Harvesting the Margins of the Viking World

Viking Age research has long been shaped by an ‘agricultural paradigm’ — a framework that centres economic and social development in the fertile plains of southern and central Scandinavia. This dominant model has marginalized alternative subsistence strategies and rendered northern regions peripheral, both geographically and conceptually. This volume challenges that orthodoxy through a new focus on the economic and cultural significance of Late Iron Age Fennoscandia. Gathering fifteen chapters from established scholars in the field, this work explores how environmentally diverse and often-overlooked northern areas were not passive peripheries. Instead they were active arenas of innovation, connectivity, and identity formation. Contributors examine mixed economies and subsistence strategies, and the movement of people, materials, and ideas across forested outlands, coastal zones, and inland trade networks. From indigenous agency to interregional exchange, this volume decentres traditional narratives to offer a more nuanced and inclusive understanding of economic life in the Late Iron Age.