The study of early medieval towns has frequently concentrated on urban beginnings, the search for broadly applicable definitions of urban characteristics and the chronological development of towns. Far less attention has been paid to the experience of living in towns.

The thirteen chapters in this book bring together the current state of knowledge about Viking-Age towns (c. 800–1100) from both sides of the Irish Sea, focusing on everyday life in and around these emerging settlements. What was it really like to grow up, live, and die in these towns? What did people eat, what did they wear, and how did they make a living for themselves? Although historical sources are addressed, the emphasis of the volume is overwhelmingly archaeological, paying homage to the wealth of new material that has become available since the advent of urban archaeology in the 1960s.

• Coverpage
• Titlepage
• Copyright
• Contents
• Locations of places referred to in the volume drawn by Letty ten Harkel
• Preface D. M. Hadley and Letty ten Harkel
• Section 1: Introductions
  • 1 Living in Viking-Age towns
  • 2 Towns and identities in Viking England
  • 3 Viking Dublin: enmities, alliances and the cold gleam of silver
• Section 2: Constructing and experiencing urban landscapes
  • 4 Beyond longphuirt? Life and death in early Viking-Age Ireland
  • 5 From country to town: social transitions in Viking-Age housing
  • 6 Childhood in Viking and Hiberno-Scandinavian Dublin, 800–1100
  • 7 Whither the warrior in Viking-Age towns?
  • 8 Aristocrats, burghers and their markets: patterns in the foundation of Lincoln’s urban churches
• Section 3: Urban trades and activities
  • 9 More than just meat: animals in Viking-Age towns
  • 10 No pots please, we’re Vikings: pottery in the southern Danelaw, 850–1000
  • 11 Of towns and trinkets: metalworking and metal dress-accessories in Viking-Age Lincoln
  • 12 Making a good comb: mercantile identity in 9th- to 11th-century England
  • 13 Craft and handiwork: wood, antler and bone as an everyday material in Viking-Age Waterford and Cork