Else Roesdahl – författare

Thoroughly updated and with a new foreword'The Viking Age is shot through with the spirit of adventure. For 300 years, from just before AD800 until well into the eleventh century, the Vikings affected almost every region accessible to their ships, and left traces that are still part of life today'Far from being just 'wild, barbaric, axe-wielding pirates', the Vikings created complex social institutions, oversaw the coming of Christianity to Scandinavia and made a major impact on European history through trade, travel and far-flung consolidation. This encyclopedic study brings together the latest research on Viking art, burial customs, class divisions, jewellery, kingship, poetry and family life. The result is a rich and compelling picture of an extraordinary civilisation.

This book presents, in twenty international papers, the origin and development, and some of the main characteristics and diversities, of the academic discipline of medieval - and later - archaeology in a number of countries in northern Europe. Denmark is the main focus, together with the four other Scandinavian countries, the Faroes and Greenland. The book also provides an insight into some of the discipline's major achievements and fascinating discoveries in these parts of the world, as well as into some of the current research agendas, with their new perspectives, including developments towards the inclusion of the archaeology of more recent periods. The book is based on the proceedings of a conference held to celebrate 40 years of medieval archaeology as a university discipline in Denmark - one of the first countries to have a chair of medieval archaeology, established at Aarhus University, in 1971.