Seminars, Workshops and Events

Seminars
Two insights into global trade networks of Viking-age Eurasia, ninth to tenth century: lists of the world’s commodities in al-Jahiz's Kitab al-tabassur bi l-tijarah and in the anonymous Hudud al-‘alam


Date: 6th of May 2026
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Dr. Viacheslav Kuleshov
Stockholm University, NFG (Numismatic Research Group)
Abbasid Coins in Viking Worlds: Evidence of Overlapping Networks


Date: 28th of April 2026
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Omran Garazhian
Archaeologist, Prehistoric Field Archaeology and Anthropological Archaeology. Studying the connections of the Viking Age to Central Asia and southern Russia
A Viking in the sun: Harald Hardrada as the best-evidenced Viking visitor to the Mediterranean

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Date: 23rd of April 2026
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Dr. Gianluca Raccagni
Senior Lecturer in Medieval History; Director of the History and Games Lab Research Centre, University of Edinburgh, and the PI of research project 'A Viking in the Sun: Harald Hardrada, the Mediterranean, and the Nordic World between the Late Viking Age and the Eve of the Crusades'.
Byzantium and Rus: A New History of Relations, 800-1453

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Date: 13th of January 2026
Time: 10.00 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Dr. Monica White
Associate Professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies
Constructing the Sacred: Religious Identity and Collective Experience in the Pre-Christian Norse World.

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Date: 2nd of December 2025
Time: 13.15 – 15.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/22-0031 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Rodrigo Carreño Muñiz
PhD in Religious Studies, specialized in Viking and Greek Religion- University of Madrid.
A Curiosity of Wonders: The Rūs and Scandinavia in an Undiscussed Arabic ʿAjāʾib Text
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Date: 28th of May 2025
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Tonicha Upham
WIVA PostDoc- Specialist in Islamicate Sources on the Rus'
Museum in Wartime: Lessons from Ukraine
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Date: 21st of May 2025
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/22-0031 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Fedir Androshchuk
Director of the National Museum of the History of Ukraine in Kyiv.
Almandines from India: Late Antique workshops in Alexandria, Egypt


Date: 24th of April 2025
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/22-0031 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Patricia Rifa - Abou El Nil
Centre d’Études Alexandrines
Vínland, or Berryland? Exploring the possibilities of the Strait of Belle Isle in the late Viking Age


Date: 23rd of April 2025
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom
Our speakers:
Environmental archaeologists: Drs Véronique Forbes and Paul Ledger, the excavators of L’Anse aux Meadows.
Listening to things
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Date: 8th of April 2025
Time: 13.15 – 15.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/16-0042
Our speaker:
James Webb:
South African artist whose work has been showcased in solo exhibitions at, amongst others, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Sweden, 2024; the Art Institute of Chicago, USA, 2018; Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom, 2016. Major group exhibitions include the inaugural Islamic Arts Biennale (2023), 8th and 16th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (2007 & 2022), 13th Biennial of Dakar (2018), 13th Biennial of Sharjah (2017), 12th Bienal de la Habana (2015), and the 55th Biennale di Venezia (2013).
Paying with small change in the Viking Age? The identification of non-silver currencies in the Birka grave material.


Date: 21st of March 2025
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Florent Audy:
Antiquarian at the Economy Museum and Royal Coin Cabinet
Vikings across Eurasia: Early Indian Ocean networks in the growth of trans – continental ‘supply lines’ to Scandinavian lands (1st – 10th century CE)


Date: 14th of March 2025
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Dr. Sunil Gupta:
Specialist on the Indian Ocean world of trade and maritime connections, with a long-term focus on cultural interactions
Eurasian Interactions Through the Silk Roads Seen From the Eastern Territories


Date: 4th of February 2025
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-2033 and on Zoom
Our speaker:
Dr. Rocco Rante:
Archaeologist in the Department of Islamic Art at the Musée du Louvre.
He headed the Franco-Uzbek Archaeological Mission in the Bukhara Oasis and the Franco-Iranian Archaeological Mission in Khorasan.
The Caliph and the Falcons: a Ninth-Century History from Iceland to Iraq


Date: 21st of January 2025
Time: 10.00 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/2-K1023
Our speaker:
SAMUEL OTTEWILL-SOULSBYWIVA:
Visiting Researcher- Historian of late antiquity and the middle ages,with special interests in manuscripts, diplomacy,and urbanism- Oslo University
Cultural Contact Zones in Viking Age and Medieval Fennoscandia


Date: 17th of December 2024
Time: 13.15 – 15.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/ 2-2033 and on zoom
Our speaker:
Dr. Gwendolyne Knight
Secretary, Societas Magica. Centre for Medieval Studies, Department of History, Stockholm University.
Body-Politics of first Millennium Scandinavia: Tales from a large-scale research project


Date: 26th of November 2024
Time: 13.15 – 15.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/ 2-2033 and on zoom
We welcome two speakers for this seminar:
- Dr. Marianne Hem Eriksen, Associate Professor of Archaeology at the School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester, and PI of the ERC Starting Grant Body-Politics.
- Renate Larsson, PhD Researcher BODY-POLITICS | Future 100 funded, and Topic Coordinator for “Promoting the 3Fs (Freedom, Forage, and Friends) in Equine Welfare” in Frontiers of Veterinary Science. School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester. Renate’s presentation is titled: “Living with Humans: Exploring Animal Lives and Relationships in Viking Age Scandinavia Through the Lens of 'Archaeoethology'”
Epic and Barbarism: The Representation of Viking Culture in Film and Television
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Date: 19th of November 2024
Time: 10.15 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/ 2-2033 and on zoom
Our speaker:
Dr. Alberto Robles Delgado
Universidad de Alicante, Spain
Bernadotte Scholarship at the Department of History, Stockholm University
Events and Workshops
Common Waters and the Historical Horizon through the Maritime Studies


Date: 11 Juni 2026
Time: 09.00 – 12.00
Place: Uppsala Eng/ 2-0024 and on zoom
Discussion titles:
- Maritime Southeast Asia in the first Millennium CE: A review of its Shipwrecks, Ports and Products
- Ships Building Connections
- Before Trade: How Maritime Networks Emerge from Ecological Rhythms
Our speakers:
- Stephen A. Murphy: Pratapaditya Pal Senior Lecturer in Curating and Museology of Asian Art and Director of the Centre of South East Asian Studies, at SOAS, University of London.
- Verónica Walker Vadillo: Ramón y Cajal Research Fellow, University of Alcalá
- Abhirada Komoot: WIVA Visiting Researcher. A maritime archaeologist and cultural heritage specialist
Tracing Indo-Roman Trade Along the Coromandel Coast and Kerala
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Date: 19-30 January 2026
Place: India
Building on Dr. Sunil Gupta’s successful time as a visiting researcher, we travelled along the Coromandel Coast in southeastern India, visiting trading ports, production sites, and temples in the heartland of the Chola dynasty. This powerful maritime empire, partly contemporary with the Late Iron Age and Viking Age in northern Europe, was deeply engaged in Indo-Roman trade, with connections that endured long after the fall of the Roman Empire. Our site visits included historic trading posts such as Arikamedu and Korkai.
The journey along India’s coast continues west into Kerala, the historic heart of the spice trade. We visited more spectacular sites along the way. In Thiruvananthapuram, we held stimulating discussions with colleagues at the Department of Archaeology, University of Kerala. These meetings helped establish valuable contacts for future collaboration.
Belitung and the Silk Roads of the Sea
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Date: 11-16 August 2025
Place: Singapore and Indonesia
Singapore:
- Asian Civilisations Museum, Belitung displays
- Belitung collections, Heritage Conservation Centre
- Jewel of Muscat ship hall, Marine Life Park
Jakarta:
- Belitung and Cerebon collections at Maritime Heritage galleries,
- Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries
- Early medieval collections at National Museum of Indonesia
- Intan collection at Museum of Fine Arts and Ceramics
Workshop Participants:
- Jiang Jiachen, SOAS
- Kevin Lam, ACM
- Michael Flecker, HSG
- Kan Shu Yi, NMS
- Gerald Sim, HPR
- Jian Cheng Michael Ng, ACM
- Kwa Chong Guan, NTU
- Tom Vosmer, N.A
- Emma Hayles, HCC
- Aaron Kao, HSG
- Stephen Murphy, SOAS
Circulation between Viking Age Birka and the Steppes: Things, People and Ideas- Csete Katona


Date: 9th of September 2025
Time: 10:00 – 16.00
Place: Uppsala
Viking Age Peatland and Turf Archaeology at L'Anse aux Meadows- Veronique Forbes
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Date: 25th of July 2025
Time: 10:00 – 16.00
Place: Uppsala
Special Guests:
- Johan Runer: Curator- Swedish National Maritime and Transport Museums.
- Fredrik Hallgren: Archeologist- Stiftelsen Kulturmiljövård
- Ingmar Jansson: Docent
Paying with small change in the Viking Age?- Florent Audy
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Date: 21th of March 2025
Time: 9:00 – 17.00
Place: Uppsala
Special Guests:
PhD Ingmar Jansson, Docent
PhD Viacheslav Kuleshov, Stockholm University and Stockholm Numismatic Institute
PhD Nanouschka Myrberg Burström, associate professor/docent and reader at Stockholm University
PhD Sven Kalmring, associate professor/docent, and senior curator at the Swedish History Museum
PhD Fedir Androshchuk, docent/associate professor, Swedish History Museum and part of IAB for WIVA
Vikings Across Eurasia- Sunil Gupta
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Vikings across Eurasia: Early Indian Ocean networks in the growth of trans – continental ‘supply lines’ to Scandinavian lands (1st – 10th century CE)
Date: 14th of March 2025
Time: 9:00 – 16.00
Place: Uppsala
Abstract:
The key theme of the workshop ‘Vikings across Eurasia’ alludes to the spread of Scandinavian exchange networks across a vast area from western Europe to Central Asia between 800 – 1000 CE, driven by the desire of Viking communities to acquire exotic goods from far lands. Among the trade artefacts recovered from excavated Viking settlements such as those in southern Sweden, are materials sourced from the Indian Ocean world, a maritime area stretching from the Red Sea to the South China Sea, incorporating the Arabian, Persian, Indic and Southeast Asian littoral regions. The artefacts from Late Iron Age and Viking sites comprise thousands of cowrie shells, wound and drawn glass beads, stone beads of carnelian, garnet and rock crystal among other items. It is argued that the movement of these materials, mainly through intermediaries in the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Caspian Sea regions, involved long established Indian Ocean maritime networks. I will emphasize the point that the Indian Ocean connections with Scandinavian lands in the Viking Age need to be understood in deep time, in terms of the expansion of sea-land ‘supply lines’ through the first millennium CE into Eurasia. In this context, I propose to give an illustrated talk, with my point of departure being the Roman sea trade with India and Indian Ocean lands in the first century CE.
Falcons, coins and the contacts between the Caliphate and Scandinavia during the Viking Age.


Date: 21st of January 2025
Time: 9:00 – 17.00
Place: Uppsala
Special guests
- Sam Ottewill-Soulsby: International visiting researcher at WIVA, historian of late antiquity and the middle ages, with special interests in manuscripts, diplomacy, and urbanism.
- Viacheslav Kuleshov: Senior researcher at Stockholm University, numismatist and archaeologist, with special interests in Oriental and Islamic numismatics.
- Ragnar Orten Lie: Archaeologist and project manager responsible for Viking veien Vestfold and Telemark, Scandinavia's leading expert on the relationship between birds of prey and humans in history.
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