Publisher's Synopsis
The North Atlantic Viking diaspora in the medieval period has been of increasing interest to scholars, yet is an area that remains poorly understood. Through the lens of kinship relations, this book broadens understanding of the subject by testing the Norse North Atlantic against the modern sociological concept of diaspora. Using different theoretical approaches to social memory, social networks, oral history, migration and diaspora, the study draws upon the disciplines of history, anthropology and archaeology to interrogate a wide range of primary material, including medieval Icelandic textual sources like ?slendingab?k, Landn?mab?k, the ?slendingas?gur and the law codes, Gr?g?s. By focussing primarily on Iceland as the locus of Norse diasporic memorialisation and the Icelandic Family Sagas (?slendingas?gur) as repositories of social memory, it takes a fresh look at the role of kinship relations in the social processes of migration, settlement and the creation of identity.
