"Negotiating the North" book now freely available via Open Access

Book co-authored by Dr Alex Sanmark

The new book entitled Negotiating the North: Meeting-Places in the Middle Ages in the North Sea Zone co-authored by Dr Alex Sanmark of the Institute for Northern Studies is now freely available via Open Access.

This book is the result of an EU-funded project focusing on the assemblies and administrative systems of Scandinavia, Britain, and the North Atlantic islands in the 1st and 2nd millennia AD. This volume integrates a wide range of historical, cartographic, archaeological, field-based, and onomastic data pertaining to places of assembly in these areas. This transnational perspective enabled a new understanding of the development of power structures in early medieval northern Europe and the maturation of these systems in later centuries under royal control.

In a series of richly illustrated chapters, the book explores the emergence and development of mechanisms for consensus, beginning with a historiographical exploration of assembly research. This is followed by an examination of the assemblies in Scandinavia and their export to the lands colonised by the Norse. Presenting a fresh perspective on the agency and power of the assembly, this interdisciplinary volume provides an invaluable, in-depth insight into the people, places, laws, and consensual structures that shaped the early medieval and medieval kingdoms of northern Europe.

Title: Negotiating the North: Meeting-Places in the Middle Ages in the North Sea Zone. By Sarah Semple, Alexandra Sanmark, Frode Iversen, Natascha Mehler (2020). For more information, click here.