Dagfinn Skre

Norðvegr – Norway: From Sailing Route to Kingdom

Along the West-Scandinavian coast, agrarian settlements, which are found along fjords and in valleys, are separated from each other and from the lands to the east by high mountains. Thus, seafaring was the main mode of communication from the Stone Age onwards. Unlike the coasts of Britain, Ireland and continental Europe, this 1000 km long coastline is littered with thousands of islands, islets and reefs, which create a protected coastal sailing route – the Norðvegr – from which the kingdom took its name. The author discusses this sailing-routes significance for the creation of the kingdom as well as for the Viking incursions in Britain, Ireland and the Continent c. 790–1050.

Appendix I: The ARM Project Council, Advisory Group, Staff, and Authors

The ARM Project Council, scheduled to meet twice annually, is a forum for contact and information-sharing between the ARM Project and its main funder, Karmøy Municipality. The Council’s role is to ensure that the project is conducted within contract and budget, making no decisions regarding the project itself. Council members are appointed by University of Oslo (UiO, up to 6 members) and Karmøy Municipality (KM, up to 6 members).

Monetary practices in early medieval western Scandinavia (5th–10th centuries AD)

A SOCIAL APPROACH TO MONETISATION shifts the attention from the classic money media — gold and silver — to the dissemination of two social practices: valuing and paying. When these two monetary practices first became widespread in western Scandinavia during the gold rich migration period (in the 5th to 6th centuries ad), they were not introduced in the sphere of trade, but instead were features of traditional or customary payments, such as weregeld (atonements for murder or offences against the person) or marriage dowries. By the Viking Age, in the late 8th to 10th centuries ad, despite flourishing commodity production, precious metals were used as payment in trade solely in towns. Even in towns, this commercial use seems to have been adopted late, and was employed only occasionally. This paper reviews the changing approaches to money and monetisation, and draws attention to the potential for regarding monetisation as the spread of a set of social practices.