(click on the images for conference/sessions' timetables/programmes)

Abstract: Oval brooches are considered one of the most distinctive elements of female Viking  costume, and they frequently are used to indicate the presence of Scandinavian  women in their settlements abroad, supporting the idea that the Viking seafarers were accompanied by their womenfolk when they settled new lands. But while they were known in virtually every other area of Scandinavian settlement in the British Isles, they were missing entirely in the Isle of Man, which presumably was conquered and settled by Hiberno-Vikings after about 870. Their conspicuous absence – and general lack of securely sexed female burials among the Viking graves in Man – gave rise to the notion that those settlers were all-male groups of warriors who subsequently married local Christian women, and this assumption formed the basis for far-reaching conclusions regarding the early Viking settlement in the Island. This long-lived notion has been challenged in 2015 on statistical grounds, but in December 2018, the discovery of two oval brooches in the Isle of Man apparently proved that Scandinavian women, too, had come to the Island after all. This confirmed the doubts about the previous conclusions regarding the nature of interethnic social contact on the Island in the late ninth century and demonstrates why 'negative proof' is a shaky ground to found hypotheses on.

This paper is going to present the currently unpublished Manx oval brooches, reconstruct the now-obsolete former interpretations and the objections to them, and discuss the impact this single new discovery must have on the scholarly preception of the early Viking Age in the Isle of Man.

Abstract: When Vikings conquered and settled in the Isle of Man in the later ninth century, they introduced to the Island a distinctly pagan burial custom that would not have been out of place in their Scandinavian homelands, including splendidly furnished mound- and boat graves. In stark contrast, the local Manx were Christian and buried their dead in plain flat graves without any objects at all. Subsequently, the Viking settlers became more familiar with the Christian faith of their neighbours (and frequently, no doubt, their in-laws) and gradually accepted baptism. During this phase of syncretism and spiritual reorientation, furnished burial became diminished until it disappeared entirely from the archaeological record in the 960s. In the face of the meagre and unpretentious burial custom they were now required to follow, the Manx Vikings adopted a completely new strategy to hold on to the socially efficacious displays the opulent mound graves had offered. Appropriating a local tradition of long standing, they found means to demonstrating the status of their dead in the custom of erecting stone monuments – while at the same time celebrating and promoting Christianity.

This paper investigates the responses the newly Christianised Vikings in the Isle of Man developed in order to cope with the changes in funerary and memorial custom the new faith imposed on them.

Abstract: When the Vikings arrived in the Irish Sea and eventually settled along its shores during the ninth century, they brought with them their pagan religion and its mythology to traditionally Christian surroundings. During a period of spiritual reorientation and syncretism, they adopted and adapted the local custom of erecting Christian grave markers and stone crosses and introduced their own iconography into Irish Sea imagery. Particularly the stone monuments in the Isle of Man ('Manx Crosses') and in north-west England offer examples that feature motifs from both pagan Norse mythology and occidental Christian traditions, the most prominent of them being 'Thorvald's Cross-Slab' in Kirk Andreas (Isle of Man) and the High Cross in Gosforth, Cumbria (England). The direct juxtaposition of figural imagery of two religions on one and the same stone is intriguing and raises several questions.

The occurrence on these bicultural stone momuments  of motifs originating not only from different religions, but distinct and far-flung 'countries' creates a contact zone in the Irish Sea region that strongly indicates that an exchange of ideas took place, both before and during the Viking Age, between that area and both the European Continent and the Scandinavian North. To investigate the different iconographical links and influences the clerical designers who created the stones appear to have drawn on, this paper compares Christian images to Continental examples as well as Norse figures to Scandinavian models. At the same time, it explores the intention of the stones' designers in their choice of motifs; whether, for example, they possibly either meant to 'demonise' the figures and deities of the 'heathen Vikings' and educate their flocks about their falsehood by depicting them on the stones or instead aimed to convey a common Christian message by combining two 'visual languages', one for a Christian, the other for a pagan audience to understand, in order to facilitate conversion.

Abstract: Mounted high up in the facade of the tower of St Leonard & St Mary RC church, New Malton, North Yorkshire, England, a weathered Romanesque carved stone panel displays an intriguing figural scene of a man with a crozier giving a benediction and standing on the necks of two dragons. In scholarly literature, this sculpture is hardly ever mentioned, let alone discussed and analysed. However, it certainly merits closer attention, as it represents one of the rare examples in the British Isles of the motif of 'Christ trampling the beasts'. This image has its origins in the eastern Mediterranean and features prominently in Christian art, such as in Carolingian book illumination, as illustrations of the famous Psalm 91:13: 'Upon the viper and the cockatrice you shall tread, And you shall trample the lion and the dragon'.

This paper presents and describes this neglected monument for the first time, analyses its iconography, and, comparing it to similar images, examines its place in Medieval Christian art.

Abstract: When the Vikings began to settle in various places in the British Isles after the middle of the ninth century, they established themselves as a new and different player in the native social, cultural and political landscape. For the Christian and Celtic inhabitants of the Isle of Man, a small island in the middle of the Irish Sea, the conquest by pagan Vikings in the later ninth century was an event of far-reaching consequences: the Norsemen had come to stay, introducing their very own culture and religion, as evidenced in a rich corpus of grave-goods. Quite soon, however, the two groups came to terms with each other, adopted each others’ ways, and by the end of the tenth century a new, hybridised island community had begun to emerge, leaving both the Celtic Manx and the island’s Norse changed for ever. Another conquest, another one hundred years later and for the first time well attested to in written sources, provided the Isle of Man with a national hero, the ‘Insular Viking’ Godred Crovan, who entered Man’s folklore as a law-giver and ‘founding-father’. This paper tracks the archaeological and historical evidence of the very beginnings of the ethnogenesis in the Isle of Man in the early Viking Age, and thus of the Celtic as well as Viking heritage of the modern Manx.

Abstract: Countless entries in the chronicles leave no doubt that Scandinavians sailed into the Irish Sea very early in what was to be called the Viking Age, plundering coastal monasteries in Ireland as early as 795, and that they settled there permanently by the 840s and founded their own kingdoms, such as Dublin. Archaeological finds attest to their presence in Ireland by at least the middle of the ninth century. Regarding other shores, our information is much less comprehensive: There are no documentary sources to tell the story during most of the ninth century in places such as the Isle of Man or the coasts of north-west England (especially of Cumbria and Lancashire), and the date of archaeological finds is often ambiguous.

For a long time, it was considered virtually certain that both territories only were visited by Vikings in the very late ninth or even the early tenth centuries, when the Vikings in Dublin came under presssure, which led to their expulsion from the town in 902.

In a recent study, I concluded that contrary to this view, the Isle of Man was conquered and settled earlier than that, about 870, and I am now in the process of reviewing the available ecidence – old and new – and reconsidering old paradigms to answer the question whether the common view that Vikings came to the eastern coasts of the Irish Sea only about AD 900, is indeed reasonable and in accordance with facts and circumstancial evidence, or must be challenged in favour of an earlier date. With the Dublin Viking kings' fleets active in the Irish Sea (and beyond) by the later 860s, the earliest beginnings of a Scandinavian kingdom in York after 866, and a date of conquest about 870 already established for the Isle of Man, a similar, early date must be regarded a distinct possibility – or indeed a probability.

This paper is going to present a preliminary report of an ongoing research project reconsidering the early Viking Age on the eastern shores of the Irish Sea.

For the presentation video, click here.

Abstract: In 853, Óláfr, son of the king of 'Laithlind', came to Dublin and became one of the most powerful Viking kings in the Irish Sea, before, according to one account, returning to his native land of 'Laithlind', about 872. For a short but important period, this kingdom had a profound influence on events in Ireland and north Britain. Vexingly, however, extremely little is known about it, making it impossible to properly assess its role in ninth-century Irish Sea history: We do not even know its geographical location.

This issue turned into the subject of lively scholarly debate, with scholars discussing whether this mysterious realm was to be taken as a kingdom in the Vikings' homeland, in west Norway, or rather as a Viking colony in south-west Scotland. But due to very limited evidence, neither theory could be proven or even considered superior to the other. Thus, stuck between two possibilities, the question remained unanswered.

In 2018, two new – and mutually exclusive – hypotheses emerged, providing fresh ideas for tackling the old problem. One of them is argued in this paper, and by following the footsteps of king Óláf and viewing 'Laithlind' in the context of the king's objectives and politics during a period of Viking expansion in the Irish Sea area and beyond, it favours a location in west Scotland.

For the presentation video, click here.

Abstract: After the Vikings settled in the Isle of Man, they gradually became Christian, and in the middle of the tenth century adopted the local custom of erecting memorial stones for their dead. They enthusiastically adapted this new medium to their taste and created intricately carved monuments – the so-called Scandinavian ‘Manx Crosses’. Apart from interlace and runic inscriptions, they frequently feature scenes with human figures and animals, which have constantly been a challenge to scholarly interpretation, as despite of the ever-present Christian cross clearly the old pagan images had not been forgotten. Among the animals in the carvings are a number of birds, many of which can be identified zoologically with some certainty. Being carved on gravestones, at least most of them appear to have religious significance – and to be illustrating both Christian and pagan traditions and thought, respectively: the doves of Christ meet Óðin’s ravens. It seems, however, that regardless of spiritual background they may have been small parts of a common message, indicating the transitional character of both the cross-slabs and Manx society in the mid-/late tenth century, when (formerly) pagan Vikings and the Christian Manx mixed.

[click here to view the picture gallery of the cross-slab]

Abstract: The image of 'Christ trampling the beasts', illustrating Psalm 91:13, is well known in early Christian art, from Mediterranean mosaics and Carolingian book-covers to stone sculpture and illumination in Anglo-Saxon England. It always shows Christ in one of two forms, either as 'Christus triumphans' or as a warlike hero, but the message is clear. In the Isle of Man, a small island in the middle of the Irish Sea, there is a fascinating example of the image, on the fragment of a Viking Age cross-slab designated Kirk Andreas MM 128, featuring two figurative scenes, back-to-back. But while on one face, the image is an almost conventional representation of the 'Christ trampling the beasts' motif, the other face's relief shows, as unequivocally, an episode played out during the Ragnarök, the Norse pagan apocalypse. The middle of the ninth century, when the stone was fashioned, still was a period of religious re-orientation for the Viking settlers in Man, and thus previous interpretations often voted that the images were meant to illustrate the defeat of heathenism by the advent of the victorious Christ(endom). Closer examination, however, suggests a less violent construction: that the same message was intended to be conveyed by both scenes, one for a Christian, the other for a pagan audience, by adapting pagan Norse imagery. This paper presents this interpretation in detail, investigates the iconographical links and influences the artisans who created MM 128 appear to have drawn on, and compares continental and English examples as well as Scandinavian carvings to those of the Manx Cross.

[Click here to view the paper's bibliography; click here to view the picture gallery of the Braaid]

Abstract: In the late 9th century, Vikings conquered the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea and settled there among the native Celtic population, introducing their own traditions and culture. At the settlement site at the Braaid a direct indicator to the manner of the relationship between both groups appears to be visible. The remains of three stone buildings, each in about the same state of ruin, are standing in close proximity to each other. One of them is a large hall with massive, bowed walls in obvious Scandinavian style, the other a smaller rectangular house with straight walls. But the third is a roundhouse in just as unequivocally Celtic building tradition.
This correlation has often been interpreted as settlement continuity, of a Viking settler taking over a Manx farm – by force or by peaceful means – and then built his own home his own way. A lack of archaeological material makes interpretation very difficult, but some architectural details in both house types suggest the possibility of interethnic collaboration. Certainty, however, must remain elusive.

[click here to view the picture gallery of Kirk Andreas MM 128]

Abstract: In the later ninth century, Viking arrived in the Isle of Man and settled there. A rich archaeological heritage attests their presence on the Island. After about 930 the famous 'Manx Crosses' – cross-slabs often decorated with reliefs of humans and animals in Scandinavian style as well as runic inscriptions – emerge, promising information about social and religious developments between the native Christians and the pagan newcomers in the first half of the tenth century.

On both faces of the fragmentary cross-slab MM 128 in Kirk Andreas a human figure can be seen – back to back, as it were. A conclusive interpretation of both the individual scenes and a common symbolism has not been offered yet: The man on one face seems to be attacked by a dog-like animal and therefore is often interpreted as the Norse god Óðinn, fighting the Fenris-Wolf in the Ragnarök and being devoured by it. Or could it rather be his son, Víðarr, vanquishing the beast after his father's death? In any case, the image of a pagan god on a Christian gravestone appears peculiar.

On the other face, however, a cross and a fish quite obviously identify the man as a Christian or as Christ himself, triumphantly stamping down a serpent beneath his feet. In the face of this juxtaposition, the missionary claim that 'heathendom is dead, Christ rules!' appears almost self-evident, but there are other considerations that lead to an alternative interpretation.

Abstract: When the Vikings began to settle in various places in the British Isles after the middle of the ninth century, they established themselves as a new and different player in the native social, cultural and political landscape. For the Christian and Celtic inhabitants of the Isle of Man, a small island in the middle of the Irish Sea, the conquest by pagan Vikings in the later 9th century was an event of far-reaching consequences: the Norsemen had come to stay, introducing their very own culture and religion, as evidenced in a rich corpus of grave-goods. Quite soon, however, the two groups came to terms with each other, adopted each others’ ways, and by the end of the tenth century a new, hybridised island community had begun to emerge, leaving both the Celtic Manx and the island’s Norse changed for ever. Another conquest, another one hundred years later and for the first time well attested to in written sources, provided the Isle of Man with a national hero, the ‘Insular Viking’ Godred Crovan, who entered Man’s folklore as a law-giver and ‘founding-father’. This paper tracks the archaeological and historical evidence of the very beginnings of the ethnogenesis in the Isle of Man in the early Viking Age, and thus of the Celtic as well as Viking heritage of the modern Manx.

[click here to view the picture gallery of Kirk Andreas MM 128]

Abstract: Im späteren 9. Jahrhundert gelangten Wikinger auf die Isle of Man, eine kleine Insel inmitten der Irischen See, und siedelten sich dort an. Eine reiche archäologische Hinterlassenschaft zeugt eindrucksvoll von ihrer Anwesenheit. Ab etwa 930 treten auch die 'Manx Crosses' auf, aufwendig gestaltete Kreuzsteine, verziert in skandinavischen Kunststilen, mit Tier- und Menschendarstellungen – stets neben dem zentralen christlichen Kreuz – sowie Runeninschriften, die Aufschlüsse über die sozialen und religiösen Entwicklungen zwischen den christlichen und keltischen Einheimischen und den heidnischen Neusiedlern versprechen. Auf den beiden Seiten des nur fragmentarisch erhaltenen Kreuzsteins MM 128 in Kirk Andreas ist jeweils – gleichsam 'Rücken an Rücken' – eine menschliche Figur in einer szenischen Darstellung zu sehen. Über die Deutung der jeweiligen Szenen wie auch ihrer gemeinsamen Symbolik besteht in der Forschung kein Konsens. Der Mann auf der einen Seite scheint von einem hundeartigen Tier angegriffen zu werden, und oft wird er daher als der nordische Gott Óðinn identifiziert, der in den Ragnarök gegen den Fenris-Wolf kämpft und unterliegt. Die Darstellung eines heidnischen Gottes auf einem christlichen Grabstein erscheint ungewöhnlich. Auf der anderen Seite weisen aber offenbar ein Kreuz und ein Fisch den Mann als Christen oder gar Christus selbst aus, der triumphierend über die Schlangen unter seinen Füßen schreitet. Die aggressiv missionarische Aussage "Odin ist tot, Christus herrscht!" scheint daraufhin naheliegend, doch gibt es durchaus andere Interpretationsmöglichkeiten, die zu einer anderen Deutung führen.

Abstract: When the Vikings arrived in the Isle of Man in the later part of the ninth century and began to settle there, many of them followed the traditional religion and burial custom of their Scandinavian homelands: Especially the richly furnished ship- and moundgraves clearly point to a pagan perception of death and afterlife. About one hundred years later furnished burial seems to have been discontinued in the Island, to be replaced by magnificent headstones, the famous Scandinavian Manx Crosses. Obviously in the Irish Sea area the once-pagan Conquerors had come under the influence of Christianity and adopted the new faith.
To better understand this transition, a number of the 25 confirmed pagan Viking graves in the Isle of Man, and some of the Manx Crosses, both their runic inscriptions and vivid imagery, are examined. They demonstrate the gradual change in the Manx Vikings' burial custom as well as in their spiritual outlook, provide a glimpse of private syncretism, and illustrate the coming to terms with Christianity during a period of spiritual re-orientation when the Gods of old and their promise of Valhalla were challenged and eventually overcome by a new God and his hero.

Abstract: Daß im späten 8. Jahrhundert die Wikinger in die Irische See gelangten, steht außer Frage, und die irischen Chroniken zeichnen ein klares Bild von ihnen als heidnische Räuber, Piraten und Plünderer. Besonders archäologische Zeugnisse belegen, daß die Wikinger auch auf die keltisch-christlich geprägte Isle of Man gelangten: Prächtige Hügel- und Schiffsgräber, Wohnhäuser skandinavischer Bauart und die Kunst und Runeninschriften auf den „Manx Crosses“ genannten christlichen Kreuzsteinen etwa zeugen von ihrem Einfluß auf der Insel und stehen beigabenlosen Steinkistengräbern, Rundhäusern und Oghaminschriften gegenüber. Doch über die Antwort auf wichtige Fragen – zum einen, wann der erste Kontakt zwischen den Gruppen und wann eine dauerhafte Ansiedlung stattgefunden haben mag, zum anderen, ob die Wikinger die Insel mit ihren gefürchteten Plünderzügen heimsuchten und sie gewaltsam eroberten oder aber ob sie sie weitgehend verschonten und sich dann eher friedlich ansiedelten, und wie beide Gruppen mit- oder gegeneinander auf Man lebten – ist sich die Forschung aufgrund der mangelhaften Materialbasis und unterschiedlicher Herangehensweisen nicht einig. Eine sorgfältige quellenkritische Analyse der archäologischen und schriftlichen Hinterlassenschaften der Wikingerzeit in der Irischen See ermöglicht aber eine These, wie die frühe Wikingerzeit auf der Isle of Man zu rekonstruieren sein könnte.