Architecture, Society, and Ritual in Viking Age Scandinavia
Doors, Dwellings, and Domestic Space

This book explores households, social organization, and rituals in Viking Age Scandinavia through a study of dwellings and their doorways.

Marianne Hem Eriksen (Author)

9781108497220, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 February 2019

296 pages, 54 b/w illus. 9 colour illus.
26.2 x 18.5 x 1.8 cm, 0.8 kg

'This monograph is a valuable contribution to the scholarship on domestic life in the Viking Age …' Teva Vidal, Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies

In this book, Marianne Hem Eriksen explores the social organization of Viking Age Scandinavia through a study of domestic architecture, and in particular, the doorway. A highly charged architectural element, the door is not merely a practical, constructional solution. Doors control access, generate movement, and demark boundaries, yet also serve as potent ritual objects. For this study, Eriksen analyzes and interprets the archaeological data of house remains from Viking Age Norway, which are here synthesized for the first time. Using social approaches to architecture, she demonstrates how the domestic space of the Viking household, which could include masters and slaves, wives and mistresses, children and cattle, was not neutral. Quotidian and ritual interactions with, through, and orchestrated by doorways prove to be central to the production of a social world in the Viking Age. Eriksen's book challenges the male-dominated focus of research on the Vikings and expands research questions beyond topics of seaborne warriors, trade, and craft.

Part I. Opening Doors to the Viking Age: 1. Entry points
2. The power of the door
Part II. Ordering Settlements and Landscapes: 3. Fleshing out the past: houses and households of the Viking Age
4. Crossing the threshold: interior space
5. Networked landscapes: exterior space
Part III. Ritual Objects, Ritual Spaces: 6. 'Lift me over door-hinges and lintels': doorways, bodies, and biographies
7. Thresholds to other worlds
8. Exits: a social archaeology of the Viking Age
Appendix.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography [JHMC], Medieval European archaeology [HDDM], Archaeology [HD], European history [HBJD]