Pre Viking Age

In 2004 a renewed archaeological investigation was carried out on the Early Medieval cemetery of Solleveld, known from the 1950s and situated in the dunes area of the North Sea coast at The Hague (The Netherlands). This brought to light some spectaculair new insights of known burial practices. The main part of the cemetery dates between 550 and 650 AD and some parts were luckily not eroded away and will further be preserved.

Besides some cremation-graves, it was somewhat striking to encounter a number of three to four inhumation burials. From the 1950s excavation, Solleveld was known as a place were only the cremation rite was performed. The mixture of inhumation and cremation burials is quite normal for Dutch early medieval cemeteries, though.

Most spectacular were a warrior grave and a boat-grave-like burial. It was almost 100 years ago that a similar warrior grave was found in the Western Netherlands, but they normally do occur within the early medieval cemeteries.
Being somewhat enigmatic, it is the first time that a boat-grave appearance is found in the  Netherlands. An alignment of some 80 to 90 rivets were still in position and took the shape of originally wooden boards set on to each other by clinker-building technique (some more were found in the loose top soil). It seemed that the boat-shape was 'suggested' by the use of boat-planks set against the wall of the burial chamber. It is thought that by doing so the idea of the ritual deposition of a small boat was given.

In search for parallels, it is tempting to look to the other side of the North Sea, where a much wealthier tradition of boat-graves and 'royal' ship-graves is presented at Sutton Hoo and Snape for instance. The royal ship graves of England and those known from 'Vendel-Scandinavia' are truly of a different kind of nature. Similarities to the more 'normal' and rather small boat-graves as also known from Northern Germany and Denmark/Scandinavia seems more appropriate. Linking up to this tradition, also in the Frisian-heartland, the Dutch province of Friesland, some early medieval inhumation graves contained a few rivets. And in the Western Netherlands within the cemetery of Katwijk near the coast at the former Rhine estuary one inhumation grave contained a rivet (excavated some 100 years ago by Holwerda).

The cemetery and nearby settlement (known as Ockenburgh, foremost famous of its' small Roman fortified area) most probably belonged to this Frisian culture-zone, stretching from the Scheldt-estuary in the south-west to South-Denmark in the north-east. During the 5th to 7th century an Anglo-Saxon influence is recognizable in for instance pottery styles, but also the occurrence of boat-graves now seems to be part of this Anglo-Saxon tradition in the Netherlands.

Weapons and other warrior attributes in the coastal areas around the north-east Baltic Sea were similar in the second half of the Viking Period. New finds from a sacrificial site of the 7–9th centuries at Viidumäe on the island of Saaremaa indicate that this common cultural sphere came into being considerably earlier, in the 8th century at the latest. This paper discusses contacts between Sweden’s Svealand region and Saaremaa as indicated by nine dress pins, of local overall design but decorated with Scandinavian animal art or simplified derivations.

"This essay seeks to address questions surrounding the Valsgärde burial ground (and to some extent also Gamla Uppsala, Uppsala, Vaksala and Vendel) by employing a terminology borrowed from the historical research of the French scholar Fernand Braudel (1902–1987) and the Annales School. Braudel (2001) distinguishes between the short-term event and the slow long-term change. This part will discuss the short-term changes that occurred in Valsgärde during the Late Migration Period and the
Early Vendel Period, and later during the Viking Age. The Late Migration Period and Early Vendel Period chamber graves refl ect infl uences from more Romanized Germanic military affi nities with their power base in southeastern Europe. Second, the longue durée of literate culture using text and coinage and its relatively small impact on the denizens of Valsgärde will be discussed in part two. There are four subsections on text available in Valsgärde and its surroundings over a millennium, c. 117–1100 AD. Finds of Latin and Arabic coinage are discussed together with the evidence of runic literacy in the area. All texts are presented in appendices."

Warfare made up a complex and vital part of the dynamics of Viking-Age society. At the core of Viking-Age warfare was the retinue, a long-lived institution which adds a considerable dimension of history to Viking-Age recruitment. In this chapter, my aim is to explore how weapon types and weapon combinations, as well as the geographical distribution of weapon graves and hill forts, might illustrate central developments in the practice of warfare and the principles of recruitment in central Norway, from the Early Roman Iron Age to the Early Viking Age. The design and combinations of weapons, as well as the distribution of weapon graves and hill forts, suggest that warfare demanded a great deal of resources in terms of both economy and manpower during the Roman Iron Age. Weapon equipment indicates that large fighting units were mobilised. Fighting units seem to have become smaller and with more specialised warriors during the Migration Period, and the need for manpower seems to have fallen. Instead, defence in the form of hill forts became more frequent. During the transition to the Merovingian Period, the practice of warfare changed profoundly. From now on warfare concentrated on the individual, with an emphasis on the horse, and on surprise, speed and improvisation. The individual warrior and the retinue became focal points in warfare and politics. In the Early Viking Age, weapon equipment and the distribution of weapon graves in the landscape indicate that larger armies were mobilised once again, but now with close historical ties to the retinue and its central position, which was established in the Merovingian Period.