The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

The Scandinavian presence
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It is perhaps intuitively unlikely that the newcomers arrived anywhere in the British Isles in such
numbers, or replaced the local population to such an extent, so as to form a majority of the
population. Irrespective of its size, however, the fact remains that the Scandinavian presence had
considerable influence throughout the British Isles.
CHANGING PERCEPTIONS
Since the Second World War, the saga-inspired view of horned-helmeted Norse raiders carrying
off Anglo-Saxon treasure and women to their dragon-headed longships has gradually given way
to a more positive image of the Scandinavian presence.
In particular, rescue archaeology within English towns has demonstrated the importance of
the ninth and tenth centuries as a period of urban growth and industrialization. As a direct result
of the Coppergate excavations in York and the presentation of an interpretative tableau of Viking
Age York in the Jorvik Viking Centre, the modern scholarly and popular view sees Scandinavian
settlers as homely entrepreneurs, trading from the fronts of their rather cosy, but smelly, workshops.
In common with other periods, there has also been a tendency to downplay the extent and
impact of invasion and migration. From the 1960s, revisionist historians, notably Peter Sawyer,
have questioned the reliability of figures for the size of the Danish armies given in the Anglo-
Saxon Chronicle, and have suggested that these were generally small raiding forces (Sawyer 1971).
They have also argued against simplistic interpretations of linguistic evidence to suggest that
there was never a mass folk migration of Scandinavian settlers. Current archaeological and historical
thinking emphasizes change at an elite level, but sees the vast majority of the population as
unaffected by changes at the top. Most recently, post-processualist trends have encouraged
archaeologists to question also whether artefact styles and cultural assemblages can be interpreted
at face value. There is a growing tendency to treat the adoption of Scandinavian style ornaments
as a symbolic fashion statement and to see Viking burial and sculpture as cultural signalling by a
population anxious to be identified with a Scandinavian elite group (e.g. Myhre 1993).
Nevertheless, study of the period has been largely unaffected by developments in archaeological
science or theory. Scientific dating methods have had little impact, and chronology still depends
upon the detailed working out of typological trends from an art-historical standpoint. Most
scholarly work is still at the stage of being focused upon data collection and cataloguing rather
than interpretation. Environmental archaeology has enlarged our economic understanding through
analysis of urban bone assemblages, but we still lack those rural sites in the urban hinterlands that
might allow a picture of the full economy to be established. The agenda is still largely that set by
the documentary sources. There is a tendency to use archaeological evidence as illustrations for
a historical narrative and as resistance to more anthropologically based approaches, such as from
those who might use Viking hoards to seek to examine gift exchange, for instance (see, for example,
papers in Samson 1991). The documentary sources have also determined the popular view of the
Vikings as the outsiders; few British today would identify themselves with Viking ancestors. The
Anglo-Saxons, under Alfred, are the ancestral English; the Vikings are still the invaders.
KEY DATA
Burials
It is rare to find archaeological evidence that appears to relate to a specific historical event, and
dangerous to look for it, but investigations at Repton, Derbyshire, appear to support an entry in