The World in the Viking Age

The Uppsala Research Centre for the World in the Viking Age (WiVA) is a collaborative, interdisciplinary meeting place for the study and wider communication of a defining episode in world history: the Scandinavian diaspora that unfolded across Eurasia from c.750-1050 CE.

While it has long been a touchstone of identity, culture, heritage, and emotion in the Nordic countries, a fascination for the Viking Age is also an enduring global phenomenon.

At the same time, the Vikings have been stereotyped and politically misappropriated almost beyond recognition, and there is a greater urgency to nuanced interpretation in both the academic and public arenas.

These issues lie at the heart of the WiVA Centre, as we cross research frontiers to reveal the full scale of ethnic and cultural diversity in the Viking world.

For the first time, we can now move south and east along the Silk Roads, and trace the Scandinavians’ activities in a network of early globalisation that connected the Baltic to the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, Central Asia, and the China Seas.

To explore these new horizons, over five years the WiVA Centre at Uppsala University will bring together a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists, historians, runologists, geneticists and more.

There will be jobs for young researchers, international visiting scholars will come to Sweden, and a Master’s degree programme will launch, alongside a programme of public events. Our view of the Viking Age will never be the same again.