Thing sites, cult, churches, games and markets in Viking and medieval southeast Norway, AD c.800–1600

ABSTRACT

The question of the co-location of different kinds of assembly, such as Old Norse things, churches, games and markets, is a familiar debate in archaeology and history. A close connection between thing and church sites is recognized in Scandinavia suggesting that law and religion were closely connected. While the location of different assemblies seems to have been determined by logistical practicalities and the choice of certain kinds of topographic feature, power relations may also have played a crucial part in dictating their setting. After the eleventh/twelfth centuries in Norway, royal regulation of things and markets increased. The locations of many types of gathering remained consistent, however, but the thing system in particular seems to have offered a mechanism for consolidating royal power.

KEYWORDS:

• Things
• markets
• games
• central places
• law
• religion
• Scandinavia

Notes

1. This word can, however, just refer to a boundary (Hoel 2008, 219).

2. There was also a market at Heimdalsjordet in Vestfold county (Bill og Rødsrud 2013), but a thing site has not been identified. In addition, the Viking town of Kaupang had a market and a thing, probably a regional and higher level thing (see Skre [2007]; Ødegaard [2015, forthcoming]).

3. At the farm of Lekum in Heggen.

4. Skeimo and Tveit with two thing place-names (Tingstøodden and Tingstøåsen) in Kviteseid, Vøien and Løken in Bærum, Berg and Skjøl in Eiker, and Andebu og Skjeau. However, the latter are in two different skipreiður (Arendal and Råbygge).

5. Ryen and Løkja in Hitterdal, present Notodden, and Sande church and Skjøll in Sande skipreiða.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marie Ødegaard

Marie Ødegaard works at the Museum of Cultural History in Oslo. She has a PhD from the Department of Archaeology, History, Religion, and Cultural Studies, University of Bergen (2015), and has participated in the HERA-funded The Assembly Project (TAP), 2010–2013. Ødegaard’s research covers a number of topics in Early and Late Iron Age archaeology, in particular settlement patterns, borders, legal landscapes and GIS. She is a co-editor of the journal Primitive Tider and has published several papers on thing-sites, assemblies and administrative landscape of late prehistoric Scandinavia.