1st Edition
Viking Heritage and History in Europe Practices and Re-creations
Viking Heritage and History in Europe presents new research and perspectives on the use of the Vikings in public history, especially in relation to museums, re-creation, and re-enactment in a European context.
Taking a critical heritage approach, the volume provides new insights into the re-creation of history, imagining the past, interpretation, ambivalence of authenticity, authority of History, remembrance and memory, medievalism, and public history. Highlighting the complexity of the field of public history today, the fourteen chapters all engage with questions of historical authenticity and authority. The volume also critically examines the public’s reception, engagement with, and interpretation of the Viking Age and the concepts of who these individuals were. Each chapter illuminates an aspect of these themes in relation to museums, leisure activities, politics, tourism, re-enactment, and popular culture – all from the vantage point of
Viking cultural heritage.
Viking Heritage and History in Europe is one of the first volumes to examine the use and role of the Vikings within the field of public history, both past and present. The book will be of interest to those engaged in the study of heritage, public history, history, the Vikings, vikingism, medievalism, and media history.
Introduction
1. The Mythopoetic Viking in European Cultural Heritage
Sara Ellis Nilsson and Stefan Nyzell
Section I: Viking Tourism, Living-history, and Re-enactment as European Cultural Heritage
2. Cross-Cultural Contact, the Tourist Gaze and Viking Heritage Spaces
Megan Arnott
3. Viking Hiking and other Time Travel
Ragnhild Ljosland
4. Vikings in Historical Pageants and Public Events
Chris Tuckley
5. Viking Re-enactment
Stefan Nyzell
Section II: Perspectives on Vikings in European Popular Culture
6. Towards Inclusive Interpretations
Shannon Lewis-Simpson
7. Alcohol Consumption, Masculinity, and the Modern Viking
Simon Trafford
8. Viking and Old Norse Memoryscapes in Comics
Martin Lund
9. Vikings and Gaming: Cultural Representations of the North in Video Games
Lysiane Lasausse
Section III: Vikings in European Museums, Heritage, and Politics
10 10. Reconstructing Viking Ships in European Cultural Heritage Institutions
Sara Ellis Nilsson
11. Uncanny Encounters with Iceland’s Vikings at the Saga Museum
Gudrun D. Whitehead
12. Runes and Racism
Andrea Freund
13. Political Uses of the Viking Age: The Sweden Democrats and the Danish People’s Party
Julia Håkansson
Conclusion
14 14. Towards Public Viking Research
Howard Williams
Biography
Sara Ellis Nilsson is Researcher of Nordic Medieval History and Director of Studies in History at Linnaeus University, Sweden. Her research interests are interdisciplinary and include cultural heritage, social and cultural history, material culture, hagiography/liturgy, and digital humanities. She is currently the project lead for the Swedish Research Council funded, 'digitization and accessibility of cultural heritage collections' (DigARV) project, Mapping Lived Religion: Medieval Cults of Saints in Sweden and Finland, and one of the co-leads of the NOS-HS funded Nordic Spatial Humanities initiative. Her research and publications have previously focused on, for instance, the digitization of cultural heritage, medieval lived religion, identity and the construction of sanctity, medieval travel, and the formation of textual networks and communities, as well as how objects and their reconstructions are used by different actors in the creation of narratives about the past, with especial focus on the Viking Age.
Stefan Nyzell is Associate Professor of History at the Department of Society, Culture and Identity, Malmö University, Sweden. His research interests include medievalism, cultural heritage, public history, police history, and contentious politics. He is currently researching historical re-enactment as a form of history from below, or grassroots public history, in which the past is not only consumed by the participants but also produced and mediated within the domain of public history. His research and publications have previously focused on violent social conflict in modern society.
