Recent scholarship has drawn out the respectable side of Scandinavian activity in the Viking Age: texts tell us of reindeer barons in Norway, Danish negotiators in Carolingian courts, converts from paganism in English monasteries, Swedish fur-traders on the Upper Volga, and Icelandic explorers along the coasts of North America. These industrious and entrepreneurial people should be set alongside the armies which sacked the Northumbrian monastery of Lindisfarne, mounted an eight-month siege of Paris, stormed the imperial city of Constantinople, drained thousands of pounds of silver from royal coffers in protection money, and won the kingdom of England. The raids still occasion debate: has the extent of the economic, political, and psychological damage attributed to Vikings been exaggerated? Controversial too are issues of cultural identity and assimilation in the Scandinavian kingdoms and the lesser polities established in England, Ireland, Scotland, the North Atlantic, Normandy, and Russia. By the end of the Viking Age, Scandinavia had become increasingly like the rest of Europe, entrenching royal power and – the last of the Germanic peoples to do so – making the transition from pagan to Christian.

The paper, which covers all the zones of activity, at home and abroad, makes substantial use of material evidence. Excavated sites and burials, coins, sculpture, and metalwork have all in their way proved to be crucial to the historian in understanding aspects of the period. There is also a wealth of written sources, which range from the respectably historical – such as royal charters – to the hagiographical and the downright literary, such as the vernacular poetry and prose of Iceland, which later served as a vehicle for memory of the Viking Age when oral tradition was converted into writing. The nature of the source material forces us to grapple with methodological issues relating to the interpretation and application of evidence, thereby refining our conception of the practice of history and the historian’s task. All sources will be available in translation.

Many of the texts are very short, being poems, letters, or even place-names. Others pick out relevant sections from much longer writings, such as references to the Viking wars in the biography of King Alfred, comments on Scandinavian paganism in an eleventh-century German chronicler, or peace-treaties recorded in Russia’s national chronicle. Only three texts are assigned to be read in full: the biography of the evangelist of Scandinavia, St Anskar, the saga of the great Viking hero Egil, and the account of an Arab envoy to the Volga River in the 920s. These – and the set objects – add up to the same quantity of reading as is set for other Further Subjects. Candidates will be required to show knowledge of Scandinavia and of the areas attacked and settled. The following sites and objects will be relevant:

• the St Peter and St Edmund pennies (of York and East Anglia, respectively).
• urban sites at York, Lincoln, Dublin; trading sites in the homelands (Ribe, Birka, Hedeby, or Kaupang); Staraja Ladoga (Russia).
• the royal site at Jelling (Denmark); the earls’ residence at Birsay (Orkney)
• settlement sites at L’Anse aux Meadows (Newfoundland) and Llanbedrgoch (Wales).
• Repton monastery and winter camp (Derbyshire).
• the Gosforth Cross (Cumbria); Govan (Strathclyde) and Middleton (Yorkshire) hogbacks; Sigmund stone (Old Minster, Winchester); St Paul’s grave-marker (London); runestones at Kuli (Norway), Jelling, Hedeby, and Glavendrup (Denmark) and Frösö , Täby, Gripsholm, and Yttergärde (all in Sweden).
• the Hunterston brooch and metalwork finds in East Anglia and Lincolnshire.
• Ingleby cremation cemetery (Derbyshire); Viking burial at Reading; ship-burials at Oseberg (Norway), Kiloran Bay (Colonsay, Hebrides), and Scar (Orkney); Peel Castle cemetery (Isle of Man).