The Hoarding Vikings

Abstract

This book investigates whether Viking hoards leave behind traces of the people who deposited them and the reasons for doing so. The focus is on the Viking-Age hoards of the Danish island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea, a unique find group in both quantity and quality. The large number of excavated Bornholm hoards enable the inclusion of the archaeological context on an unpreceded scale. This book explores how hoards fulfilled many different purposes and Bourdieu’s theory on capital and field forms the theoretical frame for a multi-contextual analysis of the hoards’ relation to the economic, social, cultural, and ritual fields. A fundamental principle of the methodical approach is that all parts of the hoards are equally important for interpretation. It is in the interaction between archaeological and numismatic data, between the objects’ production and circulation data, and between the accumulation and deposition data, that the functions of the hoards appear. This holistic analytic model illuminates how and by whom the hoards were accumulated and deposited, theorising that the motivations for purpose of depositing different hoard types vary and that these motivations are reflected in the deposition contexts. Besides describing the acts and actors that influenced the accumulation and deposition of silver, the book also examines how hoards influenced Viking-Age people and society. Demonstrating that the motivation behind the accumulation and deposition of hoards was multifaceted, The Hoarding Vikings is for researchers and students of Viking archaeology.