Connecting to Pasts in Viking Age Scandinavia. Relational perspectives on Reuses, References and Reinventions.’

This seminar aims to explore how the affectivity of material culture may cross time through two examples of reuse of the past in the Viking Age: the use of kerbstones on a group of Viking Age burial mounds, and of antiques in Viking Age hoards of precious metal objects. Kerbstones on roman Period mounds were being reused as well as referenced in the Viking Age. The affective affordances of the kerbs will be explored including their temporal dimensions. Further, the acquisition, collection, maintaining of specific objects through centuries and the effects and affects of hoarding them in the Viking Age will be examined. Traditionally, the use of the past in the past has been treated as merely a power strategy. In this paper, these traditional notions of power will be challenged by exploring affectivity in relation to material culture. By examining how these objects work and how they affect humans and social settings the ambition is also to move beyond the agency debate and to gain insight into the entanglements of affects.

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https://stockholmuniversity.zoom.us/j/65435293371