Ebook: Processing Death: Oval Brooches and Viking Graves in Britain, Ireland, and Iceland

Burials with oval brooches from the Viking Age settlements in Britain, Ireland, and Iceland have frequently been interpreted as the graves of a specific and uniform group of people: (pagan) Scandinavian women of relatively high status. This interpretation is partly a result of the way in which the material has been treated, as static entities with more or less fixed meanings. How similar were these graves, however, and can they be interpreted as belonging to a specific group of people? By studying oval brooches and the graves in which these appear, this thesis examines how grave-goods were used in life and in death, and how the funerary rites themselves were performed. It provides an approach to grave-goods and graves that allows for the identification of variation in the material. Seeing the material as processes rather than objects is accentuated in order to identify variation. Through a theoretical framework emphasising ritualization, the focus is placed on ritual practice as meaningful in and of itself, rather than as reflective of uniform ideas and concepts. The meaning of funerary rites is also acknowledged as relational rather than essential; they must be understood in relation to each other and to other ways of acting.

The thesis comprises two in-depth case studies. The first case study (chapter 2) demonstrates that there are considerable differences in how oval brooches were used in both life and death and argues that these variations in use affected the brooches’ abilities to evoke remembrances in funerary rites. Instead of regarding their meaning as static, the chapter emphasises how their meaning was relational and dependent on people’s previous experience with oval brooches, both as a category and as individual objects. The second case study (chapter 3) examines how the funerary rites themselves were performed. It demonstrates that there were norms governing the funerary practices, but also that these practices in several cases varied or deviated from the norms. These variations and deviations highlight funerary practices as responses to an actual and contemporary situation: the death of a specific member of the community.