Danish king.30 Alexia Grosjean explains the chronological difference between Scottish military migration to Denmark and Sweden by pointing to the early political and marital ties between the Scottish house of Stuart and the Danish house of Oldenburg, prior to the emergence of “a positive informal confederation” between Sweden and Scotland from 1569 to 1654.31 Apart from market forces, then, diplomacy and foreign policy seem to have been important variables affecting the dynamics of military migration. Perhaps the most frequently referenced early example of Scots in Swedish service is that of Archibald Ruthven, a nobleman who came to Sweden with a force of three thousand Scots in 1573. During their short stay in Sweden proper, the soldiers skinned the province of Uppland for provisions before they travelled to Livonia. There, during the siege of Wesenberg, they were spectacularly slaughtered by allied Germans in a pitched battle that rapidly escalated from a mere alehouse brawl.32 The chronicler Russow largely explains this conflict stemming from the religious otherness of the Calvinist Scots.33 Jealousy caused by the uneven distribution of pay among the different foreign

24  Berg, Lagercrantz, Scots in Sweden; Grosjean, An Unofficial Alliance; Dow, Ruthven’s Army; Fischer, The Scots; Grosjean and Murdoch, eds., Scottish Communities Abroad; Murdoch, Network North. 25  Miller, The Scottish Mercenary, 170–171.

26  Christensen, Dansk statsforvaltning, 348; Styffe, Sverige under de yngre Sturarne, 1504–1520, no. 260, 338, 495; Peder Swart, 56–57; Olavus Petri, 321; Jahn, Danmarks politisk-militaire historie, 454. 27  Petri, Östgötafänikorna till och med år 1618, 37; Lind et al., Danske korstog, 348–51.

28  Fischer, The Scots, 47: Konung Gustaf den förstes registratur: 9 1534, 148; Konung Gustaf den förstes registratur: 26 1556, 509, 856; Grosjean, An Unofficial Alliance, 14.

29  Fischer, The Scots, 47; Mankell, Nyare tiden 1526–1611, 6:51; Barkman, 1560–1611, 235, 746, 749; Persson, Vinterfälttåget, 47. 30  Persson, Vinterfälttåget, 26; Historiske kildeskrifter, 2.1:8–11.

31  Grosjean, An Unofficial Alliance, 4.

32  Dow, Ruthwen’s Army; Russow, Chronica, 153–54. 33  Russow, Chronica, 150.

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contingents may also have contributed to this particularly bitter episode. Nevertheless, Scots continued to serve in the Swedish army and several Scotsmen made careers as commanders of Swedish units. As Steve Murdoch shows, the Scots often formed the hard core of Swedish armies during the reign of Gustavus Adolphus and throughout the Thirty Years’ War. A great number of Scots also became naturalized Swedish noblemen and frequently merited the same trust as native soldiers and officers. In the later sixteenth century many Scottish soldiers also served the Polish king.34 While English soldiers also served in the region at times, they formed a smaller and less frequent national contingent and have consequently received little attention from historians. An early exemplar is Henry Bolinbroke, the future King Henry IV (1399– 1413), who joined the Teutonic order with a large retinue for the siege of Vilnius in 1390.35 Much later, around 1560, the Englishman Siegfrid Preston arrived at the Swedish court; during the Russian war in 1570, he brought a squadron of English cavalry into Swedish service for two years. At least one of his captains then went on to serve in France and the Netherlands; one of his lieutenants stayed behind in Stockholm for three years to secure money owed to the captain by the Swedish crown and surely needed for the next campaign—testifying to the interconnected workings of these military markets.36 English infantry also served Gustavus Adolphus in Russia in 1611–1615, in the regiment of Samuel Cobron.37 Probably for the first time, during the Kalmar War (1611– 1613), Irish soldiers also served in Sweden proper, where they fought alongside Scots against the Danes.38 Along with the Scots, Irish units were also frequently deployed by the Swedish crown in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War.39 In the decades around 1600, however, most of the English and Scottish trade in the Baltic was with Poland. As Stewart Oakley points out, with reference to the struggle between Sweden and Poland, King James I gave preference to the Poles, whom he frequently allowed to hire ships and mercenaries on the British Isles.40 In addition to soldiers from the British Isles, French troops also contributed to these migrations. Arguably, the first mention of French soldiers in the Baltic region is from the 1390s, when the Teutonic Order employed companies of Gascon crossbowmen in the wars against the Lithuanians.41 French soldiers are also mentioned in the region in the 1510s, in the service of the Danish king Christian II. In the winter of 1520, he brought around two thousand French auxiliary troops commanded by the prince de Fouquar34  Frost, The Northern Wars, 48.

35  Rechungen über Heinrich von Derby’s Preussenfahrten, 33; Ekdahl, “Horses and Crossbows.”

36  Ö� dberg, Om stämplingarna, 77. Compare the account of Captain Nicholas Palmer in the judicial protocols of the municipal court of Stockholm: Stockholms stads tänkeböcker 1568–1575, 238ff, 396, 614–15. See also David J. B. Trim’s account of the English fighting in France and the Netherlands: “Fighting ‘Jacob’s warres’,” 121, 395–96. 37  Generalstaben, Sverige krig, 586.

38  Cronholm, Sveriges historia, 1:454.

39  Grosjean, Murdoch, “Irish Participation,” 277–87. 40  Oakley, “Trade, Peace,” 223–24.

41  Ekdahl, “Horses and Crossbows.”



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mont, Gaston de Brezé. This campaign is described by the French chronicler Martin du Bellay, who claims that Colonel Jacques de Valles was taken captive by the Swedes and that a Captain Saint-Blimont was among those killed in an ambush at the forest of Tiveden. Du Bellay describes how the French soldiers endured miserable hardships in the Swedish winter and were eventually deserted by the Danish King. Without money, provisions, or proper clothing, they managed to hitch a ride on ships bound for Scotland and then on to France. Only half of the original force eventually returned home from this campaign.42 Just as was the case with the Scots, French soldiers entered Swedish service much later than in Denmark. French and Flemish officers are found in the Swedish army for the first time in the 1560s, the most famous being Charles de Mornay, Jacques Collaert, and Pontus de la Gardie. De la Gardie first served in Scotland and then entered the service of the Danish king. Later, he was taken prisoner by the Swedes at Varberg and offered to enter Swedish service. Together with his son Jacob, he eventually became one of the more prominent field commanders in Swedish military history: the former commanding the army in Livonia and the latter seizing Moscow in 1610. Already during the Nordic Seven Years’ War, Pontus de la Gardie, was repeatedly commissioned to raise troops for Sweden in France.43 In 1566, the Swedish king sent him to France to find Gascon troops, but this pursuit failed.44 Swedish administrative documents nevertheless indicate that, in 1569, he commanded a mixed French–Scottish squadron, which he had somehow brought to Sweden.45 To explain such developments, Jason Lavery, Sören Tommos, and Frede P. Jensen have emphasized the hardening of Swedish–Danish competition in the mercenary market of northern Germany during the 1560s, which prompted both countries to make additional probes into France.46 In 1565, for example, the Danish king Frederik II sent his agent Anders Lorichs to ask the French court for permission to enlist two thousand harquebusiers, who were to travel to Denmark on board French salt ships bound for the Baltic. When Queen Catherine declined this request, Lorich turned to the adventurer Peyrot Monluc, who was then gathering a company for a trip to India. In spite of the French royal prohibition on enlistments, Monluc made Lorichs a cheap offer for his mercenaries. This offer was debated in Copenhagen in 1566, but declined: likely because the Danish king did not want to oppose the formidable French queen. In the following year, Lorichs presented a grandiose—but subsequently discarded—new plan to ferry four thousand Gascon soldiers to Sweden, where they would make a surprise coastal landing in order to outmanoeuvre the Swedish forces.47 42  Sundberg, Medeltidens svenska krig, 399; du Bellay, Les mémoires, 15; Styffe, Sverige under de yngre Sturarne, 1504–1520, no. 491. 43  Arnell, Bidrag, 167; Tommos, “Erik XIV”; Riksarkivet, RR 1566 30/5.

44  Jensen, Danmarks konflikt, 217; Tommos, “Erik XIV,” 36–37.

45  Ö� dberg, Om stämplingarna, 24; Arnell, Bidrag, 167.

46  Lavery, Germany’s Northern Challenge; Jensen, Danmarks konflikt, 216–22; Tommos, “Erik XIV.” 47  Jensen, Danmarks konflikt, 216–17.

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The Swedes maintained their relations with the French market. In 1571, the Swedish king Johan III (1568–1592) was encouraged to contract the French captain La Garde and to enlist fifteen hundred soldiers from Gascoigne.48 There are also later mentions of French as well as Italian soldiers in the Swedish army at the siege of Nöteborg in 1582.49 A large number of French soldiers under the captains Bourguignon de Corobel, De la Ville, and De la Chappelle also entered Swedish service during the period 1608–1615, and were deployed on the Russian campaigns.50 French dragoons under Jean Dupuis also served the Danish king during the parallel Kalmar war fought in Sweden proper.51 The French were not only sought-after, they were often considered more trustworthy than Germans. In 1566, the Swedish king Erik XIV stated that he preferred to enlist men from “other foreign nations” than Germany, and planned to contract a thousand French cavalrymen to deploy in Livonia.52 This decision was probably due to a recent event, when a German squadron under the command of Franz von Kettenburg had deserted and instead entered Danish service.53 Given the ongoing war with Denmark, this was a very serious breach of contract and also considered the utmost in deceitful behaviour. A later discussion recorded during the reign of Karl IX highlights the ethnic preferences for, and prejudices toward, soldiers of different origins: the king remarked that the French were proud and somewhat peculiar, but would not tolerate physical punishment.54 Apparently, this was the case for the Germans, in his estimation. Even though the French periodically served in the region, they were never as numerous as the Scots. Dutch mercenaries also travelled to the Baltic region, but only occasionally. During the late Middle Ages, Dutch merchants had begun to compete with the Hanseatic League for shares of the Baltic commercial market; during the course of the sixteenth century, their commercial presence there markedly increased. However, this makes it the more puzzling that Dutch soldiers are so rarely mentioned in the Baltic during this period. The only clear early exception is when the dethroned king Christian II tried to reclaim his power over the Nordic realms by force: in 1531, he landed in Norway with around seven thousand soldiers recruited in the Netherlands, but was soon defeated.55 In 1571, Wilhelm of Orange sent delegations to Denmark and Sweden to ask for troops to serve against the Spanish in the Low Countries.56 Due to the Danish military exhaustion after the Nordic Seven Years’ War (1563–1570), and the outbreak of the Russo-Swedish War in 1570 however, both countries declined the request. In 1592, the Swedes, in return, asked the States General of the Netherlands for permission to enlist Dutch units, and 48  Ö� dberg, Om stämplingarna, 5–6, 26.

49  Ahlén, Bidrag, 1:109; Artéus, Till militärstatens förhistoria, 134.

50  Sprinchorn, “Om Sveriges förbindelser,” 145; Generalstaben, Sveriges krig, 574–96. 51  Generalstaben, Sveriges krig, 585.

52  Kongl. kansliets diarium öfver ingångna skrifvelser 1566, 55. 53  Jensen, Danmarks konflikt, 187. 54  Geijer, Samlade skrifter, 6:85.

55  Hamre, Norsk politisk historie, 469–71.

56  Sprinchorn, “Om Sveriges förbindelser,” 130–31; Ö� dberg, Om stämplingarna, 25.



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a few companies eventually came to serve in Livonia 1592–1593.57 After some unsuccessful negotiations at the turn of the century, King Karl repeatedly tried to persuade the States General to allow further enlistments. In 1601, in response, the famous military reformer Johan of Nassau travelled with Dutch units to Livonia and served there as Swedish field commander.58 In 1606, the Swedish renewed their attempts to recruit in Amsterdam, and the entrepreneur Don Rodrigo de Cordova y Gusman entered Swedish service to undertake enlistments.59 In 1613, Johan Mönnichhofen also brought a Dutch regiment into Swedish service on the Russian campaign.60 As Gunnar Artéus points out in his study of the Swedish officers corps during the reigns of Gustav Vasa’s sons (1560–1611)—and as I have further demonstrated above— the foreign mercenaries in Swedish service were mainly recruited from three regions: Estonia–Livonia, the British Isles, and northwestern Europe (the Holy Roman Empire, France, and the Netherlands).61 That said, men of other nations, including Hungarians, Italians, Poles, Russians, and Spaniards, are also found in Swedish service during this period. And considering that this was an age of religious hostilities, it is noteworthy that the confessional convictions of the mercenaries appear to have been no great obstacle to recruitment. During this period, Roman Catholic, Calvinist, as well as Russian Orthodox soldiers entered Swedish service.62 Many Hungarians served in the Polish army as well as the Swedish, and a large number followed King Stefan Báthory’s army to besiege the Russian city of Pskov in 1581.63 Spanish soldiers are also found in the Polish army during this period.64 A lesser-studied group of Baltic mercenaries are the Bohemians: by the time of the battle of Tannenberg in 1410, Bohemian soldiers served both the Teutonic Order and the Polish king on opposite sides of the land war in northern Poland.65 On his campaign to Sweden in 1452, the Danish king Christian I (1448–1481) also brought a few hundred Bohemian mercenaries.66 During the first three quarters of the sixteenth century, Robert Frost estimates that around seven thousand Bohemians served the Polish crown.67 Swiss soldiers were also being recruited to Baltic service, albeit belatedly. In the spring of 1567, King Erik XIV gave instructions to his agents Hans Krafft and Joakim Birgersson to collect a loan from a merchant in Antwerp. From there, they were directed 57  Sprinchorn, “Om Sveriges förbindelser,” 135–36; Artéus, Till militärstatens förhistoria, 139–66.

58  Sprinchorn, “Om Sveriges förbindelser,” 138–42. 59  Sprinchorn, “Om Sveriges förbindelser,” 142–44. 60  Generalstaben, Sveriges krig, 592–94.

61  Artéus, Till militärstatens förhistoria, 134.

62  Artéus, Till militärstatens förhistoria, 134. 63  Frost, The Northern Wars, 48.

64  Frost, The Northern Wars, 48; Artéus, Till militärstatens förhistoria, 134. 65  Ekdahl, “The Teutonic Order,” 347.

66  Poulsen, “Med harnisk og hest”, 48–50; Christensen, Dansk statsforvaltning, 348; Saxdorph, “Legoknektar”, 10:430–31; Mankell, Hednatiden och medeltiden, 524. 67  Frost, The Northern Wars, 48.

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to travel to Switzerland, where three squadrons of good Swiss cavalry were to be contracted; they should then march to the Netherlands and embark for Sweden.68 But due to the difficulty of securing the loan in Antwerp, this particular project was abandoned. Only on the campaign to Russia, in 1611–1612, did a company of Swiss soldiers serve the Swedish crown, for the first time ever recorded.69 As many of the examples adduced above suggest, a central factor which adds to the complexity of military migrations during this era is the rise of Russia. Due to the perpetual arms embargo against Orthodox Christian polities by the powers of Latin Europe, Muscovite princes had increasingly imported expertise in order to manufacture their own weapons. By 1475, the Italian craftsman Rodolfo Fioraventi was already employed in Moscow to cast bronze cannon.70 During his travels to Russia in 1517 and 1526, Sigismund Herberstein noted that the Grand Duke had both German and Italian cannon-founders in his service.71 In 1547, when Ivan IV first assumed the title of Tsar, he attempted to expand this enterprise and commissioned the German Hans Schlitte to recruit military ordinance specialists. Schlitte managed to gather one hundred and twenty-three men in Lübeck, whom he intended to ship to Russia, but the whole party was eventually arrested for trying to breach the embargo and the venture was abandoned altogether.72 This did not dissuade adventurous individual artisans, however. In 1579, Heinrich von Staden mentions German artillery personnel permanently stationed in Moscow, and during the following century, a large number of Dutch, English, German, and Scottish specialists travelled to Russia to manufacture arms for the Tsar.73 These assorted military craftsmen were increasing joined by mercenaries. In late 1580s, the Englishman Jerome Horsey tells of some Scots who escaped Swedish service, among them a Captain Gabriel Elphingstone, and came to Muscovy to serve the tsar.74 In 1589, the Englishman Giles Fletcher accounts for a number of foreigners in Russian service: four thousand three hundred Poles; four thousand Circassians serving under Polish officers; eight Dutch; a hundred and fifty Scots; and a one-hundred-strong company composed of Greeks, Turks, Danes, and Swedes.75 Two years later, Fletcher even describes an allowance of land allotted by the tsar to maintain foreign mercenaries—Poles, Swedes, Dutch, Scots, and others.76 In the 1620s, the tsar also created a special chancellery for the recruitment of foreign soldiers.77 In 1630, the famous Scottish 68  Tommos, “Erik XIV,” 16, 30, 33, 40; Riksarkivet, RR 22 March 1567, fol 118.

69  Generalstaben, Sveriges krig, 596–88. 70  Esper, “Military Self-Sufficiency,” 189.

71  Von Herberstein, Notes upon Russia, 1:98.

72  Esper, “Anti-Russian Arms Embargo,” 182–83.

73  Esper, “Military Self-Sufficiency,” 185–208; Esper, “Anti-Russian Arms Embargo,” 180–96; von Staden, Aufzeichnungen über den Moskauer Staat, 147. 74  Bond, Russia, 225–26; Berry and Crummey, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, 330.

75  Berry and Crummey, Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, 180. 76  Bond, Russia, 52.

77  Urban, Bayonets for Hire, 81–84.



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general Alexander Leslie, who had served in both Sweden and Poland, was employed in Moscow as a military adviser and brought 4,600 men into the tsar’s service.78 In the following year, as William Urban has found, there were some one hundred and ninety foreign officers in the tsar’s army. By the mid-seventeenth century, a number of French Huguenots and Dutch engineers were also hired by the tsar to design fortifications.79 Conversely, in several instances, Russian soldiers also migrated from Russia. As soon as Swedish forces occupied Russian territory in the early 1580s, Russian noblemen changed sides and entered Swedish service as mercenaries and even fief holders. Kasper Kepsu has studied the early seventeenth century influx of Russians into Swedish service and has shown that many eventually became naturalized noblemen in Finland.80 Lastly, we should note that contingents of Tartars, Cossacks, and other peoples from the Crimea, the Caucasus, and the Asian steppes—regions nominally subject to Muscovy—served the tsar throughout this period and followed his armies to Livonia.81 For their part, the Poles also contracted Ukrainian Cossacks.82 In 1561, the chronicler Russow describes how the burgers of Riga were amazed when the Lithuanian prince, Nicolaus Radziwil, arrived outside the city with an army in support of the Polish king. Apart from Germans, Poles, and Lithuanians, his army included a great number of Armenians, Turks, Tartars, Podolians, Russians, and Wallachians.83 The constant military exchanges with the various steppe peoples mediated by Russia and Poland–Lithuania therefore contributed to the further entanglement of military migrations in the Baltic Sea region during this era.

Conclusion

In this study, I have sketched some major geographic trends in military migration into and through the Baltic Sea region during a pivotal era. I have shown that the period from around 1400 to1620 was characterized by the constant circulation of military groups within and to this region, and that a large proportion of this traffic consisted of individual soldiers looking for employment. The growth of migration was also clearly propelled by the emergence of competitive sovereign states, with their ever-increasing demand for military expansion—and hence for mercenaries. Correspondingly, the decline of these migrations in the later seventeenth century was probably connected to the consolidation of these states and the development of standing “national” armies increasingly recruited or conscripted from populations of citizen-subjects. While mercenary armies continued to dominate much of the European continent well into the eighteenth century, the trend of “military nationalization” started somewhat earlier in 78  Frost, The Northern Wars, 144; Urban, Bayonets for Hire, 82. 79  Urban, Bayonets for Hire, 82

80  Ahlén, Bidrag, 1:109; Kepsu, Mellan Moskva.

81  Frost, The Northern Wars, 4–5, 10, 49–50, 95, 143–44. 82  Frost, The Northern Wars, 151. 83  Russow, Chronica, 89.

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the North. The near-dominance of Sweden in the entire Baltic region during the latter part of the seventeenth century also hampered the development of a multipolar market there. Eventually, this reduced the demand for foreign soldiers. Thus, with the exception of some campaigns during the Napoleonic Wars, the great era of military migration into the Baltic seems to have waned by the late seventeenth century. In stark contrast to Knud Jespersen’s claim of the Baltic as a region in “splendid isolation,” then, this article has also emphasized how the waves of geographic mobility generated by the military market clearly preceded the Thirty Years’ War. The different chronological and regional components of this migration have been studied before, but not in close conjunction with one another. This study accordingly offers a more global and long-term perspective on this process, making it possible to show that the regions from which soldiers were recruited, or whence they migrated, changed continuously throughout the period. Some tentative explanations for these trends and variations can be adduced. First, even though this traffic was sometimes facilitated by political alliances or restricted by diplomatic obstacles, I suggest that it was mainly directed by the basic supply-and-demand dynamics of the international mercenary market. Confessional differences rarely seem to have affected these migrations. As a suggestion for future research, then, I would like to propose further studies of what factors, apart from the Baltic crusades, originally generated the influx of soldiers into this region. A possible explanation is the improved access to capital markets and the liquidity (in cash) necessary to salary mercenary armies. For example, the different chronological patterns discernible in mercenary contracting between Denmark and Sweden may be explained by the initial lack of capital in the latter realm. From an economic perspective, studies that more closely scrutinize how the dynamics of the market affected the circulation of soldiers would also contribute to understanding these migration patterns, as would understanding how commercial and financial networks may have facilitated the enlistment and transfer of soldiers. Second, even though I have just emphasized that diplomatic considerations were not of paramount importance, it is vital to ask in what ways changing political networks and alliances or even larger geopolitical factors affected access to troops, apart from the Swedish-Scottish studies already available. Finally, we can ask to what degree changing socio-economic circumstances drove soldiers from centres to peripheries and whether technological factors, such as improvements in maritime logistics, may have facilitated migrations. The period delineated here ends where large-scale transoceanic exchanges and the comprehensively global movement of military personnel begin. Whether we label it transnational or hemispheric, the military migrations of this era nevertheless largely exceed the general degree of interconnectedness considered characteristic of these societies at the time, and thus provides a backdrop and series of precedents for the mechanisms of later military migration. The Baltic Sea region in particular, which attracted large and geographically differentiated groups and individuals from the entire region north of the Alps, illustrates how interrelated these military markets were—a hitherto insufficiently appreciated dynamic that reveals this so-called “periphery” as a surprisingly global centre.



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Kepsu, Kasper. Mellan Moskva och Stockholm: de svenska ryssbajorerna i Ingermanland 1478– 1722. Helsingfors: Otava, 2015. Kreem, Juhan. “The Business of War: Mercenary Market and Organization in Reval in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries.” Scandinavian Economic History Review 49 (2001): 26–42. Lammers, Walther. Die Schlacht bei Hemmingstedt: Freies Bauerntum und Fürstenmacht im Nordseeraum. Eine Studie zur Sozial-, Verfassungs- und Wehrgeschichte des Spätmittelalters. Heide in Holstein: Westholstein, 1953. Larsson, Lars-Olof. Kalmarunionens tid: från drottning Margareta till Kristian II. Stockholm: Rabén Prisma, 1997. Larsson, Mats G. Vikingar i österled: en samlingsutgåva. Stockholm: Atlantis 2011. Lavery, Jason Edward. Germany’s Northern Challenge: The Holy Roman Empire and the Scandinavian Struggle for the Baltic, 1563–1576. Leiden: Brill, 2002. Lind, Jensen and Bysted Jensen, eds. Danske korstog: krig og mission i Østersøen. København: Høst, 2006. Mankell, Julius. Hednatiden och medeltiden. Vol. 1 of Öfversigt af svenska krigens och krigsinrättningarnes historia. Stockholm: Militärlitteraturföreningen, 1890. _____. Nyare tiden 1526–1611. Vol. 2, part 6 of Öfversigt af svenska krigens och krigsinrättningarnes historia. Stockholm: Militärlitteraturföreningen, 1903. Miller, James. “The Scottish Mercenary as a Migrant Labourer in Europe, 1550–1650.” In Fighting for a Living: A Comparative Study of Military Labour 1500–2000, edited by ErikJan Zürcher, 169–200. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2013. Murdoch, Steve. Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603–1746. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Nilsson, Sven A. På väg mot militärstaten: krigsbefälets etablering i den äldre Vasatidens Sverige. Uppsala: Univ. Historiska institutionen, 1989. Oakley, Stewart P. “Trade, Peace, and the Balance of Power.” In In Quest of Trade and Security: The Baltic in Power Politics, 1500–1990. Vol. 1 1500–1890, edited by Göran Rystad, KlausRichard Böhme, and Wilhelm M Carlgren, 221–56. Stockholm: Probus, 1994. Ö� dberg, Fridolf. Om stämplingarna mot konung Johan III åren 1572–1575. Stockholm, 1897. Paravicini, Werner. Die Preussenreisen des europäischen Adel. Beihefte of Francia 17. 3 vols. Sigmaringen: Thorbecke, 1989–99. Persson, Stefan. Vinterfälttåget. Lund: Sekel, 2008. Petri, Gustaf. Östgötafänikorna till och med år 1618. Vol. 1 of Kungl. Första livgrenadjärregementets historia. 6 vols. Stockholm: 1926. Pleiss, Detlev. Bodenständige Bevölkerung und fremdes Kriegsvolk: Finnen in deutschen Quartieren 1630–1650. Å� bo: Å� bo Akademi, 2017. Poulsen, Bjørn. “Kingdoms on the Periphery of Europe: The Case of Medieval and Early Modern Scandinavia.” In Economic Systems and State Finance, edited by Richard Bonney, 101– 22. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995. _____. “Med harnisk og hest. Om adel, krig og vold i dansk senmiddelalder.” In Riget, magten og æren: den danske adel 1350–1660, edited by Per Ingesman and Jens Villiam Jensen, 44–77. Å� rhus: Å� rhus University Press, 2001. Puhle, Matthias. Die Vitalienbrüder: Klaus Störtebeker und die Seeräuber der Hansezeit. Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 1992. Roslund, Mats. “Muslimskt Medelhav vid Mälaren. Spår av islamisk handel i det förmoderna Sverige.” In Förmodern globalitet: Essäer om rörelse, möten och fjärran ting under 10 000 år, edited by Anders Andrén, 159–77. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2011.

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Santosuosso, Antonio. Barbarians, Marauders and Infidels. The Ways of Medieval Warfare. Boulder: Westview, 2004. Saxdorph, Niels M. “Legoknektar.” In Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder fra vikingetid til reformationstid. Edited by Ingvar Andersson and John Granlund. 22 vols. Malmö: Allhem, 1956–78. Skoog, Martin Neuding. “‘Wie die huren auff ein kirchweich’: Landsknektskulturens diffusion och reception i Sverige 1489–1530.” In Politiska rum: kontroll, konflikt och rörelse i det förmoderna Sverige 1300–1850, edited by Mats Hallenberg and Magnus Linnarsson, 119–41. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2014. _____. I rikets tjänst: krig, stat och samhälle i Sverige 1450–1550. Lund: Augusti, 2018. Sprinchorn, Carl. “Om Sveriges förbindelser med Nederländerna.” In Historisk tidsskrift (1885): 105–60. Sundberg, Ulf. Medeltidens svenska krig. Stockholm: Hjalmarson & Högberg, 2002. Tidander, Lars and Gustaf Theodor. Nordiska sjuårskrigets historia. Westervik: Ekblad, 1892. Tommos, Sören. “Erik XIV och Jacques De Crussol, Ett svenskt värvningsföretag i Frankrike under det nordiska sjuårskriget.” Aktuellt och Historiskt Meddelanden från militärhistoriska avdelningen vid kungl. Militärhögskolan, edited by Börje Furtenbach, 15–45. Stockholm: Militärhistoriska avdelningen, 1976. von Transehe-Roseneck, Astaf. Die ritterlichen Livlandfahrer des 13. Jahrhunderts: eine genealogische Untersuchung. Würzburg: Lenz, 1960. Trim, David J. B. “Fighting ‘Jacob’s warres’: English and Welsh Mercenaries in the European Wars of Religion: France and the Netherlands 1562–1610.” PhD diss., King’s College London, 2002. Urban, William. Bayonets for Hire: Mercenaries at War 1550–1789. London: Greenhill, 2007.

Martin Neuding Skoog ([email protected]) is an assistant professor of military history at the Swedish Defence University, Stockholm. He holds a PhD in history from Stockholm University (2018). His main field of research is the inter-relations of war, state, and society in late medieval and early modern Europe. Ongoing research projects comprise early modern hybrid warfare and military markets in the Baltic Sea Region. Abstract This study examines military migration in the late medieval and early modern Baltic Sea region in order to map out the directions and patterns of mercenary movement prior to the emergence of national armies. The results illustrate the high degree of the markets’ interconnectivity and points to the transnational or even global character of military migration in the North well before the Thirty Year’s War, conventionally perceived as the threshold conflict in this context. Keywords military markets, migration, Baltic Sea region, mercenaries

OLD AND NEW LAND IN THE NORTH AND WEST: THE NORTH ATLANTIC ON THE MEDIEVAL GLOBE AROUND 1500 FELICITAS SCHMIEDER There are various opinions regarding the circumference of the Earth but it is not possible to verify them. It is said that it is 22,500 or 24,000 miles, more or less, according to the different estimates and opinions, which are not very reliable because they have not been verified by experience (per non esser experimentada). And even if some have repeatedly sailed in the southern and northern regions they have not had time to measure, or even estimate, the distances, given that they navigated as events dictated and not to measure the navigation itself. So I leave to the eternal God the measurement of His work which only He can understand in full.1

With this statement, inscribed on his huge (1.96 m diameter) mid-fifteenth-century world map, the famous Venetian mapmaker Fra Mauro accepts that he cannot measure the earth based on the experience available to him. Although he acknowledges that a great deal of experience had already been accumulated by practical navigation to both the southern and northern reaches of the globe, all of this has not, in his view, provided enough information to compass its entirety. Consequently, Fra Mauro constructs a quite traditional circular mappa mundi (medieval world map)2 which is by far the richest we have, and absolutely up-to-date in terms of content. For us, Fra Mauro’s creation represents the challenges of mapping the new knowledge available to Latin Europeans3 around 1500 and, at the same time, their awareness that they did not know enough.

I.

What could people like Fra Mauro actually know about the North, more specifically about the North Atlantic—and what are we, today, not supposed to expect them to have known? In this article, I will pursue the Latin Europeans’ perspective on new geographical information available to them in the decades around 1500. Taking the “global” in “the Global North” literally, I specifically examine contemporary knowledge about the Northern Atlantic between Europe and whatever lay on the other side, as derived from Scandinavian sources and into the older schools of Latin European mapmaking. This is a big topic and it will become even bigger through the perspective I employ and explain below. That said, this article is only a glance into a still bigger project that 1  Fra Mauro’s World Map, ed. and trans. Falchetta, no. 2828.

2  Edson, The World Map; Woodward, “Medieval Mappaemundi.”

3  That is, the group of people whose literate elites used Latin as their common language of learning and, more generally, of writing; including people who wrote, more and more, in a vernacular language. We are not speaking of “Europeans” here, because of the political and ideological overloading of that term in the contemporary world.

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is only beginning and does not claim to address the questions I pose in any exhaustive way. Most research on and around the Latin European expeditions in the North Atlantic around 1500 attempts to find out when and how “America” was “discovered” and thus entered the Latin European geographical and cartographical worldview. The problem is that, at the time when these expeditions actually took place, they were not about the quest for America. Looking at the events and findings in this way means that we are judging the results from a modern perspective, on the basis of goals that did not exist at the time. Therefore, I suggest not using the expression “the discovery of America” to indicate European arrival on what we today call the American continent—I have, in the following, tried speaking of the “new land” because most people ca. 1500 quickly accepted it as such. The often-criticized term “discovery” should also be avoided due to clear Eurocentrism. Even more importantly, not only does the fixation on “America” distort our approach to the problem, it is accompanied by a certain unacknowledged Americentrism, and not just among American scholars who seek to trace the origin(s) of their civilization(s). The meanings that America, and particularly its North, gained long after the 1500s has also led European scholars, not least Scandinavian scholars, to engage in a “who-was-therefirst?” competition. But neither the Vikings nor Columbus (nor Amerigo Vesspucci) first encountered what we know as “America.” For the Vikings, Greenland and Vinland (both off the modern Canadian coast, the latter probably in Newfoundland) were just islands out in the northwestern sea. The Vikings thought of them as possible places for settlement, comparable in principle to many other places that Vikings/Normans reached between the eighth and eleventh centuries. For Columbus and many other seafarers around 1500, especially those who recognized that he had not reached “India” or East Asia, the continent later called America was, at best, an unexpected source of riches. At worst, it was an obstacle to finally reaching Asia, especially its northern regions. If anyone at that time was interested in the much earlier Scandinavian experience, it was probably in aid of finding a passage through or around the lands in the West. There was no “medieval European knowledge of America.”4 So let us forget about America for now, and instead look at some of the cartographic productions created around 1500. What did or could mapmakers know and how should we (not) deal with their knowledge? Maps of the time are not “already modern” nor do they “misunderstand” the evidence; they are not dead-ends or meanderings into nowhere, nor are they the opposite: precocious. The question, “Who was right around 1500?” seems, to me, of little relevance for a historian seeking to understand the facts on the ground at that time. The much more relevant questions are: Who was looking for what? and Who was constructing a new world image according to what traditional and new information? My approach works at more than one level, often at the same time. On the level of contemporary sources, this article will ask what cartographers knew and did around 1500, and in this context explores knowledge networks within the European continent. How did cartographers exchange knowledge about the world? How were theories of

4  An example here is Enterline, Erikson, Eskimos, and Columbus, a book that is central to this question.



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specific spaces used in the wider spatial imagination as a basis for the many very different maps that were produced? How did cartographers experiment with possibilities and use what they did know (or believed they knew) to make extrapolations for the whole? What paths were followed and what answers were supplied by a given participant in this collective project? At the same time, this article also asks searching questions about our own knowledge of the past five hundred years and the “realities” of the Earth: an imperfect knowledge that distorts (in the same ways that cultural memory does) nearly every article or book on this lively, and scientifically exciting, time.

II.

The spherical shape of the Earth was a well-known fact for medieval Latin Europeans.5 Nevertheless, medieval cartographers did not represent it on a three-dimensional globe; at least, no such globes are preserved before the very end of the fifteenth century. Meanwhile, the other side of the globe—call it the back side or the down side—was not well known and was not usually thought worthy of representation. If a “fourth continent” or, more specifically, a terra australis (Southern Land) was depicted, it was relegated to a space at the margins of the map. Such a land was either empty or inhabited by monstrous races; all in all, there was only enough interest to spark a more practical curiosity about its contours and contents when the time we are looking at here came to pass.6 Even after the thirteenth century, when the world grew wider and the relevant information denser, the usual format remained sufficient because the whole known land mass of Afro-Eurasia was connected. Since it was impossible for humans to measure the earth anyway—because, as Fra Mauro observed, we do not know enough7—there was neither a need nor a solid basis for changing it.

5  Jürgen Wolf has shown how “modernity invented its Middle Ages—or how the ‘medieval earth globe’ was turned into a ‘modern flat earth’”: Die Moderne erfindet sich ihr Mittelalter; see also Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth.

6  Hiatt, Terra Incognita, emphasizes a development from more abstract to more practical, active, initiative-driven knowledge in his chapter titles: “Terra Recognita: The Expansion of the Known World, 1400–1493” and especially “Nodum Cognita: The Antipodes and the New World, 1493– 1530.” See also European Perspectives of Terra Australis, ed. Scott et al.; and Schmieder, “The Globe as Mappa Mundi?”

7  Fra Mauro was not convinced by the Roman polymath Ptolemy (second century CE) and basically argued along the lines drawn by the Franciscan scientist Roger Bacon in the thirteenth century. In his Opus maius (Greater Work, as opposed to the Opus minus, Smaller Work), Bacon had compared the testimony of several antique authorities, among them Aristotle and Ptolemy, concerning the amount of habitable land and water in the oceans and (more importantly in the context of this article) the distance between “the end of Spain and the beginnings of India.” Although he leaned toward its being a relatively short distance—and was followed in this by the fifteenth-century scientist Pierre d’Ailly, whose work influenced Columbus (see Petrus de Alliaco, Ymago mundi, ed. Buron, 206–8)— Bacon concluded that an approximately exact measurement of the whole earth was neither to be found in the books of the ancients nor achieved in his time, since humans knew only a small part of it: “Quantum autem hoc sit, non est temporibus nostris mensuratum nec invenimus in libris antiquorum ut oportet certificatum; nec mirum quoniam plus medietatis quartae in qua sumus est nobis ignotum” (Roger Bacon, Opus maius, ed. Bridges, 1:293). On geography in Bacon’s system of sciences, see Gautier Dalché, “Vers une Perfecta doctrina locorum”; see also Vogel, Sphaera terrae.

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The width of Asia had become known to the Latin Europeans when they travelled through the Mongol Empire in its heyday between ca. 1250 and 1350. When this Empire broke apart and other empires rose, access to Asia became more chancy, largely replaced by memories of the immensely rich regions as laid down in Marco Polo’s and other travellers’ reports.8 Considerations of how to reach South, Southeast, and East Asia by ship, without having to deal with obstructive forces on the way, became more urgent as on one hand the Eurasian land routes became more dangerous when the Mongol empire increasingly disintegrated into warring realms, and on the other hand the routes through any Muslim (Mamluk, Ottoman) territory by Latin Christians were avoided for good reasons. For example, the Genoese brothers Vivaldi set out in 1291 to circle Africa in order to reach Asia and never came back. Around 1300, the learned Peter of Abano deemed the Vivaldis’ attempt futile because the way through Mongol lands was open.9 These considerations and attempts only became more intense when the Portuguese initiated attempts to circumnavigate Africa in the fifteenth century.10 All of this took a great deal of time, money, and effort—and all for an uncertain outcome. Thus, people considered other options which the globe could provide—and suddenly, the back side of the Earth, so to speak, became more interesting. Connections between Europe and Asia via the Oceanus attracted much more scrutiny.

III.

As we all know—because, as they say, the rest is history—the calculations of Columbus’ first and most daring journey turned out to be wrong; and Columbus, who dared to try that journey, ended up in new land in the West. Columbus not only tried the western route to East Asia because he thought it was much shorter than it actually is, but also because he knew that he would be able to find stepping stones along the way. “Knew” in this case means that many old traditions described the existence of islands in the Atlantic. As far as people were then aware, most of these had not been visited for some time.11 But that did not mean they did not exist. Towards the end of the fourteenth cen8  A great deal has been written about Marco Polo and the creation, reception, and afterlife of his book and its meanings. Only a few important aspects can be referenced here: Gadrat-Ouerfelli, Lire Marco Polo au Moyen Âge; Gaunt, Marco Polo’s ‘Le Devisement du Monde’; Akbari and Iannucci, Marco Polo; O’Doherty, The Indies and the Medieval West.

9  Petrus von Abano (Petrus Aponensis), Conciliator, differentia LXVII, fol. 98v: “parum ante ista tempora ianuenses duas paravere omnibus necessariis munitas galeas qui per gades herculis in fine hispanie situatas transire. Quid autem de illis contigerit iam spacio fere trigentesimo ignoratur anno. Transitus tamen nunc patens est per magnos tartaros eundo versus aquilonem: deinde se in oriens et meridiem congirando.” On the Vivaldis see Quartapelle, “El «loco vuelo».” 10  See Russell, Prince Henry; Newitt, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion.

11  See Schmieder, “Der Fall von der Erdscheibe”; and Van Duzer, “Floating Islands.” For an insightful and still useful perspective on the great impact of legends on actual discoveries, see Hennig, “Atlantische Fabelinseln.” For a rich collection of premodern geographical and cartographical sources, see Hennig, Terrae incognitae. Another important collection of sources (also in German translation) is the series Dokumente zur Geschichte der Expansion, ed. Schmitt, especially vol. 1: Die



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tury, the Italian encyclopedist Domenico Silvestri made a list of all the known islands in the world naming, among them, the island of Perdita: Perdita is an island in the Indian Ocean, distinct from all others by its abundance and fertility in all things. It is unknown to mankind, if it is not identical to Canaria about which I already wrote and which was found in our time. But they say about Perdita that it was once found, then was searched and not found, and that is why it’s called Perdita, the lost island.12

This shows how late medieval Latin Europeans estimated the conditions of discovery in the open sea and the chances of re-discovering whatever lands they, or someone in the past, had ever reached—at a time when longitudinal measurement techniques were unavailable. Several islands that had been recorded in ancient lore had been reached when people sailed out into the Atlantic in the fourteenth century, recognized from traditional descriptions. The Fortunate Isles (insulae fortunatae) known from antiquity, for example, were and are usually identified with the Canary islands.13 Others were yet to be found, included the island of Antilia or “Island of Seven Cities” where, according to tradition, Christians had fled when the Muslims conquered the Iberian peninsula in the eighth century;14 the insula sancti Brandani, the name pars pro toto for the islands which mittelalterlichen Ursprünge, ed. Verlinden and Schmitt, chapters 1, 11–70. For the general context, see Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus; and Reinhard, Die Unterwerfung der Welt.

12  Domenico Silvestri, De insulis et earum proprietatibus, ed. Pecoraro, 183: “Perdita insula Indico oceano sita amenitate omniumque rerum fertilitate pre cunctis longe prestantissima. Hominibus incognita est nisi esset Canaria, de qua supra, que nostro tempore fuit reperta, licet etiam dicatur ista aliquando inventa, postea quesita non est reperta. ideo dicitur Perdita”, De ymagine mundi (in a new edition Los islarios en la época del humanismo). (See also Montesdeoca Medina, Los islarios.) What Silvestri attributes to the seventh-century bishop Isidore of Seville (“asserit Isidorus De ymagine mundi”) is actually taken from De imagine mundi by the twelfth-century theologian Honorius Augustodunensis: Patrologia Latina 172, col.133; for a new edition, see Honorius Augustodunensis. De imagine mundi, ed. Flint, 66. 13  Quartapelle, “El redescubrimiento de la Canarias”; Wittmann, “Las islas imaginadas.”

14  The island of Antilia shows up on more and more maps from the early fourteenth century onwards: see Nordenskiöld, Periplus, table 114 and 164–66. The knowledge undergirding the legend is mirrored in a corresponding inscription on the globe made by Martin Behaim in 1493. Because Behaim had a great deal of space on this globe—considering that he did not know anything about the huge land mass between Europe and Asia—he gives quite lengthy descriptions of most of the Atlantic islands he depicts. The globe is now in poor condition and it was difficult to read even when Ernest Ravenstein transcribed all the inscriptions and translated them in 1908: Martin Behaim. A slightly revised reading has been offered online at the University of Erlangen–Nürnberg, achieved by laying it over a photographic record from 1990: http://wisski.cs.fau.de/behaim/ node/254829 (you can click on the segments and inscriptions to get a transcript). According to Behaim, “als man zelt nach cristi gepurt 734 jar, als gantz Hispania von den heiden aus affrica gewonen wurdt, do wurde bewont die obge/[schriben] Insula antilia g[enant Sep]te citade von eine[m erzbischoff ] von porto p[ortigal mit] sechs andern bischoffe [und] andern christen, m[an und] frawe, di zu schiff von hispanie dar geflohen kamen mit irem vieh, hab und gut anno 1415 [1414] ist ein schiff aus hispanie ungehert vorbei [do ge]west am nechsten”; Martin Behaim, ed. Ravenstein, 77: “In the year 734 of Christ, when the whole of Spain had been won by the heathen (Moors) of Africa, the above island Antilia, called Septe Citade (Seven Cities), was inhabited by an archbishop from Porto in Portugal, with six other bishops, and other Christians, men and women,

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the sixth-century Irish St. Brandan, or Brendan, had reached on an odyssey into the ocean west of Ireland;15 and Brasil. This island—among others which modern scholars like to qualify as legendary, mythical, or phantasmal—was actually sought for with significant effort: in 1480, the English king sponsored a mission to search for it, departing from Bristol into the Western Ocean.16 All of these islands were quite regularly pictured on medieval maps off the coasts of Africa and Europe.17 When scholars write about these islands, they are still mostly categorized as either real or imaginary; but since that is a judgment based on our modern knowledge, it does not help much when it comes to understanding how contemporaries saw these spaces in the Atlantic. For example, Brasil and Antilia were the names given to places contemporaries identified with those islands they expected to find. A contemporary image exemplifying this can be found on the first known18 physical model of a terrestrial globe—created in 1493, before Columbus returned to Europe—by who had fled thither from Spain, by ship, together with their cattle, belongings and goods. 1414 a ship from Spain got nighest it without being endangered.” These traditions still stimulate the imagination, not the least in the context of the “who discovered America first?” question, and can be used to formulate it neutrally: see Chiasson, The Island of Seven Cities.

15  The legends around this early medieval saint were widespread in the later Middle Ages and translated into several vernacular languages. Again, possible cartographic knowledge can be found on the Behaim globe (see note 14): “Nach cristi gepurt V und LXV jar [565] kam sand brandan mit seinem schiff auf dise insel, der doselbst vil wonder besach und der uber siben jar darnach wider in sein land zog”; Martin Behaim, ed. Ravenstein, 77: “In the year 565 after Christ, St. Brandon in his ship came to this island where he witnessed many marvels, and seven years afterwards he returned to his country.” See also comments by Nordenskiöld, Periplus, 166; Reichert, “Mythische Inseln,” 646–49. A recent edition of the Latin Brandan legend is that of Navigatio sancti Brendani, ed. Guglielmetti and Orlandi. On the high medieval traditions, see Strijbosch, The Seafaring Saint. On the German tradition, see Hammer, “St. Brandan und das ander paradicse.”

16  For this expedition, see Williamson, The Cabot Voyages, 187; see also Jones, “Henry VII and the Bristol Expeditions”; Hennig, Terrae incognitae, 4:285–307; Nordenskiöld, Periplus, 164. The island of Brasil was denoted on maps from the fourteenth century onward, often more than once. The first mention seems to have been on the portolan charts made by Angelino Dulcert: see Hennig, Terrae incognitae, 4:292; and Nordenskiöld, Periplus, 114. Probably the most copious representation appears on the chart by Domenico Pizigano (1367), which features a three-island Brasil: Longhena, “La carta dei Pizigano,” 62. For the Laurentiana–Medicea world map, from ca. 1351, see Nordenskiöld, Periplus, 115. “brazil” appears twice on the Atlas Catalan from 1375: see El món i els dies, ed. Pujades i Bataller, Llompart and Samsó, (a facsimile edition and commentary), 111 and 115. It also appears twice as “berzill” on the Modena world map (ca. 1450): Il Mappamondo Catalano Estense, ed. Milano and trans. Battini. In both cases, the editors consider the one further to the south as having been an identification of one of the Azores islands: that is, the first identification of (today’s) Brazil (one of several before the name ended up at its present land). The Venetian Andrea Bianco’s Atlante nautico of 1436 has berzil off the Irish coast and brasil in the ocean off Portugal: see Falchetta’s editon of the mansucript Venice, Biblioteca Marciana It. Z. 76 (4783), available at www.movio.beniculturali.it/ bnm/ridottiprocuratorisanmarco/it/118/andrea-bianco [accessed April 11, 2020]). On a possible background for this, see Schmieder, “Fall von der Erdscheibe.” On the afterlife of the legend, very much from a literary point of view and only briefly on the medieval “cartographical error,” see Freitag, Hy Brasil. 17  See Nordenskiöld, Periplus.

18  In a not undisputed letter to a contact in Portugal, the Italian mathematician Paolo del Pozzo



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Martin Behaim, a well-travelled burgher of Nuremberg who was familiar with Atlantic islands as the son-in-law of the Flemish governor (in Portuguese service) on one of the Azores.19 His globe reveals a composite picture of the ideas I have just presented because, as a globe, it could show contemporaries the islands off the coast and place into perspective the coasts of Asia and Europe and the islands in the Atlantic. For contemporaries, it offered a view of the more and more interesting “back side” of the globe, and the spatial interconnections among all the islands both known and not yet (re)discovered.

IV.

While the coastlines and islands discussed above were mostly represented as localized toward the south of the northern hemisphere, let us finally look at the North Atlantic’s depiction on the medieval globe. Here, the information we have is mostly connected to the late development of Scandinavian cartography in mainstream European mapmaking.20 In looking at the representation of Scandinavia on medieval Latin European world maps, one must acknowledge Janet Abu Lughod’s analysis of the western European sphere in the late medieval world system,21 specifically when it comes to exchanges of geographical knowledge: her circuits rightly exclude Scandinavia for practical reasons; geographical information about Scandinavia was scarce beyond the region and most of this was dubious. Not much was generally known about it, or sought after, in the places where maps were produced during the Middle Ages up to the fifteenth century.22 In Roman Alexandria, during the second century CE, even less had been known about the northern reaches of the globe. Thus, when the Greek Geography (by Claudius Ptolo-

Toscanelli referred to Antilia (and the usual narrative connects this to Columbus’ decision to travel to the West). He allegedly attached a map which has since been lost. The reconstruction by Hermann Wagner, in 1895, is seductive because it shows this Antilia in a place where it can also be found on late medieval portolan charts and in the place where the islands known today as the Antilles are located. But although it is often reproduced (see the online database scholars of the University Erlangen–Nürnberg have created around the Behaim globe, cf. http://wisski.cs.fau.de/ behaim/node/255007 [accessed April 11, 2020]), N.14), it is pure guesswork based on much more recent knowledge. Chet van Duzer, in discussing possible influences on the world map by Henricus Martellus Germanus, has summarized the arguments against the Toscanelli tradition (compare Toscanelli and Columbus, ed. Vignaud) in Van Duzer, Henricus Martellus’s World Map, 181–91. Gautier Dalché even speaks of the “fantôme” Toscanelli when discussing his possible Ptolemaic calculations: “La Géographie de Ptolémée,” 268–75.

19  The Behaim globe is in the Germanische Nationalmuseum at Nuremberg—recently made accessible in a digital edition under the application “Marble”—and has been photographed several times. Its inscriptions, as transcribed by Ernest Ravenstein and revised by Ulrich Knefelkamp, are also now published online: http://wisski.cs.fau.de/behaim/ (a site which also includes the results of research from an exhibition in 1992–1993: Focus Behaim Globus, ed. Pülhorn and Laub). Creating a globe did not mean abandoning the medieval traditions: Schmieder, “Globe as Mappa Mundi.” 20  See Ehrensvärd, The History of the Nordic Map.

21  Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony.

22  On the knowledge of Scandinavian geography conveyed in northern written and oral traditions, in both Old Norse and in the Latin Historia Norwegie, see the article by Tatjana N. Jackson in this collection.

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maeus) was translated into Latin23 in the fifteenth century, and the maps he had calculated were drawn, it did little to improve the cartographic image of Scandinavia. Ptolemy was said to have developed a grid on which any place on the Earth could be mapped, in principle. But no such Ptolemaic maps are preserved from before the thirteenth century in Byzantium, and it is not even certain that Ptolemy himself ever created one. In the fifteenth century, two movements within humanist cartography debated how best to deal with the legacy of Ptolemy’s work. One group wanted to create a map as meticulously close to what Ptolemy had had in mind as possible; the other group wanted to merge the second-century Ptolemaic systematic list of places with more recent, modern information. This latter group was open to any modern information they could ascertain. In Rome, during the 1420s, when the French cardinal Guillaume Fillastre the Elder met the Danish mapmaker Nikolaus (or Claudius) Clavus (also called Niger, the Black), the latter produced for the cardinal the first so-called tabula moderna as an addition to the original Ptolemaic maps of the provinces of Europe. It showed not only mainland Scandinavia but also Iceland (as an island), and Greenland, as well as the “wild Lappland” as part of a framing landmass filled with monstrous northern races.24 The Clavus map was quite influential and, slightly re-worked, became part of most Ptolemaic collections. In the following decades, working at least partly in Italy, two German cartographers, Donnus Nicolaus Germanus and Henricus Martellus, also integrated Clavus’ Scandinavia into their modernized Ptolemaic world maps in different ways—even though this updated information barely fitted into Ptolemy’s framing coordinates. The maps of Nikolaus Germanus, created in the 1460s and the basis for important printed editions in the 1480s, even had to break the frame open in order to fit Clavus’ elongated Scandinavia into the map.25 This may have been one more impetus for the modelling of a globe instead of a twodimensional world map: when Martin Behaim took this newly developed version of the Clavus–Ptolemaic image of Scandinavia for his globe, no framework needed to be cut 23  On the Latin European reception of Ptolemy, see Gautier Dalché, La Géographie.

24  On Nikolaus/Chlaus/Claudí�us Clavus or Niger (“the Black”), see Björnbo and Petersen, Der Däne Claudius Clausson Swart, trans. Lesser; Fischer, “Claudius Clavus.”

25  Donnus Nikolaus Germanus’ painted map from his 1467 edition of Ptolemy’s geography can be found at https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Ptolemy_Cosmographia_ 1467_-_world_map.jpg [accessed April 11, 2020]. Even more fascinating is the world map from his third edition, which became the basis for the edition of Ptolemy printed at Ulm in 1482 and 1486; see, for instance, Munich, Staatsbibliothek, 2 Inc.c.a. 1820 a: https://daten.digitale-sammlungen. de/~db/0008/bsb00082908/images/ (see digital image 00238) [accessed April 11, 2020]. On the development of Nicolaus’ map, see Fischer, Die Entdeckungen der Normannen in Amerika (quoted here; translated as The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America) The printed version of Martellus’ world map from ca. 1490 is exemplified by the copy in the British Library, Add. MS 15760: https:// www.bl.uk/collection-items/world-map-by-henricus-martellus [accessed April 11, 2020]; see also Van Duzer, Henricus Martellus’s World Map. The works of both fifteenth-century Ptolemaic mapmakers are contextualized by Vagnon, Cartographie et représentations. On these maps and mapmakers see also Van Duzer, “Graphic Record of a Lost Wall Map” and “Bring on the Monsters and Marvels”; Herkenhoff, “Die Darstellung außereuropäischer Welten”; Babicz, “Domnus Nicolaus”; Bonacker and Anliker, “Donnus Nicolaus Germanus.”



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through. The Behaim globe, and all the globes produced afterward, not only depicted the spaces between continents that had to be overcome, but also provided space for all the ideas around the margins that had not fitted onto the flat mappae mundi. This in turn opened up new spaces to be filled, not only by extrapolations from traditional knowledge and recently acquired information, but by exploration.26 All of this is important because it shows how cartographers worked conceptually, how they imagined the earth as a whole. It also hints at what seafarers may have expected to encounter out in the Atlantic, and thus the human resources that mapmakers could tap into, in order to identify places after they were found.

V.

It should be clear by now that the Latin European worldview was well prepared to make room for new discoveries, not the least because it was ready in principle to perceive them as “old lands” found again. But in order to understand the following examples, it is necessary to emphasize one more phenomenon. When Columbus, followed by more and more seafarers, reached what we know today as the Caribbean and the American continent, they did not (of course) know anything of what we know now. This might sound self-evident, but the consequences of the gaps in their knowledge—especially those of which they themselves were aware—are not naturally clear to us. Relatively soon, many people realized that Columbus had not reached East Asia, but just how far off he had been only became evident much later. There was no satellite image which people could check to see what land they had reached. Most people remained convinced that the Asian landmass could not be too far beyond the new-found land and, in a relative consensus, cartographers pictured this conviction time and again. The island off the Asian coast that Columbus had hoped to reach first (following mostly Marco Polo’s description) was Japan (Zipangu),27 which was now often represented in the middle of a relatively narrow stretch of ocean between the new land and China. The open question at this point—the answer to which few agreed on—was whether the newly found land was somehow connected to Asia. Was it a long peninsula reaching out from northeast Asia into the North Atlantic? Or was it a separate island, or even a continent? A thorough analysis of this discussion warrants its own article. For now, suffice it to say that the maps of this crucial time around 1500—starting with that of Juan de la Cosa ca. 1500—are so different that they need to be looked at separately and carefully. One cartographer, Johannes Ruysch, created a kind of tabula moderna world map for the edition of Ptolemy’s geography printed in Rome, in several batches, between 1507 and 1508. These world maps were included in nearly all the editions of Ptolemy 26  For one general consideration see Vogel, “Fra’ Mauro über den Raum außerhalb der Karte.” On the consequences for the polar region, see Figures du Nord, ed. Schnakenbourg; and Mund-Dopchie, “L’Orbis arcticus.” On specific traditions of depicting the North, see Jørgensen and Langum, eds., Visions of North; and Mund-Dopchie, Ultima Thulé. A few interesting contributions can now be found in Plumb, Sanmark, and Heddle, eds., What is North? 27  Reichert, “Zipangu.”

Figure 8.1. Johannes Ruysch’s world map of 1507–1508 (41 × 54 cm): detail showing the North Atlantic. Image in the public domain, courtesy of the Norman B. Leventhal Map and Education Center, Boston Public Library (https://collections.leventhalmap.org/search/commonwealth:3f462s18s).

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that were done at that time in Rome, thus marketed widely. He left out Zipangu completely, perhaps keeping the option open in case the newly found islands—“up to which point the ships of King Ferdinand of Spain came”—would turn out to be Zipangu: see Figure 8.1.28 He has also depicted the southern portion of the new land as a separate and huge Terra Sancte Crucis (Land of the Holy Cross) and kept the island of Antilia as a stepping stone between it and the Azores. North of this, and separate from it, he drew a peninsula that reaches out from northeast Asia.29 On an island at its eastern tip, Ruysch wrote the name of Terra Nova, by which he probably meant the land that still carries this name today: New-Found-Land, reached by John Cabot in 1497. It is important to clarify that none of these attempts to picture the as-yet-unknown— to outline possible explanations and contexts for all the new findings—is better than another because it comes closer to what we know is correct. No single cartographer knew better or more than their contemporaries—it only means he made the luckier guess. We have to take seriously Fra Mauro’s acknowledgement (quoted in the beginning of this article) of not being able to know, but of having to estimate on the basis of available information. But any of these attempts could be taken as a basis for further research and taken as a theory to be scrutinized in practice. Just to make clear that these were not only spur-of-the-moment attempts, quite different options were offered, even towards the end of the sixteenth century, when new knowledge was proliferating, we can discern quite divergent approaches in the maps made (for example) by Abraham Ortelius and Johannes Myritius.30 Any of these attempts could be taken as a basis for further research, as a theory to be scrutinized in practice. For example, it was only in 1728 that Vitus Bering, a Danish officer in Russian service, could prove that America and Asia were separate, by sailing through the strait now named after him. What, then, did these experimental mapmakers do with the North Atlantic and their knowledge of Scandinavia? Ruysch, as we have seen, developed the north-reaching image derived from the work of Clavus. Having taken part in one of the expeditions from Bristol to Newfoundland in 1501–1504, he still extrapolated from the geography of his Ptolemaic map as much as from personal travel experience. Clavus’ Greenland thus became the easternmost part of Ruysch’s northeast Asian peninsula, slightly to the north of terra nova (which, in modern terms, would mean that he considered Greenland 28  See https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ruysch_map.jpg [accessed April 11, 2020]. This printed map was changed several times during the publishing process and should thus be handled more like a manuscript because, in any two editions labelled “Rome 1508,” there can be different maps, albeit different only in detail. For a comparison among several, see McIntosh, The Johannes Ruysch and Martin Waldseemüller World Maps. On the mapmaker, see Meurer, “Der Maler und Kartograph Johann Ruysch.”

29  In form and certain contents, this map is quite similar to the Contarini–Rosselli map from 1506, but Ruysch elaborated much more on the region he had visited and for which he now envisioned a wider geographical context: see A Map of the World.

30  The 1570 map of Ortelius, Typus orbis terrarum, is often reproduced: https://commons. wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OrteliusWorldMap.jpeg [accessed April 11, 2020]. The Universalis Orbis descriptio by Myritius, one of the last cartographers to try to reconcile the old and the new, is included in his Opusculum geographicum rarum between pages 60 and 61: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/btv1b55009531c/f80.item [accessed April 11, 2020].

Figure 8.2. Johannes Schöner’s globe of 1515 (27 cm in circumference): detail showing the litus incognitum. Image courtesy of the Historisches Museum, Frankfurt am Main, X 14610; photo © Dr. Frank Berger and reproduced by permission.

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part of the North of the New Land, not some island close to it, and not in any way part of Europe). The picture looks a little different on Johannes Schöner’s globe, created in Nuremberg in 1515, which can be read together with his much more detailed world description, Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio (A Most Clear Description of the Whole Earth), from the same year.31 Schöner—who explicitly refers to the example of Clavus—depicts a Scandinavia comparable to that of Ruysch and a North Atlantic that is wide with a good distance between Europe and Asia. The new land in between is separated into two islands, north and south, the latter actually called “America” (following Martin Waldseemüller’s famous proposal made a few years earlier, in 1507).32 Between the northern island and Europe, another island is shown just below the Arctic circle called Litus incognitum (Unknown Strand). This, again, seems to be Newfoundland. On other maps of the time, this same land is often described as belonging to the king of Portugal,33 or is at least marked with a Portuguese flag; but it is also called “unknown strand,” as here. Whether this is a reference to a land “not yet identified,” which some people remembered should be there, or a reference to a land incognitum “not yet named,” is anyone’s guess. It certainly shows awareness among cartographers that they were dealing with knowledge that was in flux and changing quickly. In sum, Johannes Ruysch and Johannes Schöner differ quite a bit not only in their image of the whole world, but also in their North Atlantic imaginaries. But they both created two highly informed suggestions that were equally plausible given the information available at the time.

VI.

Around 1500, then, there was a readiness to collect information and to experiment with its integration into a changing cartographic world view—and yet information about “America” was neither collected nor sought. The so-called Vinland Map, most probably a modern forgery, is therefore paradigmatic of the situation in which we modern scholars reside when it comes to determining what we can know about the knowledge and ideas of these mapmakers and their contemporaries: regardless of whether it is authentic or 31  One of the globes from 1515 (as opposed to the one from 1520) is preserved today in the Historical Museum in Frankfurt am Main: see Der Erdglobus des Johannes Schöner and the edition of its texts by Van Duzer, Johann Schöner’s Globe, which also takes into account the Luculentissima: http://mdz-nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00014669-5 [accessed April 11, 2020], a description of the world put together by Schöner in parallel to the globe. On the globe, see also Schmieder, “Globe as Mappa Mundi.” 32  Hessler and Van Duzer, Seeing the World Anew. The name America was famously proposed by Martin Waldseemüller on his world map from 1507 for the southern part of the newly encountered land—which led to its emphasis as America’s “birth certificate.” But although some other cartographers accepted the name, others—among them Waldseemüller himself, in another case— did not use it on their early maps.

33  On the Portuguese so-called Cantino map that existed in 1502, see Milano, La carta del Cantino; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantino-Planisphäre#/media/Datei:Cantino_planisphere_(1502). jpg [accessed April 11, 2020]. The land found by seafarers sponsored by the king of Portugal is also noted on the Contarini world map. See also Winius, “In Northern Mists.”

Figure 8.3. “Vinland Map” (285 × 212 mm): New Haven, Yale University. Beinecke Library MS 350A. Reproduced by permission.

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not, we seem not to be able to establish that from its contents only. So let us look at it now, in a kind of thought experiment. This map surfaced in the 1950s, in an interesting manuscript dated to the fifteenth century which ended up in the Yale University library. It depicts Greenland, Vinland, and the North Atlantic like no other map of the time, and it seems to reference the names of Viking explorers from ca. 1000. Can this be possible on a pre-Columbian map, or do these features prove that it was painted much later on an empty leaf of an old manuscript? At the time of its discovery, the materials and contents of this map were quickly scrutinized.34 The ink, in particular, came under suspicion as much more recent; this dispute—as far as I am aware—is still ongoing. Scrutiny of the map’s contents was begun at a conference whose proceedings were published in 1965. R. A. Skelton simultaneously contextualized the geography of the Vinland map through a comprehensive survey of cartographic knowledge relating to the global North that circulated among Latin European cartographers between ca. 1450 and ca. 1550. Although Skelton’s comparative study helped a great deal to put the map and its questionable authenticity into perspective—not least by showing that its contents could be authentic—he was mostly interested in proving the correct placement of Vinland within North America. In particular, he wanted to establish as a hard fact that the localization of Vinland was possible before the arrival of Giovanni Cabotto (John Cabot), the first explorer after the Vikings to reach “North American” land on his search for the Northwest Passage.35 But what about the soft skills of extrapolation and curiosity? As I have shown here, global cartography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was not so much about, or at least not restricted to, hard facts. The maps were drawn in what I have called elsewhere a “time of experiment.”36 Seafarers tried to find islands, planners laid out possible scenarios for reaching treasure, and cartographers tried to combine all the information they could get (whether, from our point of view, “legendary” or “real”) into a consistent image of the world. Although it remains uncertain how much knowledge had been passed on, and how widely, there was certainly information to be unearthed about an island in the West named Vinland, reached by Viking Icelanders around 1000 and lost again soon after—as we have seen, losing islands was nothing surprising at the time. The cartographic global North around 1500 was still very much an imagined space, but also one based on experience—and not at all imaginary, in that a lot of lore existed but did not really reach into the reality of both scholars and seafarers. 34  The Vinland Map, ed. Skelton, Marston and Painter; Washburn, ed. Proceedings; Seaver, Maps, Myths, and Men; Larsen and Dorte, “Sommer, Facts and Myths”; Towe, Clark, and Seaver, “Analysing the Vinland Map.”

35  Most of the voyages aiming for the northern part of what we know as America were explicitly trying to find a way past the interjacent land, in order to get to East Asia. Basing themselves on one of the theories discussed at the time, they tried to find the Northwest Passage (while others considered the North or the whole of what would be America as a peninsula of northern Asia), starting with the expedition of John Cabot in 1497: see Williamson, ed., The Cabot Voyages; and Jones, “Matthew of Bristol.” On later ventures, see Regard, The Quest. 36  Schmieder. “Eine Zeit für Experimente.”

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In terms of information as well as communication and the openness of minds, the Vinland Map could be authentic, whatever the material evidence, and that makes it an ambiguous witness to our own capacity to access fifteenth-century knowledge. A medieval mapmaker could have had access to “Viking knowledge” (different from Clavus) and, at the same time, the usual cartographic knowledge of the time. Thus, the map would be a kind of missing link between two regions of Europe, showing a unique attempt to bring together knowledge of the North and the South of Europe. One of the great Roman Church councils of the time has been suggested as a probable place for this to have happened. It could be the attempt of a contemporary mapmaker, who had come across Viking lore and Ptolemaic calculations, to extrapolate the possible places of Greenland and Vinland and to place them on a map of the known world—possibly in order to induce exploration and to outpace other searchers. This unknown mapmaker could have come close to what we now know is correct—which, again, does not mean that he knew, but that he was lucky. But the Vinland Map could also, of course, be the forgery it is usually taken for, made by a modern person who wanted to throw weight behind the argument that the Vikings discovered America and that people in the Middle Ages knew about it. Only one look into the Wikipedia entry shows why this kind of forgery would have been attractive. For example, the German Wikipedia article stresses that, if genuine, “the Vinland Map would be the earliest map representing a part of the American coast line, and it mentions a ‘Bjarni’ and a ‘Leif’ as discoverers of Vinland and thus America.”37 Therefore any discussion of the Vinland Map stands as a symbol for one of two modern intellectual traps: either the inability of modern historians to accept the possibilities and parameters of medieval cartographic experimentation and intensive debate; or the modern temptation to undertake an anachronistic search for “medieval knowledge of America” to correct the error of those who had not managed “to discover” a continent that would become meaningful only much later. To conclude: this article has questioned both the state of Latin European knowledge of the world around 1500 and modern understandings (or wishful thinking) about this knowledge. Starting from the contemporary (medieval) awareness of not knowing, as well as contemporary belief in what we consider legendary, it has surveyed the growing information about the known world produced during the “age of discoveries,” with a special emphasis on the islands in the Atlantic. It then proceeded to examine the geographical knowledge of Scandinavia available to Latin European map-makers, especially in the realm of Ptolemaic cartography, and considered the influence of this knowledge on the earliest world maps to include Scandinavia and the new lands identified, or hypothesized, between Europe and Asia. While the question of what we modern historians think we can know hovers in the background all the time, it comes very much into focus when we look at the so-called Vinland Map. Based on what we know about what they knew, this map could have been a fifteenth-century attempt to bring Viking knowledge to bear on updated Ptolemaic maps—or it could have been a forged modern bid for “first dibs” on America. It stands as an example that what we know about the knowl-

37  https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinland-Karte [accessed April 11, 2020].



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edge, approaches, and ideas of that time is not enough to answer this abiding question unambiguously. This opens the door, not to a fresh consideration of the Vinland Map’s authenticity, but to its horizons of possibility: a renewed discussion that can be especially helpful when looking into global history from both a medieval and a Scandinavian northern perspective.

Bibliography

Primary Sources A Map of the World. Designed by Giovanni Matteo Contarini, engraved by Francesco Roselli, 1506. 2nd rev. ed. London: British Museum, 1926. Abraham Ortelius. Typus orbis terrarum, 1570. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:OrteliusWorldMap.jpeg [accessed April 11, 2020]. Andrea Bianco. Atlante nautico, 1436. Edited by Piero Falchetta. Venezia: Biblioteca Marciana, 1993. _____. Mappamundi. Venice, Biblioteca Marciana It. Z. 76 (4783): https://www.movio.beniculturali.it/bnm/ridottiprocuratorisanmarco/it/118/andrea-bianco. Cantino Map, 1502: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantino-Planisphäre#/media/Datei:Cantino _planisphere_(1502).jpg [accessed April 11, 2020]. [Catalan Atlas.] El món i els dies: l’Atles català, 1375. Edited by Ramon J. Pujades i Bataller, Gabriel Llompart, and Julio Samsó. Barcelona: Enciclopèdia Catalana, 2005. Dokumente zur Geschichte der Expansion. Edited by Eberhard Schmitt. Vol. 1: Die mittelalterlichen Ursprünge der europäischen Expansion, edited by Charles Verlinden and Eberhard Schmitt. Vol. 2: Die großen Entdeckungen, edited. by Matthias Meyn et al. Munich: Beck, 1984–1986. Domenico Silvestri. De insulis et earum proprietatibus. Edited by Carmela Pecoraro. Atti della Accademia di scienze, lettere e arti di Palermo ser. 4, vol. 4, pt. 2, fasc. 2. Palermo: Accademia di scienze, lettere e arti, 1954. _____. De insulis et earum proprietatibus. Edited and translated [into Spanish] by José Manuel Montesdeoca Medina. “Los islarios de la época del humanismo: el de insulis de Domenico Silvestri. Edición y traducción.” PhD diss., Universidad de la Laguna, 2000. ftp://tesis. bbtk.ull.es/ccssyhum/cs103.pdf [accessed April 11, 2020]. Fra Mauro’s World Map. Edited by Piero Falchetta. Terrarum orbis 5. Turnhout: Brepols, 2006. Henricus Martellus Germanus. Ptolemaic World Map, ca. 1490. London, British Library, Add MS 15760: www.bl.uk/collection-items/world-map-by-henricus-martellus [accessed April 11, 2020]. Honorius Augustodunensis. De imagine mundi libri tres. Edited by J-P. Migne. Patrologia Latina 172. Paris: Migne, 1854. _____. De imagine mundi libri tres. Edited by Valerie I. J. Flint. Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Âge 49 (1982): 48–151. Johannes Myritius. Opusculum geographicum rarum. Ingolstadt: Eder, 1590. Johannes Schöner. Globus: Johann Schöner’s Globe of 1515. Transcription and Study. Edited by Chet van Duzer. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2010. _____. Luculentissima quaedam terrae totius descriptio. Nürnberg, 1515. http://mdz-nbnresolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb00014669-5 [accessed April 11, 2020]. Il Mappamondo Catalano Estense—Die Katalanische Estense Weltkarte. Commentary by Ernesto Milano and transcription by Annalisa Battini. Zürich: Graf, 1995.

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Martin Behaim. His Life and His Globe. Edited by Ernest Georg Ravenstein et al. London: Philip, 1908. Navigatio sancti Brendani. Edited by Rossana E. Guglielmetti and Giovanni Orlandi. Millennio medievale, Testi 2. Florence: SISMEL, 2017. Nikolaus Germanus. Ptolemaic World Map, 1467. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Ptolemy_Cosmographia_1467_-_world_map.jpg [accessed April 11, 2020]. Petrus of Abano (Petrus Aponensis). Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et praecipue medicorum. Edited by Franciscus Argilagnes. Venice, 1504. Petrus de Alliaco (Pierre d’Ailly). Ymago mundi. Edited and translated by Edmond Buron. 3 vols. Paris: Maisonneuve, 1930. Roger Bacon. Opus maius ad Clementem papam. Edited by John Henry Bridges, 3 vols. London: Williams & Norgate, 1897–1900. Toscanelli and Columbus, the letter and chart of Toscanelli on the route to the Indies by way of the west, sent in 1474 to the Portuguese Fernam Martins, and later on to Christopher Columbus. A critical study on the authenticity and value of these documents and the sources of the cosmographical ideas of Columbus, followed by the various texts of the letter. Edited by Henry Vignaud. London: Sands, 1902.

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Abu-Lughod, Janet L. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Akbari, Suzanne Conklin and Amilcare A. Iannucci. Marco Polo and the Encounter of East and West. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008. Babicz, Józef. “Domnus Nicolaus Germanus—Probleme seiner Biographie und sein Platz in der Rezeption der ptolemäischen Geographie.” In Land- und Seekarten im Mittelalter und in der frühen Neuzeit, edited by Cornelis Koeman, 9–42. Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 7. Munich: Kraus International, 1980. Berger, Frank, ed. Der Erdglobus des Johannes Schöner von 1515. Frankfurt am Main: Henrich, 2013. Björnbo, Axel Anthon and Carl Sophus Petersen. Der Däne Claudius Clausson Swart (Claudius Clavus), der älteste Kartograph des Nordens, der erste Ptolemäus-Epigon der Renaissance. Translated by Ella Lesser. Innsbruck: Wagner, 1909. Bonacker, Wilhelm and Ernst Anliker. “Donnus Nicolaus Germanus, sein Kartennetz, seine Ptolemäus Rezensionen und Ausgaben.” Schweizerisches Gutenbergmuseum 18 (1932): 19–48, 99–144. Bott, Gerhard, ed. Focus Behaim Globus. 2 vols.: Part 1: Essays; Part 2: Catalogue. Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 2. Dezember 1992 bis 28. Februar 1993. Nürnberg: Germanisches Nationalmuseum, 1992. Chiasson, Paul. The Island of Seven Cities: Where the Chinese Settled When They Discovered America. Toronto: Random House Canada, 2006. Edson, Evelyn. The World Map, 1300–1492: The Persistence of Tradition and Transformation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. Ehrensvärd, Ulla. The History of the Nordic Map: From Myths to Reality. Helsinki: John Nurminen Foundation, 2006. Enterline, James Robert. Erikson, Eskimos, and Columbus: Medieval European Knowledge of America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.



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Felicitas Schmieder ([email protected]), has been professor of pre-modern history at FernUniversität in Hagen since 2004. Her 1991 dissertation was entitled “Europe and the Foreigners: The Mongols Judged by the Latin West from the Thirteenth to the Fifteenth Century,” followed by her habilitation (2000) on “Frankfurt in the Middle Ages.” She has been a recurrent visiting professor in the Department for Medieval Studies at the Central European University, Budapest. Her main research areas are pre-modern cartography, global and regional; medieval cross-cultural contacts and perceptions; prophecy as political language; the history of medieval “Europe”; medieval German urban history; and European cultural memory.

Abstract In six steps, this article questions both the state of Latin European knowledge of the world around 1500 and modern understandings (or wishful thinking) about this knowledge. Starting from the contemporary (medieval) awareness of not knowing, as well as contemporary belief in what we consider legendary, it surveys the growing information about the known world produced during the “age of discoveries,” with a special emphasis on the islands in the Atlantic. It then proceeds to examine the geographical knowledge of Scandinavia available to Latin European map-makers, especially in the realm of Ptolemaic cartography, and considers the influence of this knowledge on the earliest world maps to include Scandinavia and the new lands identified, or hypothesized, between Europe and Asia. While the question of what we modern historians think we can know hovers in the background all the time, it comes very much into focus when we look at the so-called Vinland Map—not in order to reassess its authenticity, but to a fresh consideration of its horizons of possibility. Keywords cartography, Atlantic Ocean, legendary islands, modern perception of past knowledge, “Vinland Map,” Scandinavia

INDEX

Abbasid Caliphate, 3, 39 Abraham, 57, 59 Abu-Lughod, Janet, viii, 1, 6–7, 137 Adalbert, archbishop of Hamburg-Bemen 80, 84 Adam of Bremen, 77–87 aDNA, 3, 13, 18 Aðalstræti, 60 Ælnoth,77 Aethicus of Istria, 78 Africa, 84, 86, 134, 136 Afro-Eurasia, 1, 133 Aggersborg, 11. See also Staraya Lagoda agriculture, 3, 9–11, 14, 19–21, 24, 39, 46, 48 Ailes, Mary Elizabeth, 116 Åland Islands, 11 Alban, Saint, 67 Albrecht III, duke of Austria, 116 Aldejgjuborg, 38. Alexandria, 137 Alfred, King of England, 66–67, 82 amber, 40–41 Ambrose of Milan, 60 Americas, 18, 55, 62, 131–47 North America, 2, 62, 145 Americentrism, 132 Amsterdam, 123 anggakuk, 63 animals, vi, viii, 3–4, 10–16, 18–20, 32–35, 54, 61–69, 72 antiquity, Arctic, 72, 81, 115, 135 Antilia, 135–37, 141 Antioch, 99 antlers (reindeer), 11, 25 Antwerp, 123–24 archaeology, v, 2–3, 9–16, 18, 20, 23, 25, 27–35, 37–40, 43–46, 50–54, 57, 60–65, 72–75 architecture, 54, 151 Arctic Circle, 55, 143 Arctic communities, 54, 62–64 Arctic trade, 2, 55, 57, 61, 70–71

Århus, 11 aristocracies, 3, 9, 27, 49, 54, 59, 116 Ari the Wise, 86 Armenia, 125 Artéus, Gunnar, 123 artisans, 3–4, 43, 61, 63, 124 Ascalon, 104 Asia, 1, 132, 134, 137, 139, 141, 143, 146, 152 Atlantic Ocean, 10, 82, 134–37, 146, 152 Austria, 116 Azores, 137, 141

baculum, 64 Badorf type vessels, vi, 41 Baghdad, 39 Baltic Crusades, 126. See also Teutonic Order Baltic Sea region, v, 3, 5, 10, 21, 37, 39–40, 49–50, 52, 79, 102, 115–30 Báthory, Stefan, 123 bear burials, 3, 13, 19 bear claws, 3, 13, 19 bears, vi, viii, 3, 11–14, 18–20, 32–35, 64, 65, 72. See also polar bears Bede, 78, 80, 84 Behaim, Martin, 137–39 Berga, 99 Bering, Vitus, 141 Birgersson, Joakim, 123 Birka, 4, 21, 49, 75, 78 Bjarmaland, 83 Black Sea, 3, 7, 115, 128 blubber, 62. See also hides, whales Bohemia, 123 Bolinbroke, Henry. See Henry IV bones, 19, 25, 10, 41, 58, 63, 64 Book of Settlements. See Iceland, Landnámabók Bordeaux, 96 boreal forest, 2–3, 9–28. See also forests Bothnia, 10 Bourguignon de Corobel, 122

154

Index

Brahe, Per, 118 Brasil, 136 Bremen, 4, 87, 80, 84, 86, 117. See also Hamburg Brendan, Saint, 136 Bristol, 43, 115–16, 120, 123, 136, 141 British Isles, 43, 78, 80, 85, 115–16, 119–20, 123, 136, 141 bronze, 14, 39, 124 Bronze Age, 16, 19 burial mounds, 3, 15 burials, viii, 3, 11–14, 16–17, 19–20, 38, 48. See also graves Byzantium, 3, 39, 138. See also Eastern Roman Empire, Roman Empire

Cabotto, Giovanni (John Cabot), 141, 145 Campbell, Tony, 85 Canada, 18, 55 Canary Island, 135 Carolingians, 57 carpology, 48 cartography, 5–6, 91, 132–33, 137–38, 143, 145–46 Caspian Sea, 39, 115 castles, 99, 105. See also fortifications Catherine, queen of France, 121 cavalry, 117, 119–20, 124 cemeteries, vi, 40, 48, 54 cereals, 10, 22 chancels, 53–54, 57, 124 charcoal, viii, 22–24, 27 chorography, 4, 6–7, 78 Christ, 57–59, 68–70 Christian I, king of Denmark, 68, 123 Christian II, king of Denmark, 118–20, 122 Christianity, 4, 48, 54, 57–60, 65, 70, 77–78, 81–86, 116 124, 135 conversion to (Christianization), 4, 48, 54, 64–65, 70, 78, 81–82, 84–86 See also missionaries, pagan Roman Church Chronicle of Duke Erik. See Erikskrönikan Chronicle of Karl. See Karlskrönikan Chronicle of Novgorod, 38, 50 chronicles, vii, viii, 4–5, 38, 50, 67, 77–78, 86, 92–95, 98–102, 104–9, 114. See also historiography

Church, Roman Catholic (post-Tridentine), 123 Church, Orthodox. See Orthodox Church Church, Roman. See Roman Church churches, vi–vii, 40, 53–54, 57, 64–65, 70, 124. See also Christianity, missionaries Circassians, 124 Clavus, Nikolaus (Claudius), 138, 141, 143, 146 Clement of Rome, 40 clergy, 3, 27 clothing. See textiles Cnut, 57, 99. See also Knýtlinga saga Cobron, Samuel, 120 cod, 18, 65. See also fish coins, 19, 39–40, 96 Collaert, Jacques, 121 colonies and colonization, 1, 3–4, 9, 16, 19, 46, 53, 55, 61–63. See also resource colonization, settlements Columbus, Christopher, 132, 134, 136, 139 commerce, viii, 3, 41, 122, 126. See also trade commodities, 2–3, 10, 12–14, 20–21, 24–25, 27–28, 35, 65, 68. See also trade communication networks, 3, 12 communities, 2–4, 11–14, 16, 28, 40, 48–49, 54, 62–64, 69, 71 Consolation of the Soul, vii, 5, 92–95, 98–109, 114 Constantine, 60 Constantinople, 60, 115 Copenhagen, 94–95, 121 copper, vi, 43 Cossacks, 125 crafts, 41, 46. See also artisans crozier, vi, 65–66, 69 Crimea, 125 crucibles, vi, 38, 41 Cyclops, 80 Dalarna, vii–viii, 14, 16–17, 25 Danes, 78–79, 81, 115, 120, 124 Danzig, 117 de Brezé, Gaston, 121 Deeds of the Danes. See Gesta Danorum Deeds of Sweyn the Great and His Sons. See Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eius



de Mornay, Charles, 121 De la Cosa, Juan, 139 De la Gardie, Jacob, 121 De la Gardie, Pontus, 121 dendrochronology, 38 Denmark, 4, 5, 11, 55, 57, 64–68, 70, 78, 92–93, 116–17, 119, 121–22, 126 Dicuil, 78 Digte, 95 diplomacy, 57, 119, 126. See also missionaries dirhams, 39. See also coins Disko Bay, 55, 60, 62, 76 DNA, ancient (aDNA), 3, 13, 18 mtDNA, 18–20 nuclear DNA, 18 Dnieper River, 3, 39 documents, 27, 121 Du Bellay, Martin, 121 Dupuis, Jean, 122 Dutch communities, 122–25

Eastern Roman Empire, 3, 39, 138. See also Byzantium, Roman Empire East Norse, 91–110. See also Old Swedish Ecclesia, 57, 60–70 ecological globalization, 3, 11–12, 35 Edessa, 107 Egils saga Skalla-Grímssonar, 83 Egypt, 101 Einhard, 79 Ekdahl, Sven, 116 Ekrem, Inger, 78–79, 86 emporia, v, 3, 4, 14, 21, 37–38, 40, 49, 52. See also commerce, trade environments, 2, 5, 9–28, 54, 58, 63. See also landscapes, ecological colonization entrepôts, 4. See also commerce, emporia, trade epigraphy. See inscriptions Eric of Pomerania, 68 Erik, Duke. See Erikskrönikan Erik XIV, King of Sweden, 122–23 Erikskrönikan, vii, viii, 5, 92–95, 98–102, 104–9, 114 Erlendsson, Haukr, 85 Estonia, 117–18, 123 Estridsen, Sven, 79

Index

155

ethnography, 9, 77 Etymologiae, 77. See also Isidore of Seville Eubalaena glacialis (North Atlantic right whale), 10. See also whales Euphemia, 108

Faroe Islands,78, 84–85 Ferdinand, king of Spain, 141 fibulas, 41, 43. See also bones Fillastre, Guillaume, 138 Finland, 3, 20, 37, 105, 125 Finns, 46, 82, 118. See also Sámi, Lapps, Indigenous peoples Fioraventi, Rodolfo, 124 fish and fishing, 10, 12, 16, 24, 54, 65, 82 Fletcher, Giles, 124 florins, 96. See also coins Floris and Blancheflour, 108 forests, v, 2, 9–12, 14, 19, 21–22, 25–30, 93, 121 fortifications, 39–40, 99, 125. See also castles Fortunate Isles, 135 Founding of Norway. See Fundinn Noregr France, 103, 117, 120–21, 123 Frederik II, king of Denmark, 117, 121 Frei, Karin, 54, 61 Frisia, 80 frontiers, 2, 9, 49, 81 Frost, Robert, 123 Fundinn Noregr, 80 furnaces, vi, 3, 21–22, 24–26 furs, 11, 13, 19–20. See also animals, hides

gaming pieces, 10–11, 49 Garðar Cathedral, vi–vii, 53–54, 57, 64–65, 70 Gascony, 120–22 Geldern, 116 Geographic Information Systems (GIS), 92 Geography, 137. See also Ptolemy German communities, 102, 116–19, 122, 124–25 German language, 116, 124 Germanus, Nicolaus, 138 Germany, 78, 116–17, 120–22 Gesta Danorum, 77 Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae Pontificum, 4, 78, 86

156

Index

Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eius, 77 Gizurarson, Osleifr, 84 glass, vii, 38, 41–42, 54, 65 global perspectives, 92, 96 globalization, 1–6, 9, 11–12, 19, 28, 38, 49, 54, 115, 118, 126, 131, 145, 147 Goths, 115 Gotland, 38–39, 49 grave-goods, 3, 14 grave stones, 99 graves, vii, viii, 13–19, 25, 27. See also burials, mass graves Grænlendinga saga, 85 Greenland, vi–viii, 4, 18, 53–55, 60–71, 76, 78, 81, 84–85, 132, 138, 141, 145–46 Grosjean, Alexia, 116, 119 Gulf of Bothnia, 10 Gunhild, 58–59, 65 Gunhild’s Cross (Gunhildskorset), v, vi, 4, 53, 55, 57, 61, 64–65, 67–73 Gustav I Vasa, king of Sweden, 118–19, 123 Gustavus II Adolphus, king of Sweden, 118, 120 Gutasagan, 94 Halagland, 81–83 Hallsbergs, 99 Hamburg, 4, 87, 80, 84, 86, 117 Hans, king of Denmark, 117 Hanseatic League, 117, 122 haplotypes, 13, 18, 20 Harald Bluetooth, 57 Harald Fairhair, 86 Hardangervidda, 10–11, 23 Härjedalen, 14 harquebusiers, 121 hearths, 46 Hebrides, 78 Hedeby, 4, 21, 49 Hedmark, viii, 14, 16–17 Helen, mother of Constantine, 60 Helena, 57–59. See also Gunhild Hennøya, 85 Henry IV, king of England, 120 herring, 65. See also fish and fishing Hertig Fredrik av Normandie, 94 Heslop, Sandy, 70 hides, 3, 13, 19, 62–63, 66, 71. See also animals, furs

hillforts, 40, 48 Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium, 77 Historia Norwegie, v, 4, 77–80, 82–87, 90 historiography, 2, 4, 7, 78. See also chronicles History of the Archbishops of HamburgBremen. See Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum History of Norway. See Historia Norwegie Holstein forest, 93 Holy Roman Empire, 115, 118, 123. See also Roman Empire Honorius of Autun, 77–78, 86 Horace, 80 Horrmunden, vii, 17 horshwaleum. See also walrus horses, 27 Horsey, Jerome, 124 How Norway Was Peopled. See Hversu Noregr byggðist hrosshalvr. See walrus Huguenots, 125 Hungary, 123 hunting, 3–4, 10, 12, 24–22, 28, 54, 60–65, 69, 82. See also trapping hvalros. See walrus Hvarf, 85 Hversu Noregr byggðist, 80

Iberia, 135 Iceland, 4, 60–61, 67, 78, 80–81, 83–87, 138 ideograms, 70 Igaliku, 53 imago mundi, 77–79, 86 India, 103, 121, 132 Indian Ocean, 135 Indigenous peoples, vii, 4, 7, 11–12, 19, 55, 60–64, 68, 71, 76, 82–83 Ingegerd Olofsdotter, princess of Sweden, 4, 38, 49 inscriptions, 57–59, 69–73, 99 Inuit, 62–63. See also Indigenous peoples Inuit Nunaat, 63 Ireland, 136 Irish, 78, 118, 120, 136 iron, vi, 3, 10, 12–14, 17, 20–26, 31, 33, 48 Iron Age, v, viii, 2, 3, 7, 10–15, 17, 21, 28.



See also Roman Iron Age Isidore of Seville, 77–78, 135 Íslendingabók, 86. See also Iceland Italy, 118, 122, 124, 135 Ivan IV, tsar of Russia, 124 ivory, 4, 18, 55–58, 60–71. See also walrus Jämtland, 14, 17–19, 78 Japan, 139, 141 jarlsriki, 38, 49 Jauss, Hans-Jürgen, 94 Jensen, Frede P., 121 Jerusalem, 101 Jespersen, Knut J.V., 115, 126 jewelry, vi, 14, 38, 41, 43, 46 Johan of Nassau, 123 Johan III, king of Sweden, 122 Jülich, 116 juniper, 70 Jutland, 49

Kalaalit, 4, 61–62, 64 Kalmar War, 120, 122 Karelia, 107 Karl VIII Knutsson Bonde, king of Sweden, 9. See also Karlskrönikan Karl IX, king of Sweden, 117, 122–23 Karlskrönikan, vii, viii, 94–95, 104–6, 108, 111 Kepsu, Kasper, 125 Khazar Khagnate, 3, 39 Kiev, 4, 38 King’s Mirror. See Konungs skuggsjá Kirpichnikov, Anatoly, 39 Knut, 57, 99. See also Knýtlinga saga Knýtlinga saga, 99 Kola Peninsula, 83 Konungs skuggsjá, 66 Krafft, Hans, 123 Kvääni, 11

Ladozhka River, 39 Lake Lagoda. See Staraya Lagoda Lament of the Virgin Mary. See Mariaklagen Landnámabók, 85–86 landscapes, 3, 12–14, 16–17, 34, 57, 86, 92, 109. See also environments Landscknechte, 117–18 Landskrona, 99

Index

Lapps, 118. See also Finns, Sámi, Indigenous peoples Lavery, Jason, 117, 121 Lazarus, 59 lead, vi, 38, 43 Legendary Saga of St. Olav, 83 Leslie, Alexander, 125 Limar, 84 Lithuania, 115–16, 120, 125 Liutger, 58, 71 livestock, 10, 12, 21, 24–25, 27–28 Livonia, 116, 118–19, 121–23 Lombards, 115 Lorich, Anders, 121 Lower Volga River. See Volga River networks Lübeck, 105, 117, 124 Lucan, 80, 84 Lybusha, 48–49

157

Mæret. See Mediterranean Sea Magnus VI, King of Norway, 67 Magnusson, Erik, 93 Mainz, 57 Majid, Asifa, 98 Mälaren, 49 Mamluks, 134 mammals, 10, 66. See also animals mappa mundi, 131, 139 Mariaklagen, 95 Martellus, Henricus, 138 Martianus Capella, 80, 84 maskettes, 63 mass graves, 25, 27 Mauro, Fra, 131, 133, 141 Mediterranean Sea, 4, 99, 102–3, 107 mercenaries, 5, 102, 116–25 Middle Low German, 94 military nationalization, 5, 125 Miller, James, 116, 119 minerals, 10 missionaries 60, 63, 78–79, 82, 86–87, 136. See also Christianity, conversion to Mongols, 1, 133, 152 Monluc, Payrot, 121 Mönnichhofen, Johan, 123 Mortensen, Lars Boje, 77–79, 86 Moscow, 121, 124–25 mtDNA, 18–20

158

Index

Münster, 116 Murdoch, Steve, 116, 120 Muscovy, 115, 124–25 Myritius, Johannes, 141

Narwhals, 54. See also whales Napoleonic Wars, 126 Nérac, 96 networks, 1, 3, 10, 11–12, 14, 16–19, 24–25, 27, 28, 40, 55, 57, 60, 66, 117, 126, 132 Neva River, 3, 37, 39, 99, 105 Newfoundland, 2, 82, 132, 141, 143 New Testament, 78 Nicholas, Saint, 53 Nidaros, 4, 16–17, 67, 86 nonhuman agents, 54 Nordic Seven Years War, 117, 119, 121–22 Nóri. See Nórr Nørland, Poul, 54 Nórr, 80 Norse peoples, 1, 4, 18–19, 39, 53–55, 60–66, 68, 71, 82. See Vikings Norse World digital resource, vi–vii, 4–5, 91–110 North America, 2, 62, 145 North Atlantic, v, vii, 4, 6, 10, 53–54, 60, 66, 71, 76, 131–33, 139, 141, 143, 145 North Baffin Island, 63 Northern Crusades, 115–16 Nortmannia. See Norway Norway, vi, 4, 10–11, 14, 16–18, 22–23, 60, 65, 67–68, 77–87, 101, 122, 137 Norwegians, 11, 66–67, 100, 102, 115 Nöteborg, 122 Novgorod, 38–40, 50 Chronicle of, 38, 50 nuclear DNA, 18 Nuremberg, 137, 143 Nuussuaq Peninsula, 62 Odin, 39 Ohthere, 66–67, 82 Okhta, 99 Olaf, Saint, 16, 77, 80, 83, 94 Olaf II Haraldson. See Olaf, Saint Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, 80, 83 Olav den heliges saga, 94

Old Danish, vii, 92, 94–96, 103–6 Old Norse[–Icelandic], 4, 57–60, 67, 77, 80, 82, 83–86, 94, 99, 137–38 Old Swedish, vii, 4–5, 92–96, 99, 103–5, 108–9 Old Testament, 78 oral tradition, 4, 79–80, 82, 86–87, 90 Orkney Islands, 78, 80–81, 83 Orosius, 67, 78, 80, 84 Ortelius, Abraham, 141 Orthodox Church, 123–24. See also Christianity Russian, 123 Östergötland, 99 Ottomans, 134 outland burials, viii, 12–17. See also burials Pacific Ocean, 1 pagan, 4, 58, 82. See also Christianity, conversion to Palaeolithic, 20 Passio Olaui, 77 patronage, 4, 57–59, 70 Paul the Deacon, 78 Paviken, 49 Pentateuch Paraphrase, 94 Perdita, 135 Peter of Abano, 134 Peter, Saint, 99 Philip III, King of France, 67 pilgrimage, 3, 16–17, 60 pine, 20, 70 pitfalls. See trapping pits Plakun, 48 Pliny, 84 plows, 24, 48 Poland, 118, 120, 123–25 polar North 4, 75, 139. See also Arctic polar bears, vi, 64–65, 72. See also bears Polish peoples, 120, 123–25 pollen, 16, 48 Polo, Marco, 134, 139 Polynesia, 1 ports, 3–4, 9, 37, 40, 65, 67, 78, 117. See also emporia Portugal, 134, 137, 143 pottery, 40 Poulsen, Bjørn, 117 Preston, Siegfrid, 120



Primary Chronicle of Rus’, 38 Prussia, 116, 118 Pskov, 123 Ptolemy (Claudius Ptolomæus), 137–38, 138–39 Pytheas of Marseille, 84

Radziwil, Nicolaus, 125 reindeer, 11–12, 16, relics, 60, 68 resource colonization, 3, 12–14, 20–21, 28, 46 reuse, 41 Reval, 117 Reykjavik, 60 Ribe, 11, 21 Riga, 117, 125 Right whale, North Atlantic, 10. See also whales

Riphean Mountains, 81–83 Rodrigo de Cordova y Gusman, Don, 123 rohal. See ivory Rom, 96, 107 Roman Church, 65, 146. See also Christianity, Latin; Church, Roman Catholic Roman Empire, 3, 19, 39, 78, 81, 84–85, 137 Roman Iron Age, 10, 11, 19–20. See also Iron Age Romance of Alexander, 108–9 romances, 91, 96, 108 Rome, 40, 96, 101, 107, 138–39, 141 runes, vi, 58–59, 70–71, 99 Rus’, 3, 37–49 Russia, 3, 37, 43, 51–52, 74, 84, 96, 105, 107, 118, 120, 123, 125 Russian communities, 4, 100, 104, 122–24, 125, 141 Russo-Swedish War, 122 Russow, Balthasar, 118–19, 125 Ruthven, Archibald, 119 Ruysch, Johannes, 139, 141, 143 Ryzaland, 96. See also Rus’, Russia Saga of Cnut’s Heirs. See Knýtlinga saga Saga of the Greenlanders. See Grænlendinga saga Saga of Olaf Tryggvason. See Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar

Index

159

sailing, 3, 80, 84–85. See also ships Saint-Chapelle, 67 Sallust, 80, 84 Samfund til Udgivelse af Gammel Nordisk Literatur (STUAGNL), 94–95 Sámi, 11, 12, 19, 60, 82–83. See also Finns, Indigenous peoples, Lapps Samogitia, 116 Sandnes, 64 sandstone, 53 Sardinia, 86 Sassanids, 39 Saxo Grammaticus, 77 Scandinavia, v, 2–3, 6, 9–12, 14, 19–22, 25, 28, 38–39, 46, 57, 66, 68, 70, 77, 92, 115, 117, 137–38, 141, 143, 146 Schleswig, 21 Schlitte, Hans, 124 Schöner, Johannes, vii, 142–43 Scotland, 80, 119, 121 Scots, 119–22, 124 scripts, 59 Scritefingi, 81 scythes, 24 seals (documentary), 38 seals (mammal), 63 Seelentrost, 94 settlements, 1, 3, 9–10, 12, 16, 20–21, 27, 37–38, 40, 46, 48–49, 53–54, 60–65, 82, 85–86, 99, 132. See also colonies and colonization, shielings Sherman, Heidi, 40 Shetland Islands, 78, 85 shielings, 3, 10, 21, 27 ships, 20–21, 37, 48, 120–21, 134, 141. See also sailing shrines, 16 Silvestri, Domenico, 135 Själens tröst. See Consolation of the Soul Skálholt, 84 Skelton, R.A., 145 skins (animal). See hides Skramle, vi, 27 Snorrason, Oddr, 80, 83 Solensjøen, Lilla, 17 Solinus, 78, 80, 84 Southeast Asia, 1 space, 4, 54, 69–70, 77, 90, 92, 98, 102, 109–10, 114, 133, 145

160

Index

spades, 24. See also tools spatiality, v, 4, 91–93, 95–96, 102, 109 Staraya Lagoda, v–vii, 3–4, 37–52 stockfish, 65. See also fish and fishing Stockholm, vii, 92–93, 95, 117, 120 stone, 14, 28, 38–40, 99 Stora Tuna, 25, 27 Sturekrönikorna (Sture’s Chronicles), vii–viii, 95, 104–8 Suchenwirt, Peter, 116 Sueonia. See also Sweden Svartbäcken, 99 Sweden, vii, 4–5, 11, 14–15, 17–20, 25, 38–39, 48–49, 68, 79, 81, 92–96, 99, 117–26 Swedes, 115, 111, 121, 122, 124 Svein Knutsson. See Gesta Swenomagni regis et filiorum eius Sven II, King of Denmark, 4, 57–58 Svenska fornskriftsällskapet, 95 Synagoga, 57, 70

Tabaristan, 39 tabula moderna, 138–39 tar, 3, 7, 12–14, 20–21, 28, 30, 35 Tartars, 125 Tating type vessels, 41 Terra Australis, 133 Terra Sancte Crucis, 141 Teutonic Order, 96, 116, 120, 123. See also Baltic Crusades textiles, 41 textual community, 5 Theodoricus the Monk, 77 Theodosius, 60 Thirty Years’ War, 115, 118, 120, 126 Thule Island. See Iceland thythisk, 96 Tiveden, 121 Tommos, Sören, 121 tools, 14, 21, 24, 38–39, 41, 63–64 topography, 9, 77, 92, 109 towns, 11, 118. See also emporia, ports trade, v, viii, 2–4, 7, 10–14, 17–19, 21, 24–29, 32–33, 35, 39–40, 49, 51–57, 59–76, 117, 120, 129. See also commerce, emporia transformation, 12–13, 20–21, 60, 148 translations, 85, 93–95, 99, 103, 108–9, 138

transmission, 7, 59, 85, 94, 104, 106 trapping pits, 16–17, 19–20, 24–26 Trøndelag, 18 Trondheim. See Nidaros Tuniit, vii, 4, 61–64, 76, 11, 12, 19. See also Indigenous peoples Turkish communities, 124–25 Turks, 124–25 Turku Castle, 105 tusks, 4, 11, 54–55, 57, 60–71, 76. See also ivory, walrus Ukrainian communities, 125 Umayyads, 39 Universitets-Jubilæets danske Samfund, 94–95 Uppland, 20, 39, 119 Urban, William, 125 urbanization, 4, 9–11, 25, 49, 118, ursus arctos, 3, 11, 18, 33–34. See also bears, polar bears

de Valles, Jacques, 121 Varangian guard, 115 Varberg, 121 Värmland, vi, 25 Vegestav, 83 Venice, 131 Vesspucci, Amerigo, 132 Viking Age, 3, 7, 9, 11–12, 18–21, 23–24, 35, 37, 40, 99 Vikings, 49, 48, 54, 115, 132, 145–46. See also Norse peoples Vilnius, 120 Vinland, vii, 6, 81–82, 84, 132, 143, 145–47, 152 Virgin Mary, 95 Virgil, 80 Vivaldi brothers, 134 Vladimirovich, Mstislav, 38 Volga Rover networks, 3, 39 Volkhov region, 3, 37–39, 46, 48–52 von Herberstein, Sigismund, 116, 124 von Kettenburg, Franz, 122 von Staden, Heinrich, 124 Vyborg, 105 Waldseemüller, Martin, 143 Wallachians, 124



walrus(es), vi, 4, 7, 11, 18, 54–75 weapons, 21, 24, 27, 62, 64, 124 Wendland, 96 Westphalia, 116 whales, 10, 58, 63, 67, 85 whalebone, 10, 58 Wilhelm of Orange, 122 wool, 3, 21

Index

Yaroslav the Wise, 4, 38 Yvain, or The Knight of the Lion, 108

Zemlyanoy Gorod, 40 Zemlyanoe Gorodische. See Zemlayanoy Gorod Zipangu. See Japan

161