Talk:Childhood in the Viking Age

Latest comment: 6 years ago by Alarichall in topic Synthesis?

Synthesis?

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Hello. I have been quite active on the Vikings page and found this newly created page as it was linked as a see also page on the Vikings page.

1. I am wondering if this issue is some kind of synthesis? Or are there really any scholarly works treating the subject in an academic way? I am wondering if somebody might have cherry-picked what suited their own interests, piecing together bits and pieces from a variety of sources on an issue that can hardly be treated as a field of study in its own right, due to lack of credible sources? At this point, is is unclear if the information is based on a few authors own ideas, on seceondhand sources such as the Sagas or whatever. Whatever the truth, the sources should be made much clearer.

2. Another issue with this page is the use of the term Viking. It would be much more appropriate and correct to use the term "Norse people in the Viking Age". As it is now, it seems Vikings were some kind of tribe or special people, which was not the case. I myself have been engaged in many a long discussion of how credible it is to use the term Viking at all on the TalkPage on the Vikings article (go and have a look in the archives there). As evidenced there, I am not against the use of the term Viking, but on the other hand it is important to use the term correctly and be aware of its limitations and meanings when doing so.

RhinoMind (talk) 12:39, 11 October 2016 (UTC)Reply

There's certainly plenty of dedicated academic research on this topic, e.g.: Carol J. Clover, ‘The Politics of Scarcity: Notes on the Sex Ratio in Early Scandinavia’, Scandinavian Studies, 60 (1988), 147–88 (on infanticide); Sally Crawford, Childhood in Anglo-Saxon England (Stroud: Sutton, 1999); Susanne Thedéen, 'Who's that Girl? The Cultural Construction of Girlhood and the Transition to Womanhood in Viking Age Gotland', Childhood in the Past: An International Journal, 1 (2009), 78-93; the work of Deirdre McAlister (https://nuim.academia.edu/DeirdreMcAlister); etc. Alarichall (talk) 08:18, 16 July 2018 (UTC)Reply