Death, Commemoration & Memory in the Viking World - MST00061M

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Module summary

In an Icelandic saga, a family are burned to death in their home. In Norway, a medieval queen is laid to rest in a custom-built ship, driven into a massive earth mound. In Dorset, 54 medieval Scandinavian skeletons are found decapitated. It is often through the record of death that we are able to learn about the life and worldview of the Vikings. All human societies remember, commemorate and even celebrate their dead; but across the Viking diaspora, there was no one way to deal with the dead. The Viking dead might feast in Valhalla, or be prisoners of Hell, or await resurrection at the Last Judgement. They might be buried or cremated; put in ship burials or funerary mounds or forgotten patches of land and sea; marked with hogbacks or standing stones or not at all. Some commemorations were entirely pagan; others drew on the new Christian religion.

This module seeks to understand the traces left in the varied death records of the Viking age in different parts of the diaspora. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to the Viking age dead, how they were commemorated and how memories were preserved. Alongside the archaeology of funerary practices, there is a wealth of information in sagas, poetry, laws, and runic inscriptions, revealing how death was understood in the Viking world. This module drives towards an understanding of the role of remembrance in funerary practices and the importance – to the Vikings and to us – of preserving the memories of the dead.

Module will run

Occurrence	Teaching period
A	Autumn Term 2022-23

Module aims

The module aims to:

• Develop skills of source analysis and interpretation;
• Assess a range of source material and relevant secondary works; and
• Develop students’ powers of evidence-based historical argument, both orally and in writing.

Module learning outcomes

After completing this module students should have:

• An understanding of the historical context of the Viking diaspora
• An appreciation of the range of practices related to death and memory used in the Viking world
• An awareness of the variety of source material available to study the topic and an understanding of some of the problems involved in the use of these sources
• The ability to use and reflect critically upon a range of relevant interdisciplinary primary and secondary material: historical texts, manuscripts, archaeological evidence, runic inscriptions, numismatics and literary sources (e.g. skaldic poetry)
• An understanding of comparative approaches to historical questions
• An appreciation of the role of memory in history and history writing

Module content

Teaching Programme:
Students will attend eight weekly two-hour seminars in weeks 2-9.

The provisional outline for the module is as follows:

1. How to Die a Viking: Theories, Connections and Intersections
2. Notions of Death in Norse Myth and Religion
3. Viking age Funerary Practices: The Textual Evidence
4. Viking age Funerary Practices: The Archaeological Evidence
5. Material Memories: Runic inscriptions
6. Material Memories: Hogbacks
7. Commemorations in Song and Story: Skaldic verse and the Sagas
8. Death, Magic and Memory

Indicative assessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Special assessment rules

None

Indicative reassessment

Task	% of module mark
Essay/coursework	100.0

Module feedback

For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required.

Indicative reading

For term time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:

Geary, Patrick J. Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994.

Price, Neil. ‘Dying and the Dead: Viking Age Mortuary Behaviour’ in The Viking World ed. by Stefan Brink and Neil Price, Routledge, 2008.

Sawyer, Birgit. The Viking-age Rune-stones: Custom and Commemoration in Early Medieval Scandinavia.Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Williams, Howard. Death and Memory in Early Medieval Britain, Cambridge Studies in Archaeology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.