New Aspects on Viking-Age Urbanism, c. AD 750-1100: Proceedings of the International Symposium at the Swedish History Museum, April 17-20th 2013

The idea to hold a conference comparing the Viking sites of Birka and Hedeby in a larger context arose with the cooperation between the Center of Baltic and Scandinavian Archaeology in Schleswig and the Archaeological research laboratory at Stockholm University. The specific aim of the conference was the discussion of structural aspects of Viking age urbanism at two specific regions: in lake Mälaren in Eastern Sweden and at the Schlei Fjord at the margin between North and Continental Europe. The problem of Viking age urbanism has not yet found a simple explanation and, while more recent attempts tend to tackle the problem via connectivity and network theory, even rather aged theoretical models by renown authors such as e.g. H. Pirenne, K. Polanyi or W. Christaller are still being influential. However, due to modern field research important progress has been made regarding questions of structural details, creating a new basis for the aspired discussion. In order to assure the thematic frame of the conference colleagues were directly requested and asked to give a paper on predefined topics according to the problem. The symposium itself was laid-out in two main sections: 'Viking-age Urbanism at Lake Mälaren and the Schlei Fjord' and 'Early Medieval Urbanism. Town Layouts and Central-Site Functions of Contemporaneous Superregional Centres'. While the first part of the conference was entirely focusing on Birka and Hedeby, their broader hinterland and declared successors, in a second part the emphasised developments in the presented regions were confronted with examples from the most important centres of the world at that time in order to put the gained results into a perspective. Here speakers on Anglo-Saxon England, the Carolingian Realm, Bohemia, the Rus’, the Byzantine Empire and even the Muslim Caliphate could become enlisted