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移到不列颠群岛、北大西洋、波罗的海和东方的新家园，这一时期被称为维京时代，传统上被概念化为“扩张”或“迁移”，这是一个简单的单向过程。本研究将探索这些移民可以被解释为“散居”的一种形式的方式，这是对移民过程的一种更有成效的理解，其重点是移民与他们的家园和散居的其他地区之间的联系。在维京散居的情况下，这种联系在语言、命名习俗、传统故事和诗歌中表现得尤为明显，但在物质文化的各个方面也能找到。这项研究的目的是利用散居的概念，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，所有这些都用于追踪斯堪的纳维亚人在全球范围内的历史运动。大多数关于维京时代及其后果的一般性调查都是从考古学或广泛的历史观点出发的。这项研究的一个显著特点是，它突出了中世纪冰岛的传奇故事，传统上，这些故事充其量被认为是维京时代的不可靠来源。然而，当我们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了。冰岛在地理位置上处于边缘，但在文化上处于中心地位，它体现了祖国与殖民地之间复杂的相互迁就，这是散居侨民的特点。因此，这些传奇故事和其他古老的冰岛文本，都是维京人散居的例证和解释，以及更常用来研究这一时期的考古和历史证据。散居主要是关于人的，但它也关于人们在新的背景下，特别是新的风景中。本研究的第二个显著特征将是其对维京散居的地理的关注，以及这种散居的语言和文化统一超越其广泛的地理范围和不同的景观的有趣方式，这方面不可避免地在历史/考古处理中被忽视。例如，这项研究将详细探讨散居犹太人的地名是如何表达这种统一性，同时又对这种多样性作出反应的。性别、家庭、宗教和身份的跨学科研究更加牢固，但我的研究将比以往的研究走得更远，将最新的科学研究成果（特别是遗传学和同位素分析）和当前的考古思维结合起来进行分析。本研究的新颖之处在于将维京时代的跨学科研究与移民和散居理论进行了对话。这些理论在维京时代的研究中很少得到应用；相反，维京时代的移民，对人类历史的巨大影响，很少被移民和散居理论家考虑。因此，该研究的贡献将是为维京研究带来新的方法和理解，并突出维京时代作为移民和散居理论发展的启发性案例研究。

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.