Nordic slavery is an elusive phenomenon, with few similarities to the systematic exploitation of slaves in households, mines, and amphitheaters in the ancient Mediterranean or the widespread slavery at American plantations during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Scandinavians in the early Middle Ages lived in a society foreign to us, characterized by different and shifting social statuses. A person could be at once socially respected and unfree. It was possible to hand oneself over as a slave to someone else in exchange for protection and food. One could be sentenced temporarily to enslavement for some offense but later purchase his manumission. Young men could enter into a kind of "contract" with a king or chieftain to join his retinue, accepting his authority, patronage, and jurisdiction, while at the same time making a quick social elevation.
Slavery was widespread all over Europe during the early Middle Ages and Scandinavians, as Stefan Brink illustrates in this book, became a major player in the northern slave trade. However, the Vikings were not particularly interested in taking slaves to Scandinavia; instead, their "business model" seems to have been to raid, abduct, and then sell captured people at major slave markets. Their goal was not people but silver. Using a wide variety of source materials, including archaeology, runes, Icelandic sagas, early law, place names, personal names, and not least etymological and semantic analyses of the terminology of slaves, Thraldom provides the most thorough survey of slavery in the Viking Age.
Industry Reviews
"Timely, relevant, thoroughly researched and assembled by one of the foremost authorities on Old Norse law, Old Norse place-names, and the Old Norse language, this has to be the definitive work on slavery in the pre-historical Old Norse world. It encourages us to question of our many previously held ideas about slavery in the Old Norse and Germanic world." -- Terry Adrian Gunnell, University of Iceland
"This study, based upon eminent insights into linguistics, history and archaeology, fills a definite gap. It is a great contribution to Viking Age studies and to studies of slavery in general." -- Thomas Lindkvist, University of Gothenburg
"Stefan Brink is at the top of his field and no one is better equipped to do justice to the difficult and still underexamined topic of Viking slavery. Brink's interdisciplinarity is masterly as he weaves together his sources drawn from historical documents, runic inscriptions, Icelandic sagas, early law, place names, personal names, and archaeology into a cohesive narrative. By combining his analysis of the sources on the Viking Age with an impressive
historical depth and an anthropological approach to slavery, Brink provides readers with a deep understanding of unfreedom in the early history of Europe well beyond the borders of Scandinavia." -- Davide Zori,
Baylor University
"Karen Bek-Pedersen, who translated this work from a Swedish version, deserves high praise for an easily readable and learned book that deals even-handedly with numerous disciplinary specialties." -- Speculum 98/4
"This is an important book for students and researchers concerned with the Viking period, a work of formidably scholarly research by a writer with a probably unparalleled knowledge of the subject." -- John Kennedy, The Parergon
"The book stands as a welcome provocation to longstanding assumptions about how slavery worked in medieval Scandinavia, and as a challenge to confront the ambiguities of our sources in creative and diverse ways." -- Alexander Wilson, H-Soz-Kult
"Stefan Brink's conclusions, which are sometimes unexpected, will certainly be debated [...] Nevertheless, the method he uses and the erudition he displays are to be admired." -- Alban Gautier, Le Moyen Âge
