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• 1 media/Mount.jpg 2017-03-24T09:12:02-07:00 Introduction 24 image_header 2017-12-05T09:06:18-08:00 Anything made or used by human hands can be historical evidence, not just written texts. Objects bear witness to the past in a uniquely tangible way, evoking an immediate sense of the lived experience of those who made, used, modified and discarded them. Physical things are especially illuminating when discussing largely non-literate societies like the Norse-speaking peoples who lived during the so-called Viking Age of the eighth to eleventh centuries, and whose bloodthirsty reputation derives largely from the one-sided accounts written by their more literate European victims.
  
  Inspired by the BBC and British Museum's History of the World in 100 Objects podcast series, this collaborative student research project led by Austin Mason at Carleton College, aims to shed light on the real history that lies behind the rumors and legends, through audio essays exploring and contextualizing 100 carefully curated objects from across the Viking World.
  
  Explore the collection via the map below, visually on the Gallery page or via the Tag Cloud, take a guided tour through specific Thematic Categories, or investigate connections between objects on the Visualizations page.
   
• 1 media/P1020779.JPG 2017-05-22T00:09:47-07:00 Spade 5 object page plain 2017-09-21T17:07:08-07:00 The wooden spade-head pictured was unearthed near Nuuk, Greenland as part of the Nipatsaq excavations and provides information about early Norse settlements in the area. This spade, much like many archaeological finds, was constructed to be functional. The holes may have been bored to allow the spade to be lashed to a handle to make a shovel.
  
  The wooden construction implies that whatever its owner needed to move was not particularly hard or abrasive. Given the context of the dig, which revealed that “the Norse economy in Greenland was heavily dependent upon … fertilized soils,” the spade could have been used to spread manure or other fertilizer.^[1] Greenland is, after all, a misnomer created to lure settlers to what was in fact a rather inhospitable island. The soil would have required a fair amount work to cultivate as farmland.
  
  The dating for items from this project ranges from 985 to 1450 AD, which fits with accounts of Erik the Red traveling from Iceland to Greenland.^[2] The strongest motivations for Greenland settlements would have been to repeat the success of those who snatched up profitable plots in Iceland. Nevertheless, settlements in Greenland would have given Norse seamen a base of operations from which to extend their journeys on to Newfoundland, where evidence has been found of brief settlement. The spade found in Greenland had its own part to play in helping the Norse achieve the peak of their exploration, stretching all the way to lands that would not be colonized again by Europeans for multiple centuries.