The Small World of the Vikings: Networks in Early Medieval Communication and Exchange

Abstract

This study explores the potential of complex network theory as a new approach to the organisation and dynamics of communication in early history. It shows how network theory pins down shortcomings of existing archaeological conceptions of trade and exchange. Moreover, it supplies a series of new, relevant questions to this subject, and new models to guide their solution. Analysing two examples, the article charts the affiliations of persons and sites in the ninth‐century literary description of Anskar's vita, and the distribution of artefact types in a large number of Early Viking Age sites in South Scandinavia. It shows how key features of complex networks can be outlined in a fragmentary sample of links. Viking Age long‐distance exchange is shown to have generated a small group of hubs, but lacked another feature, typically found in mature, robust networks: the connections rarely reached across hierarchical levels. This made it vulnerable to systemic collapse, and points to a salient difference between early medieval long‐distance communications and modern globalisation.