Scottish Archaeological Journal

The paper offers a synthesis of a large body of recent research into the Old Norse religion which has been conducted as part of the multidisciplinary research project Väger till Midgård -- Roads to Midgard. Evidence for the pre-Christian Norse religion is drawn from medieval Icelandic literature, place-names and the archaeology of ritual sites. The movement from remote, open-air temples (vé) to purpose built ritual houses and finally churches is outlined and the development of a pre-Christian priesthood is explored. Burial archaeology from the Bronze Age to the Christian era provides a vital perspective on changing religious concepts. The prolonged contact with the Mediterranean world during the Roman Iron Age exerted a strong influence on the Old Norse religion and it is argued that some of the most distinctively Scandinavian religious features can be seen to be hybrid cultural constructs.

The author proposes that, although the modern urban past is already served by a tradition in industrial archaeology, there are good reasons to rethink that tradition and to develop a wider approach to the archaeology of urban society. With Glasgow as a focus, the paper discusses some barriers to the type of urban archaeology proposed, namely the preconceptions that the recent past is already familiar and that new knowledge is easily addressed by archival research. The author then reviews the development of Scottish industrial and urban archaeology, recognising their achievements while highlighting some areas of historical understanding traditionally avoided, and explores some possibilities for the future -- especially, but not exclusively, in the archaeology of labour and urban domestic and social life.