Aarhus University Press – serie

Why Europe? What made Western and Central Europe, long an economic and political backwater compared with the other agrarian civilisations of Eurasia, the cradle of modernity? This book argues that the crucial juncture occurred in backward medieval Europe. The key turning point came as a reform movement within the Catholic Church – spearheaded by Pope Gregory VII – challenged lay rulers' hold over bishop appointments. The eleventh-century rupture sundered religious and lay power, and it meant that European emperors, kings, and princes had to tread a fine line: caught between the opposition they encountered from strong social groups such as townsmen, nobles, and Catholic clergy and from other European rulers. This double balancing act has long been seen as a necessary condition for the modernisation process that in recent centuries has culminated in the modern state, the modern market economy, and modern democracy: the trinity that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sociologists attempted to explain. What Karl Marx dismissively referred to as the "medieval rubbish" thus nurtured the seeds of modern Europe by creating power pluralism between and within political units.

We live most of our life in indoors. In this book Danish anthropologist Cecilie Rubow examines what our way of life means for our understanding of nature and our handling of the world's ecological crises. The author follows in the footsteps of beachgoers, birders, environmentalists and climate activists. That journey, full of magic, surprises and criticism, leads to the realization that there is not just one nature, but several, and that nature is where we least expect it._x000D_The book is also an introduction to new anthropological thinking about how ecological crises call for new ways of understanding nature.

The performance of rituals is a key component in understanding the culture of Late Iron-Age and Viking-Age Scandinavia, which was marked by tremendous social and religious transformations. New approaches to social, political, and religious rituals are currently offering stimulating new perspectives on the period and the entanglements of symbolism, the exercise of power, materiality and agency. Research on finds such as iconographic objects or buildings associated with rituals, as well as new interpretations of well-known textual and material sources points to the continued relevance of the ritual perspective for exploring the Viking-Age mind-set. This volume contains the proceedings of the 39th Interdisciplinary Viking Symposium, held on 20th May 2022 at Aarhus University. The five chapters of the book pose questions of what, how, and why as well as by or for whom rituals of various kinds were performed in the Viking Age in a predominantly pre-Christian context. By considering the involvement of people, words, things, and spaces in ritual acts, it seeks to deepen our understanding of ritual performance in the period from a truly interdisciplinary perspective.