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FRIHUMSAM-Fri prosj.st. hum og sam

Viking Nativity: Gjellestad Across Borders

Alternative title: Vikingtidens begynnelse: Gjellestad som sentralsted

Awarded: NOK 12.0 mill.

In 2018 a ship burial was discovered at Gjellestad in Halden municipality. With this as a point of departure, a research group consisting of archaeologists and historians is now set to investigate regional political conditions and changing political constellations and interests in the area from the Roman Iron Age to the late Viking Age (200 - 1000 AD). Research will be centred on the Late Iron Age Vingulmork and Hranariki areas, which stretched from the Oslo Fjord to Gothenburg, and will put the ship burial into a broader cultural-historical and socio-political framework. What role did central places such as Gjellestad play in the creation, consolidation and maintenance of collective identities, politics and kingdoms in Scandinavia in the first millennium? This fundamental question is key to our understanding of the emergence of regional political entities and later nation states in early historic Scandinavia. The Viking Nativity project will examine the historic landscape in Viken, and will focus on the articulation of identities, military capacity, the ability to negotiate through symbolic and economic resources and trade. The project is structured along three thematic research areas, where the region is perceived as a landscape of violence, of borders and of negotiations. These threads will be pursued at different spatial scales. The focus will be on Gjellestad and its immediate surroundings, and will investigate how it interacted with people, networks and connections on a larger regional scale. This will be achieved through a combination of large-scale geophysical surveys with archaeological and historical research on existing material. Since similar sites are mostly known from fragmented sources, a detailed exploration of Gjellestad and its regional context provides an opportunity to change research in this area, while at the same time forming a methodological template for studies of similar sites with few written sources available.

In?2018,?an extensive and long-lived archaeological site was discovered during a ground-penetrating radar survey?at Gjellestad outside?Halden in Østfold (now Viken County). Consisting of settlement traces in the form of large post-built structures and an extensive burial mound cemetery, which includes a ship burial, it has been suggested that Gjellestad represents an Iron Age central place on the eastern shores of the Oslofjord. The site is situated in an area contested yet connected throughout the Iron Age. Therefore, it provides a highly suitable point of entry for investigating developments and fluctuations in the political landscapes, agents, communications and constellations in Viken and beyond, from the heyday of the Roman Empire to the emergence of the Scandinavian kingdoms in the late Viking Age. To achieve these goals, we have assembled an interdisciplinary team of researchers with scientific expertise and qualifications relevant to all areas of the proposed research project, including the implementation of various archaeological prospection methods, experience in field methodology and data interpretation of archaeological sites from the Nordic Iron Age, as well as the use of digital documentation and analytical methods based on written and material evidence. Although challenging, the project will cover a square kilometre with high-resolution geophysical surveys over a field period of 2-3 years. The central concept of the project is the use of state-of-the-art, large-scale geophysical surveys and minimally-invasive exploration of the surrounding environs in combination with archaeological and historical research on a larger geographical scale, thus underpinning the investigation of the centre at Gjellestad by its wider geo-political setting. Gjellestad and similar sites are mostly known from very fragmented written and material sources. This project, can significantly add to our knowledge of socio-political development in the Nordic Iron Age.

Funding scheme:

FRIHUMSAM-Fri prosj.st. hum og sam