Book review: Muslims on the Volga during the Viking Age

 

A compilation of essays may not necessarily be your first choice when you reach for a book on a library shelf or conduct a quick search on Amazon. 

For many of us non-academics, essays are something that brings back pubescent horrors from schooldays. The type of thing that, as soon as you graduated from high school, you'd pledge to avoid for the remainder of your life... until you went to college or university. 

Yet one must, as Voltaire's Candide quips, "tend to one's garden," and part of this tending is surely reading both for pleasure and for a purpose. 

Muslims on the Volga during the Viking Age, thankfully, for a collection of essays, combines both pleasure and purpose as a series of famed historians and academics cast their gaze upon the multicultural interactions that took place on the Volga River during the 10th century CE.

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Archeologists share new findings from the Viking graves at Tvååker, Sweden

 

The Viking burial ground at Tvååker revealed 139 graves, including ship-formed stone settings and a ship-formed mound. Photo: Arkeologerna

Ship made of oak and stone 

The latter appears to be the remains of a wooden ship burial that may have been relatively common in the local area. 

"Scientists in the 1950s discovered a characteristic local grave type in Halland County known as 'oblong mounds,'" Nordin and Kjellin tell The Viking Herald. 

"These have been interpreted to be the remains of a cremation in a ship site. The cremation here appears to have taken place in the ship." 

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Rare Viking-age treasure begins international tour

 

The Galloway hoard is set to be on display in Adelaide in Australia next year

One of the UK's most important archaeological finds this century is set to go on show for the first time outside the UK early next year, as it begins its international tour.

The Viking-age Galloway Hoard - buried about AD 900 - was unearthed in a south of Scotland field by metal detectorist Derek McLennan in 2014.

It contains a variety of objects and materials, including a rare Anglo-Saxon cross, pendants, brooches, bracelets and relics.

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140-year-old message in a bottle found in Viking burial mound in Norway

 

Archaeologists excavated the Myklebust ship mound and found a 140-year-old message in a bottle left by the site’s discoverer, photos show. Photo from the University of Bergen

When researchers began reexcavating a Viking burial mound in Norway, they knew they were following the footsteps of an influential archaeologist. What they didn’t know was that he’d left them a note 140 years ago. The Myklebust Ship is the one of the largest Viking ships ever found in Norway, reaching about 100 feet long in its original form. Archaeologist Anders Lorange unearthed the burnt ship in a large burial mound in Nordfjordeid in 1874, according to the Sagastad Viking Center dedicated to the find. The massive treasure-filled grave — likely belonging to a Viking king — was “only halfway excavated” before being filled in, the museum said.

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