Svante Fischer

This paper discusses the recurring problem of veterans from the Late Roman army in Scandinavia. It employs various forms of empirical evidence to discuss the problem of a peripheral society dispatching large segments of the male population to fight wars in the imperialist center.

This paper summarizes the background and excavation history of the hilltop settlement of Runsa in Uppland, Sweden. Runsa tells an important story of several attempts at establishing and maintaining a control point and a safe haven on a small island strategically located along one of the major water routes connecting the inland of Uppland to Lake Mä...

This is a discussion on the role of silver in the Scandinavian Migration period. It departs from a decontextualized find from the island of Tjurkö in the county of Blekinge in Southern Sweden (Fabech 1994). The paper has a distinct focus on evidence from Sweden and Denmark. While the Norwegian material is obviously equally interesting, there was no...

Negli ultimi cinquant'anni sono stati numerosi i rinvenimenti monetali nella Penisola Iberica ma le pubblicazioni relative sono apparse prima dell'introduzione di moderni sistemi di classificazione, come ad esempio il DOC e il RIC X. Oltre a ciò, alcuni de-positi di età romana contenevano solidi appartenenti ad usurpatori, quali ad esempio Costanti...

This is a study of the so-called Aquileia solidus hoard, discovered on February 11, 1971 during an archaeological excavation of the central nexus of the basilica-forum complex of Aquileia. In an early publication by Giovanni Gorini in 1979, two possible interpretations were proposed. First, the nine solidi could have been deposited relatively soon...

Late Roman mint of Mediolanum

This paper is a study of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine solidi from the province of Scania in southern Sweden and the solidi kept in the coin cabinet of the Lund University History Museum. The catalogue lists 34 solidi and classifies the recorded issues according to modern numismatic standards using the current DOC, MIBE and RIC typologies. It...

This paper is a study of the Late Roman and Early Byzantine solidi from the province of Scania in southern Sweden and the solidi kept in the coin cabinet of the Lund University History Museum. The catalogue lists 34 solidi and classifies the recorded issues according to modern numismatic standards using the current DOC, MIBE and RIC typologies. It...

The first step in this assessment of the imitative solidus finds in Scandinavia is to classify the material in time and space. With no major classification typology available to her at the time, Fagerlie ordered the coins mainly according to iconography. It appears, given her catalogue structure, that Fagerlie had come to the conclusion that the ch...

ABSTRACT Svante Fischer 2020. Th e Late Roman and Early Byzantine Solidi of the Stiernstedt Ancient Coin Collection. Journal of Archaeology and Ancient History. 2020, No. 28 pp 1–26. http://urn. kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-426054 Th is is a study of 33 Late Roman and Early Byzantine solidi from the period 394-565 that are kept in the Stier...

This paper is a study of three solidus hoards located at strategic passages through the Italian Alps. It is argued that the hoards are connected to barbarian mercenaries in Roman service. The hoards are analysed and compared to historical sources and solidus hoards from Scandinavia. It is argued that it may be possible to distinguish between hoards...

Abstract: This paper discusses the imported images of Late Roman and Early Byzantine imperial dress found in Scandinavia as a possible source of inspiration for the gold foil figures. It examines how these images were first presented to and then imitated by Scandinavians by focusing on solidus pendants from sites where gold foil figures have been r...

The recorded Late Roman and Early Byzantine solidus material in Scandinavia is rich and diverse. Much of the material comes from well documented hoards and the various segments of the Scandinavian solidus corpus can be connected to important political events and related specific payments within the Late Roman Empire, as evident from late 5th centur...

Scandinavian hoarding

Svante Fischer “From Italy to Scandinavia – The Numismatic Record of the Fall of the Western Empire” Abstract In the study of an era of purported mass migration such as Late Antiquity, one ought to verify to what extent people or objects actually moved from one place to another. One must also ascertain if this migration can be shown to have had...

The strongest archaeological evidence for the presence of Scandinavians inside the Western Empire in the 5th century is discussed. The purpose is to address a set of questions related to the return of military veterans from the Continent to the Scandinavian periphery during the 5th century. The key issue here is to discuss whether it is possible to...

This paper discusses the presence of solidi struck in Constantinople found in 5th and early to mid-6th century solidus hoards in the Western Empire, Italy in particular. Some 112 different solidus hoards in eleven regions are compared and evaluated. It is suggested that solidi from Con-stantinople in most of these hoards may be interpreted as the e...

Depuis trois décennies, le « barbare » a fait l’objet d’un intérêt accru. L’étude des civilisations se focalisait jusqu’ici sur les espaces plus documentés par les sources écrites, mais une attention nouvelle est désormais accordée aux mondes jugés extérieurs, aux zones de contact, aux pratiques d’échanges et aux formes de la représentation mutuell...

the purpose of this paper is to provide an interdisciplinary discussion ofthe relationship between the diffusion of the runic script and sonie of the major waterways of Europe, namely the North Sea, the Rhine, and the Danube. Judging from a distribution map, runic inscriptions from the Merovingian Period appear to have a very distinct concentration...

Syftet med denna text är att redogöra för de äldre runinskrifternas problematik, hur de ordnas i seriation rent typologiskt, och hur denna seriation kan användas till att datera förändringar i de äldre runinskrifterna. Texten kommer också att belysa de begränsningar som typologisk seriationsmetodik inbegriper.

BA-thesis, Department of Scandinavian Languages, Uppsala University 1999.

The purpose of this talk is to highlight a very real problem in Western intellectual tradition – that of the Occidentalism projected by westerners themselves. The terms Orientalism (Said 1978) and Eurocentrism (Amin 1988) are postcolonial terms describing the way westerners portray and regard the Orient and how they also consider European values an...

This article contextualizes some one hundred mid- to late 5 th century solidi and two hundred silver coins found in the grave of King Childeric in Tournai, Belgium. We argue that the coins in the grave must have been assembled for the specific purpose of the burial rite and that some of the participants in the burial rite were allowed to look at th...

In this paper, I discuss the context of a Late Roman solidus hoard found in the Casa delle Vestali on the Forum Romanum in Rome. The hoard consists of 397 solidi, Late Roman gold coins. Most of the hoard consists of uncirculated solidi struck in the name of the Western Roman emperor Procopius Anthemius (AD 467-472). By means of situating the hoard...

Archaeological investigations and clear aerial photos have identified the presence of house foundations within several ringforts on the island of Oland, east of the Swedish mainland. One of them, Sandby borg, was selected for further investigations by means of a ground-penetrating radar (GRP) and magnetometry survey. A subsequent excavation was car...

This article presents a Merovingian Period silver spoon that was recently discovered in an opulent female chamber grave in the “Niederfeld” row grave cemetery of Ichtratzheim (Bas-Rhin). The spoon has no less than three different inscriptions, one in seriffed Latin capitals and two in runes. The first contains a Latin male personal name, Matteus, t...

The purpose of this paper is to explore the background of a small group of relatively rare 5th-century solidus types struck in Thessalonica for the East Roman Emperor Leo I (AD 457–474) that have been found in Scandinavia. Besides being listed and briefly discussed by Fagerlie in 1967, no concentrated attempt has ever been made to identify their sp...

There are some 40 Migration Period chamber graves in Sweden (Fig. 1). The distribution pattern extends from Bohuslän in the south-west to Medelpad in the north-east, although the vast majority is found in Uppland and Södermanland in the Mälar Valley. A Swedish chamber grave typically dates to c. AD 480–510. The wooden interior construction usually...

This paper will discuss a particular case of Early Christian literacy and Gothic text production in the age of Germanic kleptocracy, that is the 5th and 6th centuries AD. Its analytical framework is a form of comparative historical sociolinguistics. It will focus on the Ostrogothic king Theoderic the Great of Italy (493-526 AD) and his relationship...

Mes recherches concernent « l’hémorragie d’or », la fuite du capital romain en forme de sous d’or à la fin du Bas-Empire que l’on trouve aujourd’hui dans des trésors monétaires cachés et abandonnés. Il s’agit des vestiges des tributs accordés aux barbares au Vème siècle après J.-C. Ces paiements destinés aux rois barbares fédérés de l’Empire et leu...

A key feature of swords from the Migration and Merovingian Periods is that they consist of many different parts, as recently highlighted by the discovery of the Staffordshire hoard. This paper seeks to understand sword parts and their depositional contexts by interpreting them as symbols of kleptocracy, animated by their object biographies in a mar...

"Runic inscriptions from the Merovingian Period appear to have very distinct concentrations along bodies of water. Moreover, at a quick glance there would seem to be a typological differentiation of runic inscriptions along different bodies of water. The North Sea shores and the English Channel offer many runic inscriptions pertaining to a martial...

There are some forty chamber graves from the 4th and 5th centuries AD found in Sweden. Five cases, including three recent finds in Uppland, offer more precise information in regard to the burial construction and the status of those buried. The chronology of the chamber grave phenomenon falls into two separate phases. By comparing this chronology wi...

The Stora Brunneby hoard of 17 solidi with a terminus post quem of 451 is presented and analysed. The hoard's type composition and the coins' average weight are quite unusual, and the hoard was therefore selected for publication in order to present some preliminary results of the interdisciplinary LEO Project at the Department of Archaeology and An...

This paper seeks to show the scientific potential of new research methods in relation to the previously published material from Helgö. We believe that one must take up the task left behind by earlier generations of scholars, providing answers to many of the questions that still surround Helgö. We will argue this case, by briefly contextualizing thr...

This chapter discusses the 5th-century west Roman imperial residences of Rome and its substitutes Arles and Ravenna, as understood within the framework of an imperialist ideology of urbanism, the “Roman urban mind”. During the late Roman Empire, the city of Rome was the central focus of the old Roman infrastructure. Ideally, the highest echelons of...

Projektet avser att skärskåda det sena Romarrikets fall i väst och det tidiga Byzantiums uppkomst i öst i relation till den barbariska periferin och klimatförändringar. Perioden har valts av flera skäl. För det första finns goda klimatdata tillgängliga från flera platser i Medelhavsområdet och norra Europa. För det andra är det historiska källmater...

The three sections presented here – (1) Changing Urbanities: Revision and Radical Critique, (2) Threshold Effects in Urban Society, and (3) Resourceful Urbanity Triggers Language Resilience – are based on the contributions to the Urban Mind project, frames 3 and 4. In these frames the ‘urban mind’ is looked upon as the normalcy of urbanity. The aut...

The Udovice solidus pendants : late 5th century evidence of South Scandinavian mercenaries in the Balkans Fischer, Svante Fornvännen 2008(103):2, s. [81]-88 : ill.

This essay seeks to address questions surrounding the Valsgärde burial ground (and to some extent also Gamla Uppsala, Uppsala, Vaksala and Vendel) by employing a terminology borrowed from the historical research of the French scholar Fernand Braudel (1902–1987) and the Annales School. Braudel (2001) distinguishes between the short-term event and th...

This is the first volume of the Runic Inscriptions of France (IRF). This work is a post-doctoral study, financed by the French Republic, the Swedish Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities, the Sven and Dagmar Salén Foundation, and the Åke Wiberg Foundation. The publication has been financed by the Association française de l’Archéologie m...

This paper seeks to contextualize the archaeological context of early runic inscriptions from Merovingian Period Alemannia (450-700) , against that of the Migration Period (400-550) and Vendel Period (550-800) of the North.

Abstract This paper is based on two international research projects. It discusses two different groups of objects, runic ring sword pommels, and pottery found in Merovingian Gaul and Anglo-SaxonKent (fig. 1). First, Volume I of Les Seigneurs des Anneaux (Runic inscriptions of France) (IRF 1), a study of 37 ring sword pommels and two scabbardmouths...