Cultural Contacts between the Western Baltic, the North Sea Region and Scandinavia: Attributing runic finds to runic traditions and corpora of the Early Viking Age

Zimmermann, Christiane; Jöns, Hauke

doi:10.1017/9781787440630.015

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“…Their success implies that some people moved there, and stayed. Furthermore, they acted as nodal points in a long-distance exchange network [25], and visitors from near and far would have been common, as attested by both contemporary textual accounts and artefactual finds [4][5][6][7][8]. The history of populating the Viking-Age towns involves geographic mobility, and is marked by encounters between individuals with cultural ties and geographic origin in the towns' immediate hinterland, but also beyond.…”

Section: Background: Viking-age Towns As Meeting Placesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Individual geographic mobility in a Viking-Age emporium—Burial practices and strontium isotope analyses of Ribe’s earliest inhabitants

et al. 2020

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Individual geographic mobility is a key social dynamic of early Viking-Age urbanization in Scandinavia. We present the first comprehensive geographic mobility study of Scandinavia's earliest emporium, Ribe, which emerged around AD 700 in the North Sea region of Denmark. This article presents the results of strontium isotope analyses of 21 individuals buried at Ribe, combined with an in-depth study of the varied cultural affinities reflected by the burial practices. In order to investigate geographic mobility in early life/childhood, we sampled multiple teeth and/or petrous bone of individuals, which yielded a total of 43 strontium isotope analyses. Most individuals yielded strontium isotope values that fell within a relatively narrow range, between 87 Sr/ 86 Sr = 0.709 to 0.711. Only two individuals yielded values > 87 Sr/ 86 Sr = 0.711. This suggests that most of these individuals had local origins but some had cultural affinities beyond present-day Denmark. Our results raise new questions concerning our understanding of the social and cultural dynamics behind the urbanization of Scandinavia.

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Section: Background: Viking-age Towns As Meeting Placesmentioning

confidence: 99%