The Smith on the Edge of Worlds: New perspectives on technology and ideology in the Late Norwegian Iron Age

Abstract

With basis in Jan Petersen's (1951) 375 "smith's graves" this thesis deal with the phenomenon of placing tools in graves, with a main occurence from the Migration Period and into the Viking Age in Norway. It is my claim that the uncritical use of old typologies in present archaeology, and a lack of understanding for the practical use of tools for smithing and other kinds of crafting (also Bøckman 2007), may have contributed with a bias toward research on metalsmithing in accordance with current archaeological trends. It has thus been necessary to analyse the tools as a part of grave goods, with a primary focus on tool combinations and other artefacts present in context. Several factors seem to indicate that the notion of the specialised smith is a product of modern mentality, and that skills of smithing may be viewed practically and symbolically in accordance with Iron Age mentality and warrior ideology. As such, It is the purpose of this thesis to investigate to which degree our ideas of the specialised metalsmith conform to smiths as presented in the grave material, and to argue for an interpretation of these figures as important pieces of society in the Late Norwegian Iron Age.