Narrating and Negotiating Difference in the Insular Viking Age

This paper explores the terms used in medieval Insular sources to refer to raiders, traders, settlers and their descendants from Scandinavia and from among the Scandinavian diaspora in the four centuries after the first surviving records of viking raids. The choice and use in Insular textual production of relational terminology such as gennti (gentiles), Gaill (foreigners), heðenen (heathens), pagani (pagans), barbari (barbarians), piratae (pirates) and wícing/ucing (pirate, sea-rover) was deliberate, especially once named leaders and more specific geographical or ethnic terminology begin to appear in the same sources, and material and scholarly networks are considered. This reflects a deliberate othering by Insular scribes, grounded in both the contemporary scholarly milieu and on biblical and late antique intellectual traditions. Furthermore, there are important regional distinctions in how these others are conceptualised, with Irish and Welsh scribes making recourse to the Old Testament and English scribes drawing on late antique patristics.