The Norse Awakens: A palaeodemographic study of Viking and Norse homeland and frontier communities during the Viking and following Medieval period in the North Atlantic

Abstract

While there has been a significant amount of interest in the lives of Viking and Norse populations in the modern era through historical representations, archaeology, and representation in popular culture; the knowledge surrounding the population health and dynamics of these people is limited. This is due to a lack of palaeodemographic and palaeoepidemiological investigations. It is widely recognised that palaeodemography can significantly improve our understanding of population health and dynamics of past populations. For this reason, this thesis aimed to apply existing palaeodemographic methods for fertility, population increase and maternal mortality, and adjust a new method for mortality in early infancy. This was in order to develop a better understanding of population health and dynamics of homeland and frontier Viking and Norse communities, which would greatly contribute to the currently limited knowledge. The results of the analyses undertaken in this thesis indicate that there were no significant differences in the subadult representation in homeland and frontier Viking and Norse communities and on an intra-regional level. However, there were significant differences in the level of subadult representation at an inter-regional level with Greenland appearing to demonstrate subadult under-representation and the Scottish Isles appearing to demonstrate a higher-than-expected number of subadults. Unfortunately, the maternal mortality estimator results were not able to be utilised due to a lack of available data, however, there are hopes to undertake these analyses at a future date when more site-specific data becomes available. The newly developed infant and neonate mortality estimator appears to require some more work, however, is showing considerable promise. These results contribute to increasing the collective understanding of population health and dynamics in Viking and Norse homeland and frontier communities. Show more