Conf/CfP - Vikings in the Mediterranean, 28-30 November 2019, Greece

Call for papers: Vikings in the Mediterranean

International Conference in Athens, Greece 28-30 November, 2019

The “Viking Age,” roughly 750-1050 CE/​AD, is usu­ally as­so­ci­ated with the raids or whole­sale move­ment of peo­ple from Scan­di­navia along the coasts of west­ern and At­lantic Eu­rope. Few non-spe­cial­ists as­so­ci­ate the same Norse pop­u­la­tions with east­ern Eu­rope (the Rus), al­though they have had a com­pa­ra­bly sig­nif­i­cant role in the po­lit­i­cal his­tory of that part of the world. Fewer still, how­ever, are aware of the ro­bust Norse pres­ence in the Mediter­ranean. In­di­vid­u­ally or in groups, Scan­di­na­vians were raiders, mer­ce­nar­ies, mer­chants, and—in some cases—set­tlers in the lands sur­round­ing the “Mid­dle Sea” (Miðjarðarhav). Many traces of this pres­ence and the en­su­ing in­ter­ac­tion re­main to this day, seen in the ma­te­r­ial cul­ture and the flow of ob­jects be­tween south­ern and north­ern Eu­rope. More­over, these traces are also vis­i­ble in his­tor­i­cal ac­counts, lin­guis­tics, iconog­ra­phy, and to some ex­tent even in the so­cial changes within the com­mu­ni­ties that took part in this ex­change. This body of ev­i­dence has not gone un­no­ticed by schol­ars in­ter­ested in this pe­riod and it has been ad­dressed to some ex­tent in the past. Nev­er­the­less, this field of re­search has not hith­erto seen a fo­cused dis­cus­sion within the frame­work of a ded­i­cated sci­en­tific meet­ing, which could be of ben­e­fit to all con­cerned.

The in­ter­na­tional con­fer­ence “Vikings in the Mediter­ranean,” co-or­ga­nized by the Nor­we­gian, Swedish, and Dan­ish In­sti­tutes at Athens in the year of the Nor­we­gian In­sti­tute’s 30th an­niver­sary, aims to change that by bring­ing to­gether schol­ars from var­i­ous dis­ci­plines in­ter­ested in the var­ied ways that the Norse have shaped the his­tor­i­cal events of the me­dieval Mediter­ranean, and vice versa. In ad­di­tion, our goal is to pro­vide a meet­ing op­por­tu­nity for schol­arly com­mu­ni­ties that do not usu­ally have open lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, e.g. be­tween col­leagues work­ing in the Mediter­ranean and those in Scan­di­navia. Fi­nally, we hope that this con­fer­ence will re­sult in the pub­li­ca­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive pro­ceed­ings vol­ume, which will ad­dress this topic in all its mul­ti­fac­eted as­pects.

We wel­come con­tri­bu­tions on any as­pect of Norse-Mediter­ranean re­la­tion­ship and in­vite schol­ars rep­re­sent­ing var­i­ous sci­en­tific dis­ci­plines that can con­tribute to this dis­cus­sion. We would, how­ever, par­tic­u­larly like to see con­tri­bu­tions re­lated to the fol­low­ing over­ar­ch­ing top­ics:

• Archaeological, literary, and iconographic evidence for Viking presence in the Mediterranean
• Mediterranean influences on early urbanization processes in Scandinavia
• Norse society and culture before and after the contacts with the Mediterranean
• Gender roles in northern and southern Europe during the Viking Age

Ap­pli­ca­tion dead­line: MARCH 30, 2019

Con­fer­ence dates: 28-30 November 2019

Con­fer­ence lo­ca­tion: Athens, Greece (venue to be de­ter­mined)

Con­fer­ence lan­guage: English

Con­fer­ence for­mat: 20 minute pre­sen­ta­tions fol­lowed by 10 minute dis­cus­sion (max. 30 min).

For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.

This opportunity has expired. It was originally published here:

https://www.sia.gr/en/articles.asp?tid=164