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During the Viking Age, the use of private violence was a precondition for social power. Iceland, for instance, was a law-making community but had no executive power to put the laws into effect. Politics throughout the whole of Scandinavia was based on strong personal relations. This was not a society of uncontrolled violence, but, alongside the development of church and kingdom, the attitude towards a legal type of violence changed. The Icelandic sagas are preoccupied with networks; the alliance patterns described can shed light on the relations between both biological and social kin. This chapter describes competing loyalties through marriage, fostering, friendship, and pledges of support. Kin and marriage systems are the main organization form for people. The discussion also considers alliances and the need for strong bonds with both family and friends at a time when the political and social order was changing.

This chapter discusses the history of the coming of the Vikings. It covers kings and kingdoms in 793; Scandinavian attacks on Northumbria; conditions in Scandinavia in the late eighth century; Norway in the Viking Age, causes of the Viking Age; the Vikings in Scotland; and the dynasty of Wrguist (789–839).

The achievement represented by the tenacious reigns of Onuist and Eadberct is conveniently demonstrated by the convulsions experienced by their realms in the run-up to the Viking Age. Successful expansionist regimes of the early Middle Ages tended to experience difficulty maintaining themselves, once the possibility of further expansion waned. Since 685 the Northumbrians had become squeezed between Mercian and Pictish superpowers, and internal troubles afflicted every Northumbrian king after Aldfrith. Eadberct was no exception, but coped well enough to contemplate expanding his frontiers; yet there would be no Ecgwulfing hegemony.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of friendship. Friendship exists in a state of constant flux, being shaped by and shaping other personal relationships. Thus, it cannot be studied in isolation of other social relations. Until about 1970, the idea of a strong kin group was central to the discussion of Norwegian and Icelandic society in the Viking Age and the high Middle Ages. The view was that a patriarchal kin-based organization united the social, judicial, political, and religious facets of society. The kin group possessed land in common and probably took care of the “individual kin-group member's need for protection, his lawful rights and his religious needs.” Over time there has been a shift in the debate in Iceland and Norway, from a focus on the kin-based society and the political institutions described in the law codes, toward the political culture and the role friendship played.

Chapter 2 examines the function of assemblies in Vikingage society and provides a detailed analysis of the assembly institution in Scandinavia and how this fitted into earlier Germanic assembly systems in Mainland Europe. This is important as the thing organisation is at times seen as an isolated phenomenon related to Norse society only. It is shown that many of the traits present in Vikingage society are found in early medieval sources from Frankia and Saxony. This chapter also investigates which groups in society could actively participate in assembly-meetings, demonstrating that the elite was the most influential. The traditional male-female binary division of ‘included’ men and ‘excluded’ women is, moreover, shown to be invalid.

This chapter introduces the book and provides background on modern and medieval theories of social memory. It discusses the work of scholars such as Maurice Halbwachs, Paul Connerton, and Pierre Nora and considers the relevance of their theories to the medieval context. The chapter then compares their views to medieval theories of memory, particularly those of Snorri Sturluson. It then discusses the role of the skald at the early medieval court and the relationship between skaldic poetry and social remembrance. It also discusses forms of poetic commemoration in Viking-Age Scandinavia and presents the main arguments of the book, concluding with an overview of each of the following chapters.

This introductory chapter discusses the significance of analyzing the life story of Cnut, one of the most fascinating of the pre-Conquest kings of England. His life offers several new ways of examining late Anglo-Saxon England in addition to areas of neighbouring Scandinavia, as well as of questioning the established norms of how an English monarch could and should behave in the eleventh century. His regime spread beyond the British Isles and spanned multiple geographical boundaries in northern Europe. In ruling these nations, Cnut had to cross substantial cultural and linguistic boundaries, and appeal to local elites in each region in entirely different ways. The resulting regimes would profoundly change the societies of England and Denmark, and ultimately contribute significantly to the end of the Viking Age in Scandinavia.

This chapter reiterates the main arguments that have been raised in the book. It notes that a wide range of commemorative texts may be found within the corpus of Viking-Age skaldic verse. Although the function of praise-poetry is often characterized as the simple exchange of reputation for honour, it is concluded that commemorative texts could fulfil a variety of functions, including the legitimation of power, the re-establishment of social and political order, and resistance to the new king’s reign. It is further noted that the role of commemoration changed with the Christianization of Scandinavia as poetic texts also came to function as hagiography and advice to princes. It is argued that skaldic commemoration was intimately linked to expressions of political and social identity.