Pre-Viking Scandinavia

The early eighth century in Scandinavia preceded the conventional beginning of the Viking Age but already contained many of the social and material features later associated with it. Denmark and Sweden were divided among regional rulers and powerful families whose authority depended on armed followings, gift-giving, trade and personal oaths. Long-distance movement across the Baltic and North Sea existed well before the better documented raiding expansion of the late eighth and ninth centuries.

Archaeology provides much of the evidence for settlement, weaponry, ships, craft production and elite culture, while later sagas and poems preserve traditions that cannot simply be treated as contemporary chronicles. Religious life remained predominantly pagan, although Christian influence was increasingly present around the fringes of the Scandinavian world.

Theodore Brun’s A Mighty Dawn begins in eighth-century Denmark and deliberately places its fictional story in this poorly documented borderland between archaeology, legend and the later saga tradition.