Academic Interests
I study the Late Iron Age and the Middle Ages of Scandinavia by using historical archaeological method, exploring the interplay between material culture and text, in particular the Old Norse written sources. I have worked on the acts of wetland depositions in the Viking Age and on the layers of meaning related to the cognitive landscape of the Viking Age. In my current research I focus on changes in mentalities and world-views of Pagan and Christian Scandinavia, diverging concepts of personhood and ideas of corporality, and varying ways of relating to the past or to pasts; in other words fundamental aspects of ontology. These perspectives are based on landscape analyses, on the studies of graves, including locations of grave yards, the use of heirlooms, and the relationship between wholeness and fragmentation in the burial customs, on the deposition of artefacts and on the relations between the inscriptions, choice of location and the materiality of rune stones from Scandinavia a. 700-1150 AD.
Projects
BibVik, Bibliometric network analysis of Viking Age research, funded by HUMIT: https://zackbatist.info/BibVik/
2016-2020 Project leader on "Using the Past in the Past. Viking Age Scandinavia as a Renaissance?" financed by the Research Council of Norway (RCN) as Young Researcher Talent.
Teaching
- EXFAC03-HARK – Examen facultatum for historie, arkeologi og konservering
- ARK1000 – Innføring i arkeologi
- ARK1030 – Jernalder- og middelalderarkeologi i Nord-Europa med vekt på Norden
- ARK2031 – Fordypning i jernalder, vikingtid- og middelalderarkeologi: Identitet, kjønn, landskap og sosial interaksjon
- ARK3090 – Bacheloroppgave i arkeologi
- ARK4200 – Prosjektbeskrivelsesseminar
- ARK4090 – Masteroppgave i arkeologi
- ARK4250 – Prosjektbeskrivelse i arkeologi
Background
Ph.d. in archaeology, University of Oslo, 2009. Mag.art. in prehistoric archaeology, Copenhagen University 2004, BA in prehistoric archaeology, Copenhagen University 1997. A,B,C and D course in Medieval Archaeology (including C-D course thesis), Lunds University, 2001, D course in archaeology (including D course thesis), Lunds University 1998. Associate Professor in Archaeology from 2011. Professor in Archaeology from 2022.