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The Viking Phenomenon

Module description

This module takes a familiar historical phenomenon, Viking raiding and expansion c.800-c.1050, and uses it as a vehicle for examining the possibilities and limitations of our extant sources. As well as exploring the impact of Viking activities and culture in the early medieval period, you will examine how later historians and commentators have used the available evidence to construct different images of the Vikings. Throughout the module, the emphasis is not on the acquisition of a detailed knowledge of Viking actions and events but on the different kinds of sources that shed light on this phenomenon and its interpretation.

Module aims - intentions of the module

We start with a brief introduction to the nature of the module and to the Viking phenomenon as it is to be understood for the purposes of the seminars and coursework. Then we will look at the cultural memory of the Vikings and how they were mythologised in both the modern and medieval periods. In the main seminars of the module we will examine different aspects of Viking identity and activity through the broad range of documentary and material evidence available to us. In the final session we will re-assess the popular representation of the Vikings and ask how we see (or should see) the Vikings today.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Understand and assess different representations of the Vikings from the early medieval period to the present day
• 2. Work critically with a range of written and visual sources relating to the Vikings

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Identify the problems of using historical sources, e.g. utility, limitations, etc., and compare the validity of different types of sources
• 4. Present historical arguments and answer questions orally

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Conduct independent study and group work, including the presentation of material for group discussion, developed through the mode of learning
• 6. Digest, select and organise material to produce, to a deadline, a coherent and cogent argument, developed through the mode of assessment
• 7. Write to a very tight word-limit

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• Vikings in the modern imagination
• Vikings in the medieval imagination
• Self-representations
• Raiders
• Traders
• Explorers
• Rulers
• Settlers
• Viking religions

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Accessible introductions to the topic:

• Cat Jarman, River Kings: The Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Road (London, 2021)
• Neil Price, The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings (London, 2020)
• Peter Sawyer (ed.), The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings (Oxford, 1997)

Primary sources

• The Viking Age: A Reader, ed. Angus A. Somerville and R. Andrew McDonald (Toronto, 2010)

Secondary reading

• James H. Barrett (ed.), Contact, Continuity and Collapse: The Norse Colonization of the North Atlantic (Turnhout, 2003)
• Stefan Brink and Neil Price (eds), The Viking World (New York, 2008)
• Margaret Clunies Ross, The Cambridge Introduction to the Old Norse-Icelandic Saga (Cambridge, 2010)
• Dawn M. Hadley, The Vikings in England: Settlement, Society and Culture (Manchester, 2006)
• Dawn M. Hadley and Julian D. Richards (eds), Cultures in Contact: Scandinavian Settlement in England in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries (Turnhout, 2000)
• Judith Jesch, Women in the Viking Age (Woodbridge, 1991)
• Neil S. Price, The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (Uppsala, 2002)

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1148

Key words search

Vikings; Middle Ages; Medievalism; Cultural history