Olsen et al. (Eds.): Hybrid Spaces

The late medieval period brought dramatic social and demographic changes to the northern coastal region of Arctic Norway and northwest Russia. From the 13th century on, the native Sámi found themselves increasingly surrounded by foreign peoples that had come here to trade and collect tribute, to harvest the sea, to make political ambitions manifest, and even to combat each other.

The flow of people, things, and practices created a direct and compressed articulation of cultural differences formerly set apart, and thus a far more diverse cultural environment in the high north. The number of new archaeological signatures added to the costal landscape is a conspicuous manifestation of this medieval diversity.

Paramount in this respect are the so-called multi-room houses, a complex and enigmatic settlement structure confined to these northern shores. Although for centuries attracting the curiosity of scholars and laymen, the recently completed research project presented in this book is the first attempt at a more thorough and inter-disciplinary approach to understanding these sites. Challenging the mono-cultural interpretations that hitherto have dominated their interpretations, our main conclusion is that the multi-room houses were used by rivaling groups and for different purposes. Despite being introduced as dwellings for distant peoples, they soon came to host both natives and newcomers. Their very design moreover was the result of a mixture of faraway traditions, borrowings, and local adaptations, thus making the multi-room houses truly hybrid spaces.

CONTENTS

Preface and Acknowledgement 5

List of illustrations 9

Notes on contributors 19

Part I: Introduction

Chapter 1: Introduction – Bjørnar Olsen 25

Chapter 2: A Brief Outline of the Historical Setting – Bjørnar Olsen 29

Chapter 3: Scholars and Multi-Room Houses: A Historiography – Jørn E. Henriksen 33

Chapter 4: Coastal Finnmark and the Environment of the Multi-Room Houses – Colin P. Amundsen 39


Part II: Fieldwork

Chapter 5: The Multi-Room House Sites: Surveys and Test Excavations – Bjørnar Olsen, Jørn E. Henriksen and Elin Rose Myrvoll 49

Chapter 6: Excavation of Iron Age Sites – Elin Rose Myrvoll 83

Chapter 7: The Skonsvika Site – Katarzyna Skrzynska-Jankowska and Przemyslaw Urbanczyk 93

Chapter 8: Boathouse Excavation at Skonsvika – Gørill Nilsen and Stephen Wickler 121

Chapter 9: The Kongshavn Site – Jørn E. Henriksen and Bjørnar Olsen 131

Chapter 10: Minor Excavations: The Løkvik and Nordmannset Sites – Elin Rose Myrvoll, Przemyslaw Urbanczyk and Colin Amundsen 149

Chapter 11: Geophysical Surveys in Skonsvika, Løkvik and Nordmannset – Krzysztof Misiewicz 159

Chapter 12: Skonsvika and Experiments with Digitalised Recording System – Przemyslaw Urbanczyk 169


Part III: Artifacts, Architecture and Chronology

Chapter 13: Artifacts: The Finds Retrieved – Jørn E. Henriksen, Camilla Nordby and Cora Oschman 181

Chapter 14: Multi-Room Houses: Site Organization and Architecture – Bjørnar Olsen and Jørn E. Henriksen 207

Chapter 15: Comparative Approach to Architecture and Formation Processes at Skonsvika – Przemyslaw Urbanczyk 221

Chapter 16: The Chronology of Multi-Room Houses - Jørn E. Henriksen 229


Part IV: Beyond Artifacts: Bones, Grains and Sediments

Chapter 17: The Zoo-Archaeology of Multi-Room Houses. – Colin Amundsen 241

Chapter 18: Vegetation History and Anthropogenic Impact on Vegetation at Localities with Multi-Room Houses in Finnmark, Norway – Christin Jensen 265

Chapter 19: Activities and Accumulations: Micromorphology Analyses of Archaeological Sediments from Multi-Room Houses in Finnmark, Norway – Ian A. Simpson and W. Paul Adderley 285

Chapter 20: The Archaeo-Botany of Multi-Room House Sites – Roger Engelmark 307


Part V: The Medieval Context: Ethnicity, Settlement and Borders

Chapter 21: Finnmark, Bjarkøy and the Norwegian Kingdom – Reidun Laura Andreassen and Håvard Dahl Bratrein 315

Chapter 22: Finnmark between the East and the West – Reidun Laura Andreassen and Håvard Dahl Bratrein 329

Chapter 23: The Russian-Norwegian Border in Medieval and Early Modern Times. - Lars Ivar Hansen 355


Part VI: Conclusion

Chapter 24: Interpreting Multi-Room Houses: Origin, Function and Cultural Networks – Bjørnar Olsen, Jørn E. Henriksen And Przemyslaw Urbanzcyk 371

References 389

Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning (IFSK). Serie B: 139. Se hele her.


ISBN 978-82-7099-602-5, 413 pp., hardcover
Format: 21x29,7 cm, weight: 2 kgs, year of publication: 2011, language: English