Vikings and the Viking Age are, and have been for many years, intensively investigated and debated—ranging from the concepts and period, how they should be defined and understood, their coming into being and disappearance, through to their legacy and revival. So-called reception studies into the use or misuse of the phenomena are well-established among academics. This book proposes that the subject should have a research field of its own called ‘vikingism’.
Viking heritage and history in Europe is an anthology published by Routledge for an academic audience—it is professionally presented, as always by this publisher, but the hardback edition is very expensive. The volume is edited by two Swedish historians, Sara Ellis Nilsson and Stefan Nyzell. The idea of the book was born during a visit to the Jorvik Viking Festival in York, UK, and further formed by conferences in Malmö, Sweden. The book is presented in the series ‘Critical Heritage of Europe’. The critical perspective is manifest in the references to works by Raphael Samuel, Laurajane Smith and Rodney Harrison in the introductory chapter and in the discussion on possible white supremacy, racism, gender and political misuse of the Vikings.
The book consists of 14 chapters, beginning with an introduction by the editors and ending with comments by the archaeologist Howard Williams. In addition to the editors, who also write a chapter each, the authors are from Canada, Iceland, Finland, Sweden and the UK, representing a broad array of university disciplines—archaeology, heritage studies, history, Jewish studies, linguistics, literature, museology, Northern studies and religious studies. The chapters are organised in three sections: ‘Viking tourism, living-history, and re-enactment as European cultural heritage’; ‘Perspectives on Vikings in European popular culture’; and ‘Vikings in European museums, heritage, and politics’. However, the diverse contributions are, as often the case in this kind of anthology, only with difficulty arranged under common headings.
The themes of the book range from tourism, museum exhibitions, reconstructions and recreations, re-enactments, festivals with historic plays and ‘time travels’ to alcohol consumption, comics, video games, runes and politics. Strangely enough, there is no chapter on films, even if films are mentioned and clearly affect the contemporary representation, for example the Canadian-Irish TV series Vikings (2013–2020).
The locations discussed include: Canada's L'Anse aux Meadows; Denmark's National Museum in Copenhagen, the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, the Land of Legends in Lejre and the Ribe Viking Centre; Iceland's Saga Museum of Reykjavik; Norway's Lofotr Viking Museum in Borg and the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo (reopens in 2027 as the Museum of the Viking Age); and in the UK, the Jorvik Viking Centre in York and Kirkwall in Orkney.
The anthology contains texts of different character and several diverse themes, case studies and viewpoints, kept together under the umbrella of the diffuse concept of Viking heritage. Personally, I was informed and inspired by reading the analysis of re-enactments, different attitudes in exhibition, reconstruction and recreation of Viking ships, the discussions about l'Anse aux Meadows as an iconic place for the encounter between Vikings and others and, finally, about the Saga Museum on Iceland, where naturalistic silicone models and the use of light makes the narrative an uncanny experience, regardless of whether or not the narrative is true.
Vikings and the Viking Age are contested concepts. The editors themselves fall into a trap of nationalism, when they as Swedes designate the Swedish archaeologist Oscar Montelius as the main figure in establishing the period. In Denmark it would be the archaeologist Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae and in Norway the historian Peter Andreas Munch.
The volume also demonstrates a western bias in the choice of authors, case studies and mostly English-language references. The Vikings and the Viking Age become something that is centred around the North Sea, ignoring eastern or southern contacts. And, as Williams gently expresses things, Vikings are not a national, Scandinavian or even a European phenomenon, it is ‘glocal’, which puts the title of the book, its headings and the context of the series in doubt.
A concept of a long Viking Age would be a correct description looking at the examples mentioned in the book. The Viking Age seems here to begin in the dark post-Roman centuries of the epic poem Beowulf and it ends somewhere around 1115, when Earl Magnus was beheaded in Kirkwall on Orkney. It is the same tendency as when the ‘Viking Reserve’ at the Foteviken Viking Museum near Malmö celebrates a battle in 1134, although Foteviken is not among the case studies of the book.
The established museums and the new centres have gradually approached each other. But there is still a wide range of formats for Viking museums displaying ships. At one end of the scale, there is the Viking Ship Museum of Oslo exhibiting the archaeological discoveries, in the middle is the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde with both the archaeological finds and the replicas or reconstructions of ships and at the other end are centres with more or less freely imagined and recreated ships. Among the various styles of exhibitions, there was the controversial ‘Meet the Vikings’ (2018–2021) at the National Museum in Copenhagen, where present-day photographs of people dressed as Vikings presented a mix of fact and fiction and the exhibit attracted a huge audience.
An anthology in a prestigious and rather expensive Routledge series is intended for academic readers and libraries. The editors and most of the authors seem to be critical observers and analysts, a few are also engaged in activities, as organisers or lecturers. Thus, there is an underlying tension between critical heritage on one side, and on the other side those who actually also participate by organising, lecturing or re-enacting. One must choose the ACHD, Authorised Critical Heritage Discourse, or the side of the re-enactment and re-imagination, or maybe keep a position in the middle. Usually, critical studies pay great attention to the voices and viewpoints of the non-academic side of heritage, but in this case all the editors and authors have a PhD. Here, I join Williams in his comments when he calls for an approach to Viking Research that does not ignore or condemn but sees the benefits of collaboration.
