Maritime Mindscapes : using experimental archaeology to reconstruct Viking Age seafaring routes

In this paper I evaluate the feasibility of reconstructing Viking Age sailing routes through experimental and ethnographic fieldwork onboard traditional Norwegian boats, focusing on aspects of Viking Age route choice, risk judgement, and the location of possible anchorages and harbours. The goal with this approach is to reconstruct the ‘scapes’ of Viking Age seafaring: the seafaring routes and environments, as well as the practices and worldviews of a maritime society. It is argued that through this approach, we can discover not only where people travelled, but also what these journeys were like, what understandings of the world they were entangled in, and how these afforded the practices observable in the surviving evidence. Some elements and aspects of these scapes survived in relatively unaltered form into the 20th century, allowing us to employ them as analogies for Viking Age affordances, and reconstruct possible maritime itineraries along the Norwegian coast.