All our academic publications are Open Access and publicly available — with a maximum embargo period of 12 months from publication.
Follow the links below, or visit our dedicated Zenodo repository.
Journal articles
Kay, K & MH Eriksen
in press/2026 From kinship systems to kinwork and oddkin: a view from Scandinavia. World Archaeology .
Wilson, A. & B. Marshall
in press/2026 Precarious lives. Intersections of outlawry and slavery in medieval Iceland. Viking and Medieval Scandinavia.
López Aceves, J. M., Molloy, B. M. I., Graham, J., Eriksen, M.H., Mol, E., Pétursdóttir, Þ., Sequeira, J, Casimiro, T., Accinelli Obando, A & M Johnson 2026 These Words Are My Own: Archaeological Theory in Dialect. Cambridge Archaeological Journal.
Marshall, B, EL Thompson, A Wilson & MH Eriksen
in press/2026 Unbounded: The multiplicity of bodies and beings in Viking worlds. Open Arts Journal 12 (2025) Special Issue: Picturing the Body
Eriksen, MH, B Marshall, E Aslesen and C Tsoraki
2025 Viking body-making: New evidence for intra-action with iconic Viking anthropomorphic ‘art’. Antiquity 99(408), 1658–1676.
Tsoraki, C, , B Marshall, E Aslesen & MH Eriksen
2025 Microwear and Reflectance Transformation Imaging Data of Iconic Viking-Age Anthropomorphic Figures: a BODY-POLITICS Dataset. Journal of Open Archaeology Data.
Eriksen, MH, KM Olley, B Marshall & E Tollefsen
2025 Womb Politics: The pregnant body and archaeologies of absence. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 35(3): 522-535: DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774325000125
Eriksen, Marianne Hem & Kevin Kay
2022 Reflections on posthuman ethics. Grievability and the more-than-human worlds of Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 32 (2): 331-343
Eriksen, MH
2022 Body-worldings of later Scandinavian prehistory: making oddkin with two body-objects. Current Swedish Archaeology 30 (2022):65-94
Book chapters
Eriksen, MH & M Syrstad Andås in press/2026 Cultic objects: Depositional events in early urban Trondheim. In Creating Sacred Space. Encounters with a Wooden Church in Medieval Nidaros, edited by A.H. Petersén, I. Sahle, B.Pedersen and B. Bandlien. Forthcoming with Brepols, Turnhout.
Eriksen, MH
in press/2026? Households. Houses as technology in the Viking Age and beyond. In A Cultural History of Technology, edited by J. Alexander, A. Bix, S. Moon, W. Storey. Bloomsbury Academic, London.
Eriksen, MH & C Ratican
in press/2026? Multispecies Vikings: Animals, people, and cyborgs in the Late Iron and Viking Ages [PRE-PRINT]. In The Routledge Handbook of Death and Burial in the Viking Age, edited by Alison Klevnäs & Cecilia Ljung. Forthcoming with Routledge, London/New York.
Eriksen, MH & B Costello
2025 Bodies of intoxication. Psychoactives in Viking ritual practice In Ritual Performance in the Viking Age, edited by Simon Nygaard, Sarah Croix and Søren Sindbæk. Aarhus University Press, Aarhus.
Aslesen, E
2025 ‘Body, Doorway that You Are’. Gendering in 4th-6th century CE Voss and Hardanger. In Gendering the Nordic Past: Dialogues Between Perspectives. U. Pedersen, M. Moen and L. Skogstrand (eds.) Brepols, Turnhout. https://doi.org/10.1484/M.WOP-EB.5.144355
Kay, K & MH Eriksen
2024 Mapping collaborations: working in the contact zone of posthumanism and gender archaeology. In Gender Trouble and Current Archaeological Debates, edited by Uroš Matić, Bisserka Gaydarska, Laura Colfotean, and Marta Diaz-Guardamino. Springer, New York.
Eriksen, MH
2023 Of bodies and buildings: Rituals in the halls of the Vikings. In The Norse Sorceress: Mind and Materiality in the Viking World, edited by L. Gardeła, S. Bønding and P. Penz. Oxbow, Oxford.
Books
Olley, Katherine Marie
under contract Childbirth in Old Norse Literature. Boydell & Brewer, Martlesham.
Eriksen, Marianne Hem
under contract Ritual Violence and the Vikings. Cambridge Elements, Cambridge University Press.
Eriksen, Marianne Hem (and contributors)
under contract Grave Politics. Dwelling with the dead in Iron and Viking-Age Scandinavia. London: Routledge.
Previous publications related to the project themes
Eriksen, Marianne Hem
2020a Body-objects and personhood in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia: Processing, curating, and depositing skulls in settlements. World Archaeology 52(1):103-119.
Eriksen, Marianne Hem
2020b Dream-houses of the Late Iron and Viking Ages: The house and the self. In Re-imagining Periphery: Archaeology and text in northern Europe from Iron Age to Viking- and Early Medieval periods, edited by K. Ilves and C. Hillerdal. Oxbow, Oxford.
Eriksen, Marianne Hem
2017 Don’t all mothers love their children? Deposited infants as animate objects in the Scandinavian Iron Age. World Archaeology 49(3):338-356.
Educational resources
AR3092 Bodies and Beings in Viking Worlds, an elective module for third-year undergraduates in the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester.
This optional module examines the fascinating and strange bodies and beings that populated the Viking worlds. The module considers themes of the Viking Age in light of current theoretical discourse, including topics like slavery, sexuality, human-animal transformation, the body and the life-course, and personhood. We will draw on evidence such as architecture, burials, human remains, and material culture, as well as (to a lesser extent) runic inscriptions, medieval poetry, and sagas. We will confront some of the stereotypical notions of the Vikings and their contemporaries, and explore well-known aspects of the period (raids, trade, rising kingdoms) in the context of a world that was made up of diverse experiences and a criss-crossing of human and non-human beings.
Offered every spring from 2023-2025 after which MHE and the project is moving from the University of Leicester,
Body-Politics 