The Viking Diaspora: a monograph

中世纪早期，人们、语言和文化从斯堪的纳维亚大陆迁徙到不列颠群岛、北大西洋、波罗的海和东方的新居，这一时期被称为北欧海盗时代，传统上被定义为“扩张”或“迁徙”，这是一个直接的单向过程。这项研究将探讨如何将这些移徙解释为“散居”的一种形式，即对移徙过程的更有成效的理解，侧重于移徙者与其家乡和散居国外的其他地区之间的联系。就散居海外的维京人而言，这种关联性在语言、命名习俗、传统故事和诗歌中特别明显地表达出来，但也在物质文化方面得到了体现。这项研究的目的是将这些语言和文化现象与分子科学的最新成果结合起来，特别是遗传学(现代和古代DNA)和稳定同位素分析，以及科学和环境考古学，所有这些都被用来追踪斯堪的纳维亚人在全球的历史运动。大多数关于北欧海盗时代及其后果的概述都是从考古学或广泛的历史角度撰写的。这项拟议研究的一个显著特点是它突出了中世纪的冰岛传奇，传统上认为，充其量，这充其量是维京时代不可靠的来源。然而，当从侨民的角度来看待这一时期时，冰岛和冰岛人在侨民中的地位就变得至关重要。冰岛在地理上处于边缘，但在文化上处于中心地位，这说明了故乡和殖民地之间复杂的取舍，这是散居海外的特征。因此，这些传奇和其他古冰岛文本，都是对维京人散居海外的例证和解释，以及更常用于研究这一时期的考古和历史证据。散居主要是关于人，但也是关于处于新环境中的人，特别是新的风景。这项研究的第二个显著特点是它将重点放在散居海外的维京人的地理上，以及这种散居海外的人在语言和文化上的统一如何超越了其广阔的地理范围和多种多样的景观，这一方面在历史/考古研究中不可避免地被忽视了。例如，这项研究将更详细地探索侨民的地名如何在表达这种统一性的同时也对这种多样性做出回应。性别、家庭、宗教和身份的跨学科研究更加牢固，但我的研究将比以前的研究更深入，将最新科学研究(特别是遗传学和同位素分析)的结果和当前的考古学思想整合到分析中。这项研究的新之处是对维京时代的跨学科研究与移民和侨居理论的对话。这样的理论在北欧海盗时代的研究中很少被应用；相反，北欧海盗时代的移民对人类历史产生了巨大的影响，很少被移民和散居的理论家考虑。因此，这项研究的贡献将是为北欧海盗研究带来新的方法和理解，并强调北欧海盗时代是移民和散居理论发展的一个具有启发性的案例研究。

The early medieval migrations of people, language and culture from mainland Scandinavia to new homes in the British Isles, the North Atlantic, the Baltic and the East, in the period known as the Viking Age, have traditionally been conceptualised as an 'expansion' or 'migration', a straightforward one-way process. This research will explore the ways in which these migrations can instead be interpreted as a form of 'diaspora', a more productive understanding of the migration process which focuses on the connectedness between migrants and both their homelands and other regions within the diaspora. In the case of the Viking diaspora, this connectedness is particularly clearly expressed in language, in naming customs, and in traditional stories and poems, but is also found in aspects of material culture. The aim of the research is to use the concept of diaspora to integrate these linguistic and cultural phenomena with the most recent results from the molecular sciences, particularly genetics (modern and ancient DNA) and stable isotope analysis, and scientifica and environmental archaeology, all of which are used to track the historical movements of people of Scandinavian origin around the globe.Most general surveys of the Viking Age and its aftermath are written from an archaeological or broadly historical point of view. A notable feature of the proposed research is its foregrounding of the medieval Icelandic sagas, traditionally viewed as, at best, an unreliable source for the Viking Age. Yet when the period is seen in terms of diaspora, then the position of Iceland and the Icelanders within this diaspora becomes crucial. Geographically peripheral yet culturally central, Iceland illustrates the complex give-and-take between the homelands and the colonies that is characteristic of diaspora. Thus the sagas, and other Old Icelandic texts, both exemplify and explain the Viking diaspora, alongside the archaeological and historical evidence more commonly used to study the period. Diaspora is primarily about people, but it is also about people in new contexts and particularly new landscapes. A second distinctive feature of this research will be its focus on the geography of the Viking diaspora, and the interesting ways in which the linguistic and cultural unity of this diaspora transcended its wide geographical range and varied landscapes, an aspect that is inevitably given short shrift in the historical/archaeological treatments. The research will, for instance, explore in some detail the ways in which the place-names of the diaspora express this unity while also responding to this variety.The interdisciplinary study of gender, family, religion and identities is more firmly established, but my research will go further than previous studies in integrating results from the latest scientific research (especially genetics and isotope analysis), and current archaeological thinking, into the analysis.What is new in this research is the dialogue of the interdisciplinary study of the Viking Age with theories of migration and diaspora. Such theories have been little applied in Viking Age studies; conversely, the migrations of the Viking Age, with their great impact on human history, have rarely been considered by theorists of migration and diaspora. The contribution of the research will thus be to bring new approaches and understandings to Viking Studies and to highlight the Viking Age as an illuminating case study for the development of theories of migration and diaspora.