Archaic Martial Traditions in High Medieval Scandinavia: A Glimpse of Viking Age Warfare?

Most written evidence regarding warfare in Viking Age Scandinavia originates either from contemporaneous chronicles – recorded by those at the receiving end of Norse attacks – from skaldic poetry, or from high medieval Scandinavian texts. However, these sources often prove problematic: either in the form of chronicles from other parts of Europe, whichoften exaggerate the brutality of Viking raids, or from 13th century Icelandic writers, who embellish accounts of long deceased rulers. This article explores archaic martial features found in 12th- and 13th-century contemporaneous sagas and treatises to identify and analyse the continued influence of Viking Age military practices in high medieval Scandinavia. By comparing information found in three medieval texts to scholarly contributions on Viking Age warfare; skaldic poems; and archaeological evidence, this article aims to identify Viking Age military features that survived the military transformation, which followed the periods of internal struggles that the Scandinavian kingdoms underwent from the 1130s onwards.

Kennings in Old English Verse and in the Poetic Edda

To shed light on questions pertaining to the similarities and differences between kennings in Old English and in the Poetic Edda, a survey is undertaken of the density of kenning use in the two corpora. The likeliest conclusion to be drawn from a comparison of findings is that the two poetic traditions are rather similar in regard to kenning use. In both traditions, kennings are notably simpler and less riddle-like than in skaldic poetry, though the Edda contains a few kennings of sufficient complexity to suggest skaldic influence. Although kennings, on average, occur more frequently in Old English, the incidence is broadly similar to that in the Poetic Edda. Kennings are not uncommonly explained by the use of variation (apposition) in Old English, but less commonly in the Edda, although the difference does not specifically suggest discrepant attitudes toward kenning use in the two traditions, since variation is rare in the Edda under all circumstances. Although the possibility of the influence of one tradition upon the other cannot be ruled out, the similarities, in the main, are probably best explained as the result of common inheritance. This explanation garners support from the number of instances in which more or less precise cognate kennings appear in the two bodies of literature.

The Skaldic Project and Lexicon Poeticum

This paper describes a digital project to edit the Old Norse poetic corpus known as skaldic poetry, composed between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. The Skaldic Project started in 1997 with the first editions published in 2007, and 75% of the corpus is now published in print and online. The long-term nature of the project, together with the complexities of the corpus and its manuscript and textual preservation, have meant that the digital resource has had a number of challenges to address. This article focuses on three of these challenges: the need to provide a large amount of material about the context of the poetry to contributors, including manuscript images; the need to provide an integrated editing and publication system capable of simultaneous updates by multiple editors and assistants; and instant digital access, online publication and a streamlined process for export for print publication. This article describes these processes and solutions, which encompass both human workflows as well as technical solutions. It demonstrates how the method adopted and data created has provided a foundation for further research projects based on the digital resource, including a lexicographic resource (Lexicon Poeticum) and an index of the complex diction of the corpus (Kenning Lexicon).