Viking Age Amulets in Scandanavia and Western Europe [Paperback]

Two hundered years of antiquarian and archaeological and archaeological interest has generated an archive of some 1350 Viking Age amulets. These objects are manufactured from a variety of materials, most often metals, and were often, but not always, worn as pendants. However, all are miniatures, objects shaped like something else tools, weapons, animals, people, or more abstract religious symbols, including hammers and crosses. They can be understood as material symbols which gained meaning through reference to phenomena beyond themselves real animals, people and so on. I argue that this symbolism must be understood within a religious frame of reference. Previous archaeological research into Viking Age religion has suffered from an uncritical acceptance of written sources that are late, biased and geographically isolated. Since religion is also behaviour in the world, there is no intrinsic reason why texts should be a better source of information that should artefacts. As an archaeological material, the corpus of amulets has a history of recovery. Analysis of times of recovery for different types of contexts reveals how the composition of the archaeological archive changes. Contemporary texts highlight the different priorities and interests, which in turn shaped research strategies. Thus, it is clear that the archive cannot be isolated from its own history. The archive represents a real, but partial record of what existed in the past. The history of recovery throws light on how the archive is partial. The present study examines the various types, materials and contexts of the amulets. It documents how amulet types have different dates and distributions, suggesting that religious practise changed through time. Some of this change may be due to influences from Christian Europe, but this may not explain everything. In any case, the chronology and distribution of amulets suggest that late, Norse sources may not be perfectly suited for unlÓJ