New Book

Negotiating the North: Meeting-Places in the Middle Ages in the North Sea Zone

A 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 has been published. 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.

The book will be freely available via Open Access. 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, see https://tinyurl.com/y2584myu