Tooley Street Delight

 

On academic business in London the other day, I chanced upon Tooley Street, just near London Bridge Underground station. Now, I've known about Tooley Street for a long time, but never actually visited it, which was clearly remiss of me, as you will understand below.

Tooley Street takes its name from St Óláfr of Norway, or rather from a church dedicated to that saint, as explained by Bruce Dickins in a classic article in Saga-Book in 1940 (pp. 67-68). As Dickins shows, there are quite a few churches dedicated to the saint in London, but this one is special, since its site is very close to one of Óláfr's youthful exploits, as recorded in the poem Víkingarvísur by the king's Icelandic poet Sigvatr Þórðarson, and edited by yours truly some years ago.

The poem recounts, in a numbered list of battles, the future king's youthful adventures in England and across the European continent.  Stanza 6 is as follows:

Rétts, at sókn in sétta,
(snarr þengill bauð Englum
at) þars Ôleifr sótti
(Yggs) Lundúna bryggjur.
Sverð bitu vǫlsk, en vǫrðu
víkingar þar díki;
átti sumt í sléttu
Súðvirki lið búðir.

It is correct that the sixth battle [took place] where Óláfr attacked the wharves of London; the valiant prince offered the English {the strife of Yggr <= Óðinn>} [BATTLE]. Frankish swords bit, and vikings defended the ditch there; some of the troop had huts in level Southwark.

At the end, he returns to Norway to become king and eventually martyr, Scandinavia's first royal saint, and rex perpetuus Norvegiae (Norway's forever king). 

It is of interest that stanza 6 mentions two specific place-names, giving the location of the battle, firstly Southwark and then the bryggjur of London. I have argued that this does not refer to London's bridge(s), as one might think, but to the wharves of London (as depicted on the cover of the book pictured above; follow the link above to read more about this question, there are also some comments there on the name Súðvirki and on the possible meanings of the word víkingar in this context).

But getting back to Tooley Street, imagine my delight to discover that one part of London Bridge Hospital is the unbelievably splendid (and grade II* listed) St Olaf House. This was built on the site of the old church, which stood until 1737, then was rebuilt and eventually demolished in 1928 to be replaced by this amazing edifice in 1932. It was originally built for the Hay's Wharf Company and became a part of the hospital in the 1980s. It's a lovely example of Art Deco, with lots of gorgeous details and quite a splendid entrance. I'm surprised it hasn't appeared in one of the Poirot episodes (or perhaps it has?).

An inscription on the corner of the building gives a brief history of the site and mentions Óláfr's military activities in the vicinity. However the exact history of all this is difficult to determine. Back in 2013 I wrote: 'Although Óláfr appears to have fought for the English King Aðalráðr (Æthelred) after the death of Sveinn tjúguskegg ‘Fork-beard’ in 1014, Snorri’s claim that Óláfr’s earlier battles were fought in support of him ... is probably erroneous ... His earlier English campaigns seem rather to have been fought alongside Þorkell inn hávi and the Danes ..., and it appears that Óláfr ‘like his friend Þorkell, changed sides and became a supporter of Æthelred’ (A. Campbell 1971, 12). The skaldic stanzas do not in themselves clarify who Óláfr’s allies and opponents were, nor exactly where and when he fought; even when they are considered in conjunction with the English and Norse prose sources much remains uncertain ...' And it goes without saying that the idea that Óláfr’s exploits are commemorated in the nursery rhyme 'London Bridge is falling down' is most likely fanciful.

The other corner of the building depicts the royal saint in all his regal majesty, rather than as a young attacker (or possibly defender - the stanza is a bit ambiguous) of a muddy ditch. It is this subsequent saintly and regal figure, rather than the youthful warrior on his gap year abroad, that is commemorated in this very fine building. I'm glad to have discovered it for myself and can recommend it as a must visit for anyone who loves both Art Deco and royal Viking saints....

If You Want to Listen

Shameless self-promotion has not generally been the main purpose of this blog. I've tended to aim for the slightly quirky, or even personal, just recording things that I have found interesting. But I have also enjoyed bringing to light various Norse and Viking things that I have observed in my studies or my travels. And every once in a while I am minded to comment on books or other phenomena from the academic world of Viking studies. Over the last few years (and especially during the pandemic) I have increasingly been doing this in the form of podcasts and other audio discussions or interviews. While my preferred medium is still the written word, I have noticed that more and more people seem to like listening to something more than reading something (and unlike reading it's something they can more easily do while doing something else). So I have enjoyed this way of communicating with people who might not otherwise read anything I have written. The audio experience is also different from this blog (and from much of what I write) in that in these contributions I am not necessarily following my own nose but more likely responding to questions or topics suggested by those who produce them, and this can force me to look at things differently.

So, for those who think this blog has been a bit thin of late, or who can't be bothered to browse in it, here are some links to the things that I have been broadcasting to the world in recent times, in reverse chronological order:

The Viking Diaspora - podcast interview with two of the guys who run the Seven Ages website, 'Exploring History, Archaeology, Science and Culture' (November 2020)

Inghen Ruaidh, the Birka Grave and Viking Warrior Women Not What You Thought You Knew with Fern Riddell and one other guest (September 2020)

Valkyries: Fierce women of war BBC World Service, Forum with Bridget Kendall and two other guests (July 2020) 

Everything you ever wanted to know about the Vikings, but were afraid to ask History Extra podcast with David Musgrove (May 2020)

The Danelaw In Our Time BBC Radio 4 with Melvyn Bragg and two other guests (March 2019) 

Runes: The Vikings in their own Words  on The History of Vikings podcast with Noah Tetzner (October 2018) 

By the way, the title of this blog post is a quotation from the first stanza of Háttalykill 'Key of Metres' by Earl Rǫgnvaldr Kali Kolsson and Hallr Þórarinsson, ed. by Kari Ellen Gade for the Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages project.

The Children of Ash and Elm

In what now seems like a completely other world, less than a year ago I wrote a blog post listing some recommended Viking reading. If I had been writing that blog post now, I would certainly have had to consider this very recent offering (it was published last month), all 599 pages of it, with the rather curious title The Children of Ash and Elm and the more prosaic subtitle A History of the Vikings. This book is by Neil Price, one of the best-known Viking specialists working today. He is professor of archaeology at the University of Uppsala in Sweden, and leader of a massive 10-year project called The Viking Phenomenon. By any account, this book, one of the outputs of that project, deserves serious attention.

I have to admit that not long ago I declined an opportunity to review the book, though this was only for practical reasons and not from any disinclination. Since then no one else has asked. So I thought I'd share some thoughts here. In fact, I rather like the freedom of writing as many (or as few) words as I like, and not having to follow the conventions of book reviews, or worry about who I was writing for, or explain the book to those who haven't read it and are wondering whether they should or not (the short answer is yes, though there's a longer and more complicated answer below). So this is not a review. Just some thoughts, mainly on those aspects of the book which particularly interest me, and which may or may not be of interest to others.

The first thing to note is that not only have I read it, but I have read it carefully and in its entirety and enjoyed doing so. You might think this goes without saying, but I can assure you that when it comes to popular or trade books about the Viking Age, this is very rarely the case for me... Too many books about the Vikings, aimed at a general audience, just say the same old things, in the same order, and in the dullest possible way. They might have their uses in providing the basics for those who know nothing, but I can rarely get past the first few pages... I assume this one is intended for a wide audience, as it is published by Allen Lane and will I guess eventually become a Penguin paperback, presumably to replace Else Roesdahl's The Vikings, which has now been around for quite a long time. So the very fact that I enjoyed reading it, and with attention, tells you a lot. However, its destiny as a popular book also makes it a bit difficult to review. How much should we expect of it? Who is it really for? We all know that it is really hard to encompass the whole of the Viking Age without making some mistakes, but how significant is that in this context? Does anyone care? I'm always being told that our first priority is to engage as well as inform the general public. But how far do we go in this process?

Well, this book is certainly very engaging. So what do I like about it? A variety of big and small things. Most important to me is how Neil's love of his subject shines through every word on these 599 pages. Here is someone who likes Vikings and the Viking Age a lot, as much as I do, almost certainly even more than I do, although probably for very different reasons. He resists the dreary tendency of some archaeologists to insist on the calling it the 'Viking period' and instead argues cogently (p. 9) for the validity of the notion of a 'discrete Viking Age'. He even admits that he is 'promoting the Vikings' worldview' (p. 26), something that sounds potentially dangerous these days. But it's not sinister, rather it is clear that his aim is deep understanding, an attempt to get inside the skin of the Vikings. Overall, I like this attitude. This is not a book for those who want battles and bling, rather I see it as an attempt to work out what motivated battles and bling (and of course much else).

Another good thing is that some of the book is about the centuries before the Viking Age, a period which is given a variety of names in different archaeological traditions (usefully tabulated on p. 66) and which is less well studied outside the circles of Scandinavian archaeology than the Viking Age itself. Very few books about the Viking Age consider this preceding period in any detail and it is illuminating to see both the continuities and the changes. In fact, you could argue that the author's idea of a 'discrete' and in many ways unified Viking Age is justified by that very contrast with the preceding period, with its multiple monikers and lack of a unifying narrative. Despite his over-fondness for Beowulf and the sixth-century 'dust veil', this focus on the pre-Viking period is still an important aspect of this book. I would also say the author is generally good on religion, even if I shudder at his adoption of the term 'religiolect' (p. 207), or when he overstates the evidence for worship of the Norse deities in England (p. 408).

I am of course very pleased that the author recognises the usefulness of the concept of 'diaspora' in understanding the Viking Age - this word is the title of the whole of chapter 13. Unlike many others, he is also alert to the fact that it is a difficult word to use and needs explanation and exploration rather than just appropriation (see especially pp. 363-5 and 555).

So, overall, this is a book which has many new and interesting things to say about Vikings and the Viking Age and already for that reason it is well worth reading. It's also a book which stimulates both thought and occasional disagreement, and I wouldn't be me if I didn't have some Thoughts about some of what Neil says.

The book is definitely the product of an archaeologist's mind, as indeed his predecessor Else Roesdahl's is. Allen Lane/Penguin still seems to belong to the class of publisher who believes only archaeologists are qualified to write about this topic. However, Neil is one of those archaeologists who is not only not embarrassed to use Old Norse texts to help understand his subject, but is also pretty knowledgeable about them. Indeed he has been supporting his archaeological interpretations with textual evidence for most of his career. This is laudable, but has some dangers. I have sometimes noticed that not only MA dissertations and PhD theses but also papers by more senior archaeologists have a tendency to use his work as a primary source to access these texts. While it is understandable that archaeologists cannot also be textual specialists, I think there is still some educating to be done here. But that is not this author's fault, rather that of those who use him in this way. This book is upfront about its use of sagas in particular, more than once urging its readers to 'read the sagas' - which can only be a good thing. I'm also totally with Neil when he notes (p. 23) that 'skeptical literary researchers' are probably too skeptical since they do not explain where all the Viking Age material in the sagas comes from, though his own justification (e.g. p. 222) is a bit thin. Let's by all means have more exchange and discussion of this topic which is sorely needed.

So I am disappointed to have to say that this book is not a particularly good advertisement for the use of sagas, or indeed any old texts, in archaeological narratives. At the most basic level, there are too many errors, often of a linguistic variety. So not only are we introduced to those weird Anglo-Norse hybrid dynasties the 'Ynglingas, Skjöldungas, and Völsungas' (p. 92) but, even more egregiously, the Saga of the Ljósvetningas (p. 160). I think our author has been reading too much Beowulf and not enough sagas. Constantine Porphyrogenitos' De Administrando Imperio is, despite the title, written in Greek not Latin (p. 366). Miðjarðarhaf  is a literal translation of 'Mediterranean Sea' and nothing to do with Miðgarðr (p. 374). A few such errors are forgivable but there are a little too many for my taste. Especially because they could easily have been eradicated by asking someone who knows about these things to read through the manuscript. But despite two pages of Acknowledgements to the Great and the Good of Norse and Viking Studies (pp. 574-6), this appears not to have been done, at least not successfully. The hubris of thinking you know everything affects us all in the end...and it's those who really do know a lot who have to be particularly careful. (I'm looking at myself here, too).

Similarly, some of Neil's reading of Old Norse texts is at least debatable and sometimes just wrong. On p. 55, he conflates without notice the texts of the poem Darraðarljóð and the prose narrative of Njáls saga in which it is cited. This is a pity for the argument because many people believe the poem is a genuine Viking Age product, while the saga definitively is not, and is therefore unlikely to be a reliable guide to what the poem really means. (I've more than once heard archaeologists at conferences claim they are citing the saga when in fact they are using the poem - when making a point about textiles, for example, this is an important distinction). Individual texts are in danger of being overinterpreted. Thus, Neil says (p. 110) that  Rígsþula 'describes an elaborate high-status wedding with fine linens and much ceremony',  but there is no such thing, only a very sketchy reference in st. 38 (40 in Larrington's translation) to Erna marrying Jarl and wearing linen. On the same page, he refers to the 'impotence' of Hrútr in Njáls saga, whereas most readers would I think say this character's marital problem was too much potence. We're told that 'sagas and poems are utterly saturated in magic' (p. 221). Well, yes, there is a fair bit of magic in these texts but 'utterly saturated'? Not in my experience. 'Professional mourner' is an odd concept to link to the Eddic heroine Guðrún (p. 253) in a context in which it is clear that she is mourning her own daughter - surely a genuine tragic figure rather than a hired weeper. It all smacks a bit too much of making the evidence fit the argument.

Runes are also not well-represented in this book, despite many of them being, unlike the sagas but like some poetry, contemporary texts from the Viking Age or earlier. It's disappointing when the author misses several opportunities to mention that important archaeological finds he discusses actually have runic inscriptions on them, such as some of the pre-Viking weapon deposits at Illerup (p. 70). Even more scandalously, the carved stones of the Isle of Man are mentioned for their Christian iconography beside images from Old Norse cosmology (p. 417) without any reference to their (more frequent, but perhaps less obviously exciting) runic inscriptions. Two Swedish rune-stones which Neil alleges (p. 112) provide evidence for men having two wives simultaneously are not only rather slim evidence for polygyny but could also be read in a variety of ways, even before we consider the problems of using these laconic inscriptions to write social history. And no, Ingibjörg did not have 'sex with me when I was in Stavanger' (p. 192). The medieval (not Viking Age) Bergen rune-stick N B390 M says that Ingibjörg unni mér þá er ek var í Stafangri or 'Ingibjörg loved me when I was in Stavanger'. You might argue that the verb unna is a euphemism here (though not always in runic inscriptions where it does seem to indicate romantic love). But I would argue that is interpretation which needs to be argued for, ideally with a consideration of how the word is used in other contexts. In this context, what is needed rather is just to get the translation right. Norse-speaking people are not known for euphemisms and did not shy away from the f-word when they needed it, as can be seen from several runic inscriptions including a famous one in Maeshowe (also post-Viking Age). 

Any one of these slips, individually, is not significant on its own, but there are rather a lot of them when it comes to the texts. What is more concerning is the overall pattern, of exaggeration and dramatisation, of literally sexing up things that were originally perhaps more mundane. Too much of this ends up with a slightly cartoonish view of the Vikings which both feeds into and panders to the ways they are portrayed in popular culture. Boring as I am, I would argue that the Vikings are fun enough without having to exaggerate what they were up to, they don't need all this showmanship. The end result is that the book sits very uneasily on the border between scholarship and yet another 'popular' version of the Viking Age. This is a worrying tendency in several aspects of Viking studies today, one example being the controversial Viking display at the National Museum of Denmark, though this book is not I think in that league, mercifully. And yet many people will regard this book as the 'defnitive' view of the Viking Age (as can be seen from both journalistic reviews, and consumer reviews on Amazon). Once again, the drive to 'engage' the public seems to be at the forefront of all public-facing scholarship and is in danger of overshadowing the actual scholarship.

This popularising tendency may be responsible for the author more or less ignoring certain forms of evidence which are not so easily tied into a colourful narrative (though others do manage it). So, place-names, a really important source of evidence, get very short, and sometimes inaccurate, shrift. It is simply not true that there are 'no non-Norse place-names in the Hebrides' (p. 404). I wonder if the author meant the Northern Isles in this instance, but even there this is not true. According to him, place-names provide the 'greatest evidence for the Scandinavian presence' in Normandy, 'as in several areas in the British Isles' (p. 419), but this point regarding the latter (and especially England) is not taken up elsewhere. The author could, I would suggest, also do with reading up on some of the recent (and older) discussion about the  name of Norway which I,  in agreement with others, no longer believe means the 'North Way' (p. 86). It's perfectly understandable that this is an area in which our multi-talented archaeologist author feels less confident, but I would really have liked to have seen more about this in a 599-page book which calls itself 'A History of the Vikings'.

Even in areas where he is more knowledgeable, the author is not always entirely reliable. I didn't know that ringed pins were a 'uniquely Norse invention' (p. 135) and I doubt it, but admittedly that's not my area of expertise. Snaptun (the find location of a carving beloved of my students which ostensibly shows Loki with his mouth sewn up) is not 'near the Norwegian border' (p. 136) - Denmark does not share a land border with Norway. It did in the Middle Ages, but that is still not where Snaptun is. I do wonder how we can be sure that Sámi traditions recorded in early modern times go back to the Viking Age and beyond (p. 89). This could well be true, but I'd welcome some comment on the question, especially in light of the author's semi-skepticism about the (earlier-recorded) sagas. His disappointingly brief comments on genetic research (p. 381) add nothing to what is an important and current discussion.

So, despite the stated commitment to interdisciplinarity, and a voluminous bibliography (in which I have happily discovered many items I knew nothing about), I'm not convinced that the author has fully digested everything he has read, especially in other disciplines. The saga-references in particular read a bit like someone who once read a saga some years ago and is retailing it from memory. Personally, I do not mind these errors, they are easily made and I can recognise them and filter them out. I can also tell when the narrative slips from fact to speculation and I for one enjoy speculation even when I do not fully agree with it, because it stimulates thought. A case in point is the author's new-found conviction that the Vikings were non-binary or queer, which seems a bit tacked on here and there to a narrative which otherwise still assumes a highly gendered society (my considered views on shield-maidens will, I hope, be published elsewhere soon, in the meantime you can get an idea from this recent podcast). The speculation is not always signposted though careful reading will reveal it. But I do wonder how many students and less experienced readers will look at the range of evidence cited and assume the author is equally expert in all of it. And then continue to cite him, rather than the original sources, for literary and linguistic detail... I'm almost tempted to say that you should study the Vikings for a few years before reading this book - you'll get more out of it and not be led astray. But is this the right kind of book for The Penguin Book of the Vikings? I'm already dreading some of Neil's more colourful exaggerations turning up in student essays for years to come.

Despite these disappointments, I do still really like this book. I hope it is recognised that engagement at this level of detail is a form of praise for this book - there are very few books I would take so much trouble to write about, especially in this informal way. I fantasise that I could even use this slightly uneven character of the book to train students in distinguishing between old news, new news and fake news, but it wouldn't be easy. The narrative is, I imagine, pretty seductive to those (almost everyone) who have less knowledge than Neil Price.

To end on a more positive note, the book has some insights or generalisations that are sufficiently interesting and provocative that I want to take them away and really chew over them, which is one reason I like this book. While it should not always be taken literally, the following random selection of observations shows some of the ways in which this book successfully stimulated my thought processes at least:

• 'trickster ... nomenclature may not help in understanding [Loki] from the point of view of the Vikings themselves' (p. 46)
• 'The mythology of the Vikings is one of only a tiny handful in all world cultures in which the divinities also practised religion' (p. 50)
• [with reference to the Migration Period, but also relevant to the Viking Age, and here's looking at you 2020] 'Some were fleeing, and others were those they fled from. Most were looking for economic security, safety, and a quieter life while a powerful minority were trying proactively to shape a world more to their liking' (p. 68)
• 'it is the man's gender that was limited and intensive, while the gender of women was to a degree unlimited and extensive' (p. 172)
• 'the Rök stone ... was deeply socially embedded (and visible) in a way that the book cultures of the Continent never wished to be' (p. 195)
• the importance of planning and preparing for Viking expeditions (p. 308)
• the 'armies' in England were 'continuously evolving migratory communities' (p. 339) or 'armed family migrations' (p. 357)
• 'There is little evidence of racism in Viking society' (p. 398)
• 'the Vikings live on today primarily as tourist magnets, as the draw of heritage trails and "experiences". The Scandinavians of the Viking Age were acutely concerned with memory; they might have been happy at this.' (pp. 498-9)

Viking Warrior Women - More of the Same? I

MM131 Andreas II
Viking Age runic cross from the Isle of Man,
commemorating a certain Arinbjǫrg

I never for a moment thought the fascination with the possibility of female Viking warriors would go away. After all, I have already argued that this fascination goes back at least as far as the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus writing in Latin around 1200, and since then it has come back at regular intervals. Way back in 1991, I suggested (and I was not the only one) that Saxo's warrior women owed more to Amazons than to Vikings (Women in the Viking Age, p. 178). This is an aspect I have touched on in some talks over the past year, and which I am developing for a proper academic article in the near future, for those who think (with some reason) that blogs are not an appropriate venue for such discussions. In the meantime, of course, the proponents of the Birka warrior (Bj 581) continue to pop up all over the place. I have already discussed a brief reference in the Channel 4 programme Britain's Viking Graveyard, last April, so won't repeat myself about that. Howard Williams will fill you in on the Megan Fox approach to the topic. What I thought I would survey in this blog post and the next are three recent television programmes which take the discussion in new directions, not all of them entirely negative. I'm not going to rehearse arguments which have already been aired ('what is a "warrior" exactly?', 'do board games really indicate military leadership', etc. etc.) but try to see what directions these programmes are taking the debate in, since judging by the number of TV programmes just within the last year, the debate is being conducted on the airwaves more than in academic fora.

Den kvinnliga vikingakrigaren

This programme , the title of which translates as 'The female Viking warrior', was first aired on Swedish television in August of this year and is still available (in Swedish, though some interviews are in English). Although the main heading on the website describes it as a 'documentary', this is nuanced a bit in the paragraph below, which claims it is a 'drama documentary' based on 'research results'. It is basically a dramatisation of what the life of the person buried in Bj 581 'could have been like'. I will leave others to decide how well they think it works as a drama - in these contexts fiction is not my business. However, it seems clear enough to me that the dramatisation (which is only about half of the programme, interspersed with more academic content) seems designed to give further credence to those 'research results' to a wider audience. The programme makes brief reference to the 'international debate' those results caused back in 2017, without giving any sense of what the debate might have been about. Some of the interviews are with the archaeologists involved in the original research, and Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson in particular is worth listening to in her explanation of the importance of roles, and of belonging to a group, which I agree is an important aspect of the Viking Age. Other interviews are clearly designed to give the drama bit a sheen of academic credibility but they don't really explain anything. Thus Elisabeth Ward gives some useful information about Iceland, Greenland and North America, based on the sagas of Icelanders, but there is no explanation of why or how these sagas might be relevant to understanding the Bj 581 burial, it is just assumed that they are. This assumption that what happened in one part of 'Viking society' can explain what happened in another part of 'Viking society' is shared by Janina Ramirez who also generalises about 'Viking society' without reference to any actual evidence - her comments are all based on, and obviously meant to support, the narrative of the drama. At the same time, and somewhat paradoxically, the programme refers to 'Byzantine sources' as evidence for female warriors. This idea is crucial to the development of the narrative, which envisages the Birka person as having travelled to and to some extent developed her martial skills in the East - here we are presented with a rather distinct part of 'Viking society' when it suits the story. The programme several times makes the suggestion that Freyja was a goddess of war (the evidence for this is actually quite limited and mainly from Snorri), and the implication that she was therefore a goddess for female warriors. Also, my favourite bugbear, the word 'Viking' itself, makes some annoying appearances. The archaeologist Leszek Gardeła, asserts that 'Saxo talks about Viking women', but Saxo never used the word 'viking', and of course Saxo is problematic as I keep saying. And Ramirez asserts that 'the Vikings did not call themselves Vikings', but they did! She also says that what they did say is that they would 'go a-viking', implying that it is a verb, which it patently is not. Yes, yes, I know I'm nitpicking, but even so, let's get it right folks.

The programme is yet another example of what I have called 'a view of research ... which fills out our meagre evidence with speculation and imaginative reconstruction' which 'can lead to the blurring of the line between primary research and public presentation'. It's a difficult balance to manage in these days when academics are practically required to engage with the general public and I know how difficult that can be. I'm not sure how successful this programme is as drama - the story is interesting enough but could have been more so. It is clearly devised to reinforce the research results and the interspersed interviews tend to disrupt any flow it might have had. I cannot see this programme as anything more than yet another attempt to lodge the interpretations of the 2017 and 2019 articles even more firmly in the minds of the general public and cut off further discussions. I am still uneasy with the 'docudrama' format, since the 'docu' bit is just there to support the drama, and doesn't allow for any ambiguities in the interpretation of the evidence, let alone any counter-evidence. A proper documentary, however, can be expected to present different interpretations, no?

Viking Warrior Women

So is this programme such a documentary? It was first aired (in Britain at least) on the National Geographic Channel earlier this month, I assume it is regularly repeated. This programme is more closely focused on archaeology, which is I think a good move, since previous attempts have come a bit unstuck on the literary and linguistic aspects. Nevertheless, the credits show that Neil Price was a consultant on the show, so it is once again a show with a mission (as the presenter, an 'archaeologist and National Geographic explorer', admits). As the presenter, Ella El-Shamahi, is not to my knowledge a Viking archaeologist, she plays the traditional role of the non-specialist presenter being informed by a variety of experts, most of whom have already appeared in previous TV shows about this topic. One could almost get a bit bored... (Disclaimer: a few years ago, when National Geographic was first thinking about this programme, they got in touch with me with a view to interviewing me for it. For whatever reason known only to them, that never happened).

The non-specialist presenter is of course allowed to say things like 'It's always been assumed that Viking warriors were all men' or 'what is being revealed right now is transforming everything we thought we knew about the Vikings and how their women might have gone to war' to big up the programme, even though they are patently untrue. Again, there is the formulaic reference to the fact that Bj 581 is 'causing controversy in Viking archaeology' but without really explaining what that controversy might consist of. But heyho, a good controversy will make the programme seem even more cutting-edge and relevant and all that. And I'm afraid the word 'badass' is used of the occupant of Bj 581...sorry but it grates in something intended to be serious.

The content of this programme is really rather interesting, as it draws on the research of the aforementioned Leszek Gardeła, and Marianne Moen from Oslo, regarding certain Viking Age graves in Denmark and Norway which could also be interpreted as being those of 'warrior women'. What interests me is the questions that the programme raises without answering, or sometimes even without recognising that they are interesting and important questions (I suppose the downside of having a non-expert presenter). An example is how an examination of the Bj 581 skeleton moves very quickly from the width of the greater sciatic notch being 'in keeping with a female pelvis' to it is 'of course female'. But OK, I'm willing to take the osteoarchaeologist's word on this matter. In other cases, there is a real lack of information.

The programme is about two graves, in addition to Bj 581, one Danish and one Norwegian. On the Danish island of Langeland, there is apparently one (out of 49) graves that has been identified as female, but never before as a warrior. (Leszek admits at this point that 'I don't think this [i.e. women warriors] was very common but they certainly existed'). What makes her a warrior? Well, she has an axe, a battle-axe in fact, and indeed one that was 'crafted hundreds of miles to the east'. Does one axe (especially an exotic one) make a woman a warrior? I'd like to have heard more about that. But it is a high-status chamber grave, so with some parallels (including the eastern connection) with Bj 581. Lots to discuss here, but it is not discussed much.

The presenter and Moen then make a pilgrimage to Åsnes, in Hedmark, Norway. Here, there is a grave discovered in 1900 which contained a 'kvinneskjelett med mannsutstyr' (a woman's skeleton with a man's equipment), according to a contemporary monument on the spot (a fascinating object in its own right, as Moen points out). This skeleton is the piece de resistance of the programme, since her grave goods, along with a wound on her forehead interpreted as a battle-scar, are the evidence for her having been a warrior. What I'm interested in is how, in 1900, the archaeologists decided it was a female skeleton? They certainly didn't have the advanced techniques used on the Birka 'warrior'. Given what we're told about Victorian (and later) preconceptions about Viking warriors being all male, what led the 1900 archaeologists to decide the skeleton was female? And do specialists still agree with this assessment? We are not told. We are only told by the presenter that 'not everyone agrees', but we are not told who disagrees, nor are any such people interviewed. Academic discussion is reduced to a one-way monologue by experts on a mission. I was particularly annoyed by the presenter's comment about these '[n]ew discoveries that I really hope will challenge what some people still refuse to believe, that there's evidence out there that not only did elite female viking warriors exist but that they had the skills and the weapons to fight on the battlefield alongside men'. It's not a matter of 'belief', dear TV presenters all, just let us into the secrets of the evidence!

Despite these caveats, there were one or two good bits in the programme. I did quite like the suggestion that the occupant of Bj 581 was a high status mounted archer. But does this imply that s/he was a warrior or a leader? Could she have been an aristocratic lady who liked hunting? I can't help but remember the riding and hunting imagery on some of the Manx Viking Age crosses, several of which commemorate women. This needs some more digging, including the implication that burials with horses suggest that the occupants were riders.  Well, yes, people with sufficient wealth probably did ride horses (in the summer), but does this make them a warrior, or a hunter, or could the horses have other meanings? I don't know, just asking for a friend.

The excellent Cat Jarman was also a refreshing interviewee on the programme regarding the female skeletons at Repton. Ignoring the presenter's astonishment ('it's previously been thought that Viking women were left at home' - no, Dr El-Shamahi, see Jesch 1991 and others), Cat made the important point that, yes, 'women were in some way part of moving out of Scandinavia, they weren't just sitting at home, looking after the farm'. But what part they played in this process is certainly multifarious, complex, and still to be discussed.

While these two programmes had some good bits, on the whole they were both mainly designed to reinforce the PR machine that has grown around the Bj 581 project. There is one other recent programme which does, however, in my view, begin to really have the more nuanced and important discussions that this topic needs. I'll let that programme have its own blog post, so stay tuned for 'Viking Warrior Women - More of the Same? II'.

Ardnamurchan Vikings

Lighthouse at the Point of
Ardnamurchan

As I have previously pointed out, many of the poetic-sounding names of the shipping forecast have Viking associations, as does the Point of Ardnamurchan, in the inshore waters section. Plus it sounds wonderful, too. So who could resist a little trip up there, especially when someone else was paying and there was a work reason to go? (More information on why exactly I was there will follow in its own good time). So last month I went and it turned out to be easier than I thought - fly to Glasgow, then it's a four-hour drive. Well, easy or easy. The drive is quite something, along Loch Lomond (the bonnie banks don't have room for more than a narrow road with lots of traffic), through Glencoe (stunning), a fun ferry crossing to Ardgour, and then the last thirty-five miles of single-track road, dodging confident locals, hesitant tourists, and a variety of fauna. You can see why the Vikings preferred to arrive by boat.

The Viking grave at Swordle Bay

The main reason for being there was in connection with the Viking grave found at Swordle Bay in the northern side of the Ardnamurchan peninsula a few years ago, which had me pretty excited. It's touted as being the first Viking boat burial found on the mainland of Britain, but that is somehow to see it with our contemporary landlubber eyes. Certainly modern technology makes it easy enough to get there overland, but even a few decades ago that would not have been the case, let alone a millennium ago. Even getting to Swordle by car from the south side of the peninsula involved quite a steep climb over the central ridge. The bay has excellent views of Eigg and Rum and other Hebridean islands - and for all practical purposes it might as well have been an island too. Certainly it was on a main Viking Age transport route.

Swordle Bay, Ardnamurchan

The burial is in a stunning location - a great place to spend all eternity. There are many interesting aspects of the grave (it was in all likelihood a man, buried with both weapons and practical items, in a boat) and you can read all about it in this academic publication from a couple of years ago. Or read a shorter presentation on the website of the Ardnamurchan Transitions project of which it is part. Now of course, there is not much to see, only the shape of the burial marked out in stones, and a sense of the site, which looks like an ideal spot for a Viking to settle in. Further archaeological investigations might reveal whether the person buried there also lived there or was just passing through when he decided to take a detour to Valhalla. I have my reasons for thinking the former is more likely. Or at least that there were Vikings living there at the time.

Sanna, a small settlement on the western

end of the peninsula

One of the reasons for thinking this is the small but significant number of place-names on the peninsula that have an Old Norse origin. Swordle Bay itself contains the element svörðr, cognate with English 'sward' (as in 'greensward'), plus dalr 'valley', and it is indeed very lush and green round about. Sanna, now a small settlement on the western end of the peninsula is indeed next to a sandy beach, and if it does come from Sandey 'Sand Island' as it seems to, then there are some small islands in the bay which this could I suppose refer to. The place-names have not been studied in any detail since Angus Henderson in 1915, so there's a job for someone!

Ockle

Many might think there's not much to do on Ardnamurchan, and certainly what we think of as civilisation is thin on the ground at its western end. But for me the landscape and seascape, the lighthouse, the place-names, the burial, were all of great interest. I was also taken by the tiny settlement of Ockle, where the sun came out, enhancing the faded colours of this derelict cottage. I also like old tractors, sheep, cast iron mileposts and many of the other things to be seen there and I know I could amuse myself there for more than the two days I had on this visit.

Strontian

One last little tidbit of information which I had not known until I travelled all the way there was the significance of the village of Strontian. It turns out that this place gave its name to the element strontium, which is key in so much Viking Age research these days, as the bioarchaeologists use isotopes to work out where people came from. If you want to know more about the element, then I recommend the Strontium video from the very fun series of videos about the periodic table made by my amazing colleague Professor Sir Martyn Poliakoff.

Just goes to show how educational following the Vikings can be!

Britain's Viking Graveyard

Viking ship model in Repton. Photo Judith Jesch

This blog started off as a light-hearted romp through some of my interests, mainly to do with Vikings and Scandinavia. I hope it is still mostly light-hearted, but I have come to realise that it is also, and now perhaps primarily, an outlet for some of the knowledge I have amassed over the years. Over the eleven (!) years I have been writing this blog, public interest in the Vikings, though it has always been there, has increased exponentially. In response to this, I have, almost subconsciously, more and more wanted to make sure that each post, however frivolous, is underpinned by that knowledge. The other thing that has changed enormously in the last decade is that academic research is now often consumed directly by people who are not themselves academics ('open access' we call it). Blogs like this may be conduits to that research which means that even a frivolous blog has some responsibilities for how it presents academic research. So I find myself taking that responsibility more and more seriously, but it's not always easy to be both engaging and correct.

Another common outlet for research into the Viking Age is the television programme. There have been noticeably many over the last decade, one or two of which I have even participated in, or at least been interviewed for only to end up on the cutting-room floor. I have on the whole not touched on these in this blog. Television programmes have their own raison d'etre, their own ways of doing things which sometimes serve the academic cause and sometimes undermine it. They have to achieve the tricky balance of edutainment, and operate within the constraints of time, budget, and how far the researchers are really able to read up on and understand the issues. In any case, there is little room for nuance or subtle arguments. For these reasons, it's not easy for an academic to evaluate them, especially from the point of view of the general audience at whom they are aimed, best to leave that to television critics.

So the following is not an evaluation, or a review, but simply my take on the programme Britain's Viking Graveyard, which was on Channel 4 last night and will no doubt sweep its way around the world fairly soon. The programme highlights excavations in and around Repton, in Derbyshire, a place I have taken an interest in since the late 1980s when I visited the excavations then being carried out by Martin Biddle and Birthe Kjølbye-Biddle. Repton and the nearby Viking cemetery at Heath Wood, Ingleby, were one of the excursions we organised for the Thirteenth Viking Congress in Nottingham in 1997 and the Biddles' work featured prominently in the Proceedings of that Congress, published in 2001. More recently, we in Nottingham have followed with great interest the excavations being carried out at Repton by Dr Cat Jarman (of whom much more later), and some of our students have been lucky enough to participate in them, too. As more or less our nearest Viking site, Repton was an important reference point for our AHRC-funded project Bringing Vikings Back to the East Midlands of 2017-18. A legacy of that project is the Vikings in the East Midlands website, which at the moment has too little on Repton, though it does have a great lecture by Cat Jarman. We are still working on this website so no doubt there will be more soon.

But on to last night's programme, which is what I really want to write about. First and foremost let me say I thought it was a really good programme - superior to most other 'Viking' programmes I have seen. There were several reasons for this, I think. Most importantly, there was no star presenter acting dumb and asking questions 'on behalf of the audience', but who inevitably becomes a bit too central to the film and overshadows the story. The voiceover narrator explained what needed to be explained, but luckily there wasn't too much going over old ground about who exactly the Vikings were and when and why. Instead, the bioarchaeologist Dr Cat Jarman was allowed to shine, with her store of knowledge, her enthusiastic personality and her ability to explain things succinctly and clearly. The other academic contributors were also well-chosen. Importantly, much of the programme was presenting real, current research, rather than the clichés that too many Viking programmes fall victim to. (Not that there weren't some clichés, but more on that later). So all in all, my preliminary conclusion is that the programme is A Good Thing and well worth watching. But beware, there are a few spoilers below.

Repton. Photo Judith Jesch

Now comes my own take on the presentation and content of the programme. I will try not to forget that a programme is not an article in an academic journal, and cannot be subjected to the same kind of forensic analysis and criticism, given all the caveats I outlined in the second paragraph above. So this is just a list of things I liked more and other things I liked less, for what it's worth. I hope these comments might be of interest to readers of this blog.

When I first saw the publicity for the programme, there were two things that caused my eyebrows to head north. One was the title and the other was the claim that '[I]t reveals the extraordinary stories of female Viking warriors'. Readers of this blog will understand my trepidation at the second of these in particular. Had Cat really found another female warrior?

Dr Roderick Dale face to face with a reconstruction

of the Repton warrior in Derby Museum.

Photo Rob Ounsworth.

Although my first reaction to the title was disapproval ('don't people know the difference between Britain and England anymore?'), it became clear that the title was actually quite carefully chosen, given that one of the arguments made in the programme was that the well-known burial of a warrior and his companion near St Wystan's church in Repton was that of two identifiable Vikings, the father and son Olaf and Eystein, who had died in Scotland and had their bones brought to Repton to be buried. Although I find this kind of identification of individuals unconvincing, I shall reserve judgement until I read the article Cat is promising on this. And certainly the mass burial in the Vicarage garden at Repton does allow for the possibility of bones having been brought there from all over Britain, not just England. Which, if true, makes the title highly appropriate.

As to the female warriors, mercifully it turned out this was mostly just clickbait, a particular kind of hype to get people to watch the programme, unfortunate but not a huge element in the programme. It is true that Cat did fly to Sweden to view the Birka 'warrior woman' with Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson. Cat also mooted the possibility that she might find a female warrior at Repton, but no evidence for this was produced beyond the fact, which we knew already, that both women and children had been present at Repton. Even Charlotte admitted that she wasn't sure whether or not her 'baby' had ever actually fought. And Cat's conclusion in the programme, which is in line with current academic thinking, was that the 'Great Heathen Army' at Repton and Torksey was not so much a purely military affair but more of a mobile community. The programme did acknowledge that women often accompanied armies, but did not suggest that they actually fought. The closest it came to suggesting this was when the camera panned along a line of female Viking re-enactors, of whom the last one was armed.

By the way, I did like the way the re-enactors featured included quite a large number of women and children - I think this might be a first for this kind of use of re-enactors in archaeological documentaries about the Vikings. And I'm sure this is partly down to the choice of my excellent friends Einar Blueaxe, Sigurðr and their families and colleagues to do the re-enactments. So in a way it was a shame that this innovative use of women in the programme just HAD to be associated with the so far quite chimerical female Viking warrior.

I was not particularly enamoured of the more clichéd use of snarling hairy guys to represent the violent activities of the Vikings. Not because Vikings weren't violent (as well as many other things) but because of the way they always look like the same hairy snarling guy in all documentaries about Vikings. I'd like to see some snarling Anglo-Saxons next time. Please. Another cliché was the use of images of large numbers of Viking ships. In this case they looked like they were made of papier maché and were all far too influenced by the Oseberg ship, when Gokstad would have been a better model. Not sure about the red-and-white striped sails, either. These graphics were EXECRABLE. (Sorry for the shouting).

But back to women warriors. There was a narratorial comment about the 'shield-maidens' of Norse mythology. Let me just repeat myself, as I have pointed out in quite a lot of lectures recently, there are no shield-maidens in Norse mythology. Any shield-maidens in other genres of Old Norse literature are a learned construct based on the Amazons, who also did not exist. (I really must get my article on this published soon, to stop the rising tide of shield-maidens engulfing serious academic as well as popular discourse). Valkyries yes, shield-maidens no. And it's not just a matter of words, but how we use words and texts in studying the Viking Age. But that's another rant, some time.

For me, the most important and exciting revelation of the programme was the discovery of a potential Viking site at Foremark. This could be extremely important in understanding the process by which the mobile community turned into permanent settlers. I really look forward to further investigations there and what they will come up with. Cat quite rightly mentioned the Scandinavian origins of the place-name, and I think this deserves further consideration, preferably by a specialist. In fact, the programme would have been much better if it had included more onomastics and fewer papier maché Oseberg ships. There is a distressing tendency among television producers (and the world at large) to assume that Vikings are only about archaeology. It distresses me, anyway. Let's bring on the specialists in Old Norse mythology, Old Icelandic poetry and prose, and place-names, whose work underlies some of the statements on which archaeologists build their interpretations. That's my rallying cry.

Overall, then, a few things that rankled. But with the River Trent, skulls and bones, playing-pieces, women, and some great participants, what's not to like? Congratulations to Cat Jarman and the Windfall films team for a programme that both informed and stimulated thought and discussion.

Baby Vikings

Heimdall and his nine mothers

by W. G. Collingwood 1908

My North American correspondent has alerted me to a news item in which some 'celebrity' or other refers to her infant daughter as a 'baby Viking' because she celebrated her first birthday by 'feasting on steak'. As it happens, I am not aware that the eating or not eating of steak is one of the aspects of how we define Vikings. Nevertheless, I thought it might be of interest to see what some Old Norse texts see as the defining features of baby Vikings.

Starting with the youngest, there is the legendary hero Helgi Hundingsbani, who is celebrated in two poems of the Poetic Edda. The first of these describes his birth, and quotes this conversation between two ravens who are rejoicing at it:

Stendr í brynju / burr Sigmundar, / dœgrs eins gamall, / nú er dagr kominn; /hvessir augu / sem hildingar, / sá er varga vinr, / vit skulum teitir. (Eddukvæði II, ed. Kristjánsson & Ólason, 2014, p. 248)

'He stands in his mail-coat, the son of Sigmundr, one day old, now the day has come! He sharpens his glance as leaders do; that one is a friend of wolves, we two will be cheerful.'

The ravens are of course, anticipating the carrion that the warrior will provide for them and the wolves during his martial career. He does indeed have a varied and interesting career and eventually grows up enough to fall in love with a valkyrie. But that is another story...

Next up is Magni, son of Thor. In one of his many giant-fighting episodes, Thor manages to fell Hrungnir, but in such a way that the giant's leg lay across his neck, pinning him down. Young Magni saves the day by being the only one strong enough to remove the giant's leg, after all the other Æsir have tried and failed. Magni was three years old at the time (and his name means 'strength'). He clearly felt he could have done more:

Sé þar ljótan harm, faðir, er ek kom svá síð. Ek hygg at jötun þenna mundak hafa lostit í Hel með hnefa ef ek hefða fundit hann. (Skáldskaparmál, ed. Faulkes, 1998, p. 22)

'It is a awful shame, father, that I came so late. I think I would have struck this giant into Hel with my fist if I had encountered him.'

His father is impressed and predicts a glowing future for his son, and gives him Hrungnir's horse Gullfaxi as a reward. This irks  Odin, who thinks he, as Thor's father, should have had this gift, rather than Magni the 'son of a giantess'. Presumably it was Magni's maternal giant heritage that made him strong enough for the deed. Magni's fate is to survive Ragnarök, but that is another story...

Another precocious three-year-old is the hero of Egils saga. We meet him first in ch. 31, ugly, black-haired and clever with words, but a bit obstreperous in playing with other children. When the family sets out for a party at the grandparental home, Egil's father refuses to take him, saying that he can't be trusted to behave when there is drink being taken, indeed he is hard enough to deal with when he's sober. The toddler won't have this, grabbing a horse to follow the party. At the party, grandfather Yngvar welcomes Egil and gives him three sea-snail shells and a duck's egg as a reward for a verse he composed in a drinking game which involved competitive poetic composition:

Kominn emk enn til arna / Yngvars, þess's beð lyngva, / hann vask fúss at finna, / fránþvengjar gefr drengjum; / mun eigi þú, þægir, / þrevetran mér betra, / ljósundinna landa / linns, óðar smið finna. (Egils saga, ed. Nordal, 1933, pp. 82-3)

'Still I have come to the hearth of Yngvar, he who gives to warriors gold (the bed of the gleaming thong of the heather). I was anxious to find him. You will not, giver of the twisted, shining gold (land of the snake) find a better three-year-old craftsman of poetry than I am. [Thong of the heather is a snake, and the snake's bed, according to tradition, is gold]. (Egils saga, tr. Christine Fell, 1975, p. 182).

It's quite a sophisticated poem for a three-year-old. Egil doesn't however, kill his first man until he is in his seventh year, the victim being a boy of ten or eleven who had bested and humiliated him at a ball game. This killing led his mother to declare that Egil was a víkingsefni 'the makings of a Viking'. Indeed Egil goes on to fulfil his destiny, but that is another story...

Anyway, six is a bit beyond babyhood and nearing the age of reason. This little tour of baby Vikings does not suggest that steak played any part in their achieving that status, but then it is not recorded what they ate and only hinted at what they drank. From the legendary poetry of the Edda to Snorri's prose mythology and the historical fiction of the saga, we do find an admiration for exceptional individuals, expressed in their baby Vikinghood. But I do not expect any time soon to read articles claiming that the Vikings started training their warriors at one day old. At least I hope not.

 

 

Some Further Discussion of the Article on Bj 581

Since writing my previous blog post, I have been prevented, for a variety of personal reasons, from engaging in any way with the discussions that have raged about this matter on social and news media. I do see this as a blessing in disguise. As I said then, I do not think the complex matters raised in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology article entitled 'A female Viking warrior confirmed by genomics' lend themselves to the reductions demanded by Twitter, or the selection and rewriting that are inevitable when the press come calling for quotes.

Why am I writing again?

Now that I am back in harness, I do however feel it is my duty to come with some kind of response, even if not on Twitter or in the media. This is not least because my blog post has, at the time of writing this, had some ~60K pageviews. This is exactly 15x as many pageviews as my next most viewed blog post and far exceeds any expectations I might have had when writing. Such a reach for a matter which is essentially about the academic minutiae and the conventions of academic discourse certainly deserves public acknowledgement. I will discuss some aspects of this response below.

A further reason for writing, which I would like to but cannot ignore, is that I have been publicly challenged, in the New York Times, no less, by 'Mattias Jakobsson, a geneticist at Uppsala University and a co-author of the paper, adding: “We would like to urge her to send her critique to a peer-reviewed journal.”' The second purpose of this blog post is therefore to explain why I will not be submitting my 'critique' to a peer-reviewed journal and why I think that this is an inappropriate challenge.

The worldwide response

First, the easier question. My blog post was entitled 'Let's Debate Female Viking Warriors Yet Again' and this in itself reveals that my aim in writing was indeed to stimulate debate. This seems to have happened, in spades, and I am delighted that that has happened. On Twitter, and in the responses to my blog, I have generally found the debate to be thoughtful and considered, even when I thought the contributor was misguided, or hadn't really understood what I was saying. Responses have come from both layfolk and academics, from supporters and opponents (though I am sorry when the discussion does turn into a case of 'for' or 'against'). I'm pleased to say it has certainly stayed fairly polite, unlike what I gather some of the Facebook responses have been (mercifully I am not on Facebook), or some of the responses BTL in the popular press as outlined by my colleague Howard Williams on his blog recently. Many of these were perhaps responding to the original article, or how it was presented in the media, rather than to my blog post in particular and thus do not concern me here (though see below on the responsibility of academics in this age of open access). In this way, I feel I have achieved my aim in writing the blog in the first place - the debate has taken place. I am particularly proud of when I became a Twitter Moment (until this week I didn't even know what a Twitter Moment was and am still not very sure) - its headline was Prof adds a grain of salt to the 'female Viking warrior' story. A grain of salt is pretty much how I envisaged my contribution, and not a big bag of sodium chloride.

I would also point out that I have with one exception not censored the comments published on my blog, even though some of them are getting a bit repetitive and some I consider misguided. There was just one response which I chose not to publish simply because, though witty, I thought it had no real relevance to the current debate. That comment section is now closed, though I am for the moment happy to entertain comments on this post here.

The challenge

Although generally polite, many of the responses, from archaeologists and scientists in particular, have been quite firm in declaring me wrong. These commentators have made the following points, among others:

• I am not a scientist and therefore not qualified to evaluate the science behind the article
• other than the new scientific results presented in the article, all the information in the Am J Phys Anthropol article was 'pre-established' and therefore no longer a matter for discussion
• they would believe a 'peer-reviewed article' over a 'blogpost' any day
• I am out of order to complain about established reference conventions in scientific/archaeological journals

The challenge, as noted above, for me to present my 'critique' in a peer-reviewed journal is misguided and the challenger has I think not read my original blog post carefully enough. I made it pretty clear there that my concern was not with their results, but with the quality of their argument in the interpretation of those results. This poor quality that I think I have identified relates to all of the points raised above:

• I did not claim to have any opinions about the actual scientific analyses reported in the article and would never do so. My critique was partly about (a) the foundations of and the evidence used in the scientific analyses and (b) about the historical interpretations of the scientific analyses. I think this is clear enough in the blog post and if any readers have not picked that up, they should read it again.
• the article, despite all of its scientific apparatus, poses an essentially historical question, and frames this question using vague, unexplained and unsupported references to narratives, poetry and historical documents. This means that the article chooses to interpret its scientific results in a historical/literary framework, without having had the courtesy to understand, or correctly cite, the long-standing discussions that have taken place within that historical/literary framework.
• on peer review, see further below. I would just point out that I was not presenting any counter-argument to the published paper, for people to 'believe', but pointing out what I considered to be deficiencies in the argument of the published paper.
• I explained in the previous blog post why I did not think that a referencing system designed for short scientific articles was valid when citing books of several hundred pages and stand by what I said there. And is it not a fundamental principle of science that results should be reproducible? This should also apply to the thought processes behind the arguments as well as what happened in the lab.

Peer review

All academics understand that peer review is both necessary and imperfect. I find it particularly ironic that commenters are claiming the superiority of the article because it has been peer-reviewed and attacking me for daring to critique it without the benefit of peer review, because I do not believe that the peer review process at Am J Phys Anthropol has done the authors any favours at all, other than giving them a huge audience for their work.

Forgive me if I have misunderstood, but I assume that the peer reviewer(s) for Am J Phys Anthropol are not well-acquainted with Old Norse literature and Viking Age and medieval Scandinavian history and therefore are unlikely to have picked up on the deficiencies of the article in these areas. I do wonder though why they couldn't at least recognise that the article might have had more force if it had avoided straying into these areas, and simply presented its scientific results for others to interpret. Whether or not a board game indicates an 'officer' is hardly a matter that a physical anthropologist can determine.

More seriously, I am surprised that the peer reviewer did not pick up on the fact that the supposed osteological analyses which these latest genomic analyses are supposed to confirm are not properly referenced in the article. I have already pointed out the fact that the article provides no indication of where these osteological analyses can be checked. Even a Swedish archaeologist generally positive towards the article recognises that it is a bit slim in the information it provides and states the following:

The plan of the grave shows which bones were well preserved. This should be enough to counter the charge that maybe the skeleton currently labelled Bj 581 is not in fact the one found in this weapon grave. This the authors should have written a few sentences about. I take their silence to mean that having already published her arguments about this elsewhere, Kjellström considers the issue uncontroversial.

Kjellström may consider the issue uncontroversial but are we just to believe her? Why couldn't the authors have simply provided a proper reference to where the osteological analyses have been published?

Since writing my critique, I have discovered that there is still some doubt about both the bones themselves and the plan of the grave as published in the article. These doubts have been expressed in a draft response by Fedir Androshchuk. This is clearly a draft and should be taken as such, but at the very least it suggests some caveats which the authors really should have cleared up properly before doing their scientific analyses. Other highly respected Viking Age archaeologists have also expressed doubts about some aspects of the analysis and interpretation. Again, these are in some cases quite specialist doubts which were perhaps not so easily picked up by the anthropological peer reviewer.

I stated in my original blog post that I did not have a considered alternative hypothesis for Bj 581, and may never have. There is therefore nothing to submit to peer review. However, I do feel I am qualified to come with a critique (and once again I repeat myself), not of the 'results' of the investigation, but of the quality of the argument and the nature of its academic discourse. I myself am often asked to peer review articles, books or projects that are primarily in Viking Age archaeology (though usually with some interdisciplinary aspect) and there seem to be plenty of people out there who consider me able to do this. Indeed I have indirectly heard from some such authors that they have respected and appreciated my critiques. It is my strong view that, in this age of open access and public engagement, academics have an even stronger responsibility than before to present the best possible research to the general public as well as to fellow academics. Which brings me to my final point.

Academic responsibility

My colleague Howard Williams, in another one of his blogs on this issue, points out that 'this has become a story about modern identities, and perhaps also about the crisis of academics attempting to be both digital public archaeologists and public intellectuals.' The original article had a very arresting title which overstates the case made in the article itself. The article is open access and was clearly designed for maximum worldwide public impact, as indeed it proved. To my mind this indicates all the more reason for the doubts, caveats and issues of interpretation to be brought to the fore in the discussion and not brushed under the carpet. Precisely because this is an article clearly intended to have maximum public and popular impact, it is entirely appropriate for it to be critiqued, by me and others, in the public domain of social and news media, and not in some peer-reviewed article I may or may not write within the next year or two and have published within the next five or ten. In an era of open access we do a disservice to our readers by leaving out the processes by which we arrive at our conclusions and just feeding them the sensational results. Although a bit of a shot in the dark as to its potential audience, my critique was indeed aimed at those readers of the article who may not have been sufficiently well versed in Viking Studies to see that there were some holes in the argument. I am content that many lay readers (or experienced academic readers in other disciplines) have understood this, but you can't win'em all.

P.S.

The last paragraph was going to be my final point, but there is one more thing worth mentioning. Many of the discussions of the original article, whether or not influenced by or in reaction to my blogpost, have turned on questions of gender fluidity, non-binary genders and similar matters, as for instance in a recent article in the Guardian, quoting Carolyne Larrington, and much of the Twitter and other discussion has turned on this matter. I would just point out that any such assertions still rely very heavily on various kinds of literary evidence, and that these texts should be subject to the same kinds of source criticism as the archaeological evidence. Interpretations of sagas are not set in stone, but in my experience few saga specialists have wanted to engage with archaeologists enough to help them work out what interpretations of these texts are plausible as evidence in conjunction with archaeological evidence when considering the Viking Age. There are many different kinds of relevant texts in Old Norse and other languages, and each genre has its own quirks and characteristics. All this, and the evolving context of literary study, has to be understood before these texts can be automatically transferred into more general historical or archaeological arguments. It's not an easy matter, and it's something I have been thinking about for most of my career, and occasionally expressed my views in writing on. It's also the kind of detailed study that some of my former PhD students have tackled, for example Roderick Dale on the berserkir and Teva Vidal on houses and domestic life. Both have been able to demonstrate the stratigraphy of certain sagas in ways that must please any archaeologist. Let us hope there is more such work forthcoming and that interdisciplinary dialogue, to which most Viking Age archaeologists of my acquaintance pay lip service, truly happens, in contexts which demand less disciplinary constraint than the Am J Phys Anthropol.