The Higher Research Seminar: Martin Hall - ‘Raiding and Trading in the Baltic Sea’

Abstract

In this chapter I will provide an overview of political and economic developments in, primarily, Scandinavia from the Bronze Age (ca 1700 BCE to 500 BCE) to the end of the Viking Age (11^th century CE). I will suggest that throughout these nearly three millennia the Baltic Sea was a major conduit for both trading and raiding, as well as cultural exchange. The mobility provided by the sea had a profound formative impact on the rise and fall of political centralization throughout the pre-state history of the littorals of the Baltic Sea.

No state existed on the shores of the Baltic Sea until the Middle Ages. But neither is it either correct or particularly informative to claim that pre-state Scandinavia and other Baltic societies were organized into chiefdoms. It is not correct because no available definition of that concept captures the variety of forms of polities on exhibition and it is uninformative because it does not tell us what the modus vivendi of pre-states polities were. There is a rather long-standing and heated debate in Anthropology and Archaeology whether the concept of chiefdom is at all useful.  Elsewhere, I have called Viking polities “raiding-trading complexes.”

The Higher Research Seminar is held on Wednesdays 13.15 to 14.30 in Eden 367, unless otherwise indicated. PhD Mid-term seminars 13:15 to 14:45. 

Convenors: Professor Annika Björkdahl and Professor Fariborz Zelli. 

The seminars are open to the public. Welcome to join us!

See the program for Spring 2025: The Department’s Higher Research Seminar Series | Department of Political Science