Course description
In 2015, the Swedish Research Council awarded a 50m SEK grant to fund a major research project on the theme of The Viking Phenomenon. Based at Uppsala University, the project commenced in 2016 and will run until the end of 2025. Its primary objective is to explore the origins of what is generally known as the Viking Age, c.750-1050 CE, with a long time-depth into the preceding centuries and a comparative perspective. At the same time, the project name has a different sense, in acknowledging and deconstructing the complex legacies of the ‘Vikings’ today. Over the nine years of the project’s operations, several dozen scholars have joined us on a rolling basis for individual research endeavours, international workshops, lectures and seminars. Project outputs to date include 17 books and edited volumes, 112 peer-reviewed journal papers and book chapters, 40 articles in popular science magazines and outlets, in addition to more than 130 conference presentations and over 120 public lectures.
In the final years of the Viking Phenomenon project, it makes perfect sense for us to offer DialPast courses on the project themes. As well as further integrating our work with the younger generation of upcoming scholars, we also invite them to challenge, debate, and expand upon it, taking Viking studies in new directions. The first of these was held in Athens in November 2024, on the overall theme of The Viking Phenomenon. As a result of discussions with students and staff there, a second course is now being offered, bringing together current issues in the study of the later Iron Age.
Note that the two courses are wholly independent, and students do not need to have attended the first Viking Phenomenon DialPast in order to participate in this one.
Disrupting the Viking phenomena
“The better we understand the Vikings, the more comfortable we are with how little we really know about them”. This reviewer’s comment on a recent book (Price 2020) makes a thought-provoking assertion that can be taken in several ways. The historical freight of political misappropriation borne by the so-called Vikings is well-known and extensively studied, part of the ongoing reckoning with issues of contemporary reception and legacy. Less acknowledged, however, is the degree of illusory certainty that has crept into so much of research in the Viking Age, with a concomitant need to undermine and destabilise it. Moreover, the difficulties of navigating and communicating within this multi-disciplinary field are compounded by the fact that basic terminology in one discipline or research tradition can sometimes carry different connotations in others.
The course addresses not only the inevitable uncertainty of interpretation and the provisional nature of academic knowledge, but also its production as a theory-dependent endeavour that is furthermore influenced by its situatedness within specific research practices and communities. A basic premise of this course is that there is no neutral position from which to undertake research or produce academic knowledge – a statement that itself is grounded in specific ontological and epistemological assumptions.
We provide a venue for PhD students to explore, reflect on, and discuss the premises underlying their own research, including their preferred approaches, methodologies, etc. The course is primarily and obviously aimed at those working within the wider field of Late Iron Age and Viking Studies, but the themes are relevant for many cultural and chronological contexts, and we encourage applicants interested in comparative perspectives.
The PhD students will be asked to present a part of their research, while critically reflecting on some of the challenges they face in their work, regarding, for example, their choice of terminology, conceptual frameworks, interpretational models, approaches, perspectives, theories, methods, and/or research designs. Discussions will be facilitated by the interdisciplinary team of teachers, and course literature will be provided to aid students in approaching these issues in their pre-submitted papers. The course is student-centred, and the thematic areas covered will depend on the specific needs of the students. Topics and questions to be addressed might include, for example:
- What is a concept, a category, and a type? How do they differ, what are they each useful for and to what extent? How can these questions be approached?
- What are the benefits and drawbacks of creating new concepts versus refining existing ones?
- The insider-outsider debate; emic and etic perspectives.
- Examining issues of subject-object relations.
- Typological and classificatory approaches to material culture and abstract cultural formations.
- The conceptual frameworks and models around networks and urban structures.
- The conceptualisation and investigation of non-human agents, whether objects, animals, or more-than-humans.
- The persistence of Romanticism in paradigms of interpretation, and what the concept of Romanticism refers to in this context.
The course will be open for PhD students at different stages of their project, and we aim to offer an open and inclusive learning environment, where difficult questions like these, along with proposals for their solutions, can be addressed, discussed, and tested in a respectful and constructive manner. Hopefully, the students will leave the course feeling better equipped to tackle such challenges in the future. Contributions making a close engagement with material culture are especially encouraged, but we do not wish to place restrictions on how the PhD students approach their research. Projects relating to matters of reception and legacy, the complex entanglements of how the people of the Viking Age are viewed today by their many and varied publics, and not least how the academic community can or should relate to them are also encouraged.
Course Work
In standard DialPast format, the course will consist of both seminars and lectures. Before the course begins, each participating student will prepare a paper (7-10 pages, Times New Roman, 1,5 spacing) for pre-circulation, addressing their research project in relation to the course theme. In the seminars, each paper will be allotted c.45 minutes (15-minute author summary; 10-minute commentary by a fellow student; 20-minute general discussion chaired by the discussant).
The organisers and lecturers will each deliver a keynote lecture during the course, actively engage in the seminars, and generally make themselves available for interaction with the students throughout. The PhD participants are expected to read the course literature, approximately 800 pages in total. The seminar days will be thoughtfully structured to provide ample and equal time for discussion, and there will also be a field trip to the sacred precinct and oracle at Delphi, a UNESCO World Heritage site with conceptual and comparative relevance to the course.
Course organisers
- Dr Sophie Bønding (National Museum of Denmark)
- Prof. Neil Price (Uppsala University, Viking Phenomenon project)
Lecturers
- Dr Sophie Bønding (National Museum of Denmark)
- Prof. Neil Price (Uppsala University, Viking Phenomenon project)
- Doc. Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson (Uppsala University, Viking Phenomenon project)
- Prof. Olof Sundqvist (Stockholm University)
Deadlines
- Registration deadline: 1st August 2025
- Paper submission deadline: 10th October 2025
Credits
- 5 ECTS
Location, Travel, and Costs
The course takes place at the Swedish Institute in Athens, Greece. In association with Dialogues with the Past (DialPast), the Viking Phenomenon project will finance and arrange accommodation, a welcome dinner, and supply lunch during the course for all participating PhD students who are part of the DialPast network.
The PhD candidates will need to finance and arrange their own travel to Athens, as well as dinners during the course (except for the welcome dinner). If you are in the DialPast network and do not have travel funding to cover these costs, please get in touch with meriem.boulaziz@iakh.uio.no.
Enquiries about practical matters regarding course organisation should also be sent to meriem.boulaziz@iakh.uio.no.
Registration
The Graduate school invites all registered PhD students in the DIALPAST network to apply for participation.
From these applications, 12 PhD students will be admitted to the workshop.
Registration deadline: 1st August 2025