174
highlighted that the linguistic structure of a
metrical line could be significantly, if
regularly, altered and reorganized as an
organic part of oral performance. In his lecture,
Niemi presented the results of his project that
also cast light on the local cultures more
broadly, revealing that areal patterns in the
singing traditions of these different groups had
evolved through their contact history.
A wide variety of verse forms were examined
during presentations in the parallel sessions,
ranging from poetry of Antiquity to recent
folklore and from
medieval court poetry to rap
music of the 21
st
century. Many of the
presentations dealt with meter in sung poetry
and music. Approaches and methods varied as
well. Maria-Kristiina Lotman (University of
Tartu) and Mihhail Lotman (University of Tartu/
Tallinn University), for example, introduced
their new research project in which they study
the relationship between meter and semantics
by means of statistical-comparative analysis.
Eva Lilja (Göteborg University) spoke on
“Embodied Rhythm”. Employing the example
of Ann Sexton’s poem “The Fury of Rain
Storms” she explicated how rhythm produces
meaning by using a four step analysis model.
Wednesday
evening
was
spent
on
Tervasaari island, where the attendees had the
opportunity to talk about syllables and
statistics in an informal manner with good food
and nice weather. On Thursday evening,
Tuomas M.S. Lehtonen,
the Secretary General
of Finnish Literature Society, welcomed
everyone to the Society-organized reception.
To the great delight of all, Stephen Evans,
conference participant and church musician
(Parish of Laitila, Turku Archdiocese), offered
a short piano performance of “Berceuse” by
Armas Järnefelt and “Yö meren rannalla”
[‘Night by the Sea’] by Heino Kaski.
An edited volume of selected papers from
the conference is currently being organized.
The next meeting of NordMetric is already
being planned and is expected to be held in
Stockholm in 2018.
The Viking World – Diversity and Change
27
th
June–2
nd
July 2016, Nottingham, United Kingdom
Elisabeth
Maria Magin, University of
Nottingham
Trying to capture the Viking Age in all its
aspects and facets, with its wide range not only
of territory but also of time, is a task that
cannot be accomplished. Still, people have
made attempts. For example, “The Viking
World – Diversity and Change”, which took
place in Nottingham from June 27th to July
2nd in 2016, made a very valid attempt to at
least present as many different aspects of the
Viking Age as possible, attracting visitors not
only from the former Viking territories, but
also from countries where Viking influence
was not as prevalent as in Northern Europe,
like Spain or Russia. Moreover, the conference
confined itself neither to one discipline nor
restricted itself to the Viking Age alone –
periods preceding and following the Viking
Age were considered as well as the core areas
and time periods of Viking dominion. All
papers presented at the conference showed one
thing quite clearly: in studying the Viking Age,
one needs to broaden the horizon.
1
What
caused a Viking to become a Viking, and what
constituted his or her identity as a ‘Viking’ was
at the beginning of this chapter of history
something very different than what it was on
the eve of the Norman Conquest.The fact that
both Knut’s accession to the English throne
and the Norman Conquest celebrated their
respective anniversaries in 2016 brings home
once more how diverse the subject we call the
Viking Age actually is.
The conference’s full six-day programme
ensured that no conference attendant was
bored at any time. An excursion to Lincoln
along with an Iceland-England football match
and a visit to a sales venue provided ample
distraction to fend off conference fatigue.
Since our knowledge of
the Viking Age is still
based on relatively few sources, naturally many
talks took their starting point in either archaeo-
logical finds or written sources – or both.
Fortunately, presenter approaches varied widely.
Hypotheses on the – possibly evolutionary –
175
cause for the earliest known raids, and thus the
start of the Viking Age were discussed alongside
burial customs in different geographical areas.
2
Amongst observations on changes in burial
customs in specific geographic areas (like on
the Isle of Man
3
), attention was directed to the
phenomenon of master-slave graves,
4
the
influence of gender on the interpretation of a
person’s burial mound,
5
and the reuse of older,
local burial sites in Viking territories as a
possible sign of assimilation or statements of
power.
6
Not all areas of Viking influence have
Viking burials, however, and in some cases –
such as in the case of Iberia – it is even
questionable if the Vikings were there at all or
if travelling to Spain is simply a trope
employed by saga authors.
7
It is interesting,
however, to look at the routes Vikings
explored and travelled along,
8
and their
manners of navigation. Papers comparing
material evidence with written sources or
looking at linguistic contacts
9
revealed that in
some areas the Viking influence appears to
have been particularly strong on vocabulary
concerning farming and fishing,
10
and that our
assumption that they navigated along a ‘Viking
mental world map’ maybe wrong. Rather,
looking at how locations along their trading
routes were named, it would be more correct to
think of the Viking landscape as more of a
‘mental string’.
11
Due to their extensive
travels, the Vikings had many points of contact
with other cultures,
12
as is evidenced by the
presence of Vikings in Arabic sources,
13
but
also in the bones of inhabitants of Viking
towns like Ribe.
14
These border encounters
opened up influences on daily life that ran both
ways.
15
Viking identities appear not to have
been as solid as we may think, raising
questions about contemporary concepts of
social, gender, and language identity.
16
These
factors may have been influenced by elements
such as location, language proficiency, and
perhaps even market demand.
It is therefore logical to pay attention to how
people regarded the space they inhabited, and
which rules governed ‘inside space’ and
‘outside space’.
17
Outdoor activities like tar
production
18
or attending a thing all had their
own set of rules that were expected to be
followed, as did, for example, the interior of a
home. The consequences of violating rules can
both be found in poetry and sagas,
19
and
interesting observations on the difference of
focus in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian law
codices were a topic of discussion.
20
Space
utilized to create a specific effect is perhaps
most obvious in giant monuments like Gamla
Uppsala in Sweden or the Jelling site in
Denmark,
21
but can also be traced in boat
graves, which connect to boat burials known
from narratives like the god Baldr’s funeral.
22
Poetry, languages and myths of origin
obviously played a great role in creating a
‘Viking identity’, but were also important in
creating local, flexible identities and in ordering
the world, whether explaining the origins of
illness
23
or for assigning people to a specific
family. Papers on those subjects focused on the
role of praise poetry in the Danish dynasty,
24
but also on kinship markers
25
and, again, on
language contacts and the remnants of said
contacts
in
individual
languages.
One
particularly interesting paper showed how
Harald harðráði’s character was constructed by
means of using the women of the saga as the
saga author’s mouthpiece.
26
Yet not everyone
told
the same story, as reflected
in the contrast
between Irish stories about Brian boru and
Njáls saga.
27
Both examples serve to show that
as a Viking leader, respecting and making use
of the diversity of your army
28
was not enough,
you also needed a good skald to tell of your
deeds. But the choice of
who to hire should be
made carefully – two other thought-provoking
papers dealt respectively with the ingenuity of
Egill in scorning Erik Blood-axe even as he
praised him,
29
and how Vafþrúðnir could have
avoided his own death by listening to the little
hints at Odin’s identity the disguised god
sprinkled into their verbal sparring.
30
They
were not the only ones to resort to ‘cheating’,
however. Also interesting were the presentations
on the topic of conversion
31
and the various
forms it took in written sources, whether in
ascribing a ‘good character’ to a pagan
ancestor post-mortem,
32
or bishops advising
their priests on how to bend the rules in order
to not scare away the newly Christened.
33
Stories were not only told with words.
Events and cosmology were also depicted on