Pre-modern seminar no 56

On 13 February, Professor Kendra Willson from the Silesian University will give a talk on the topic "Runic inscriptions from Poland in archaeology and imagination". The seminar will take place in Lossi 3, room 406, at 16:15.

While Poland is not normally considered to have had a runic tradition, there are a few runic finds from the Migration Period and Viking Age, the latter concentrated in areas of Scandinavian settlement in northwestern Poland. A few inscriptions have been imported in modern times or created in a memorial spirit. There has also been scholarly and popular speculation that Slavs used runes, which has led to some forgeries and fanciful interpretations of inscriptions. The hypothesis of Slavic runes was a mainstream view in the nineteenth century, but after Poland's restored independence after World War I, it was relegated to alternative discourses. The idea may be reemerging with a new find from Czechia and changing views of "Vikings" in scholarship and popular culture. The debate over runes is part of a long dispute over the role of Scandinavian contacts in Poland's early history.

The Pre-modern seminar is an interdisciplinary and informal seminar at Tartu University organized by the Department of Scandinavian Studies. It was founded in 2010 and has so far arranged 55 meetings with talks by scholars on different levels, both from Estonia and from abroad. The focus is on pre-1800 issues of all kinds.