Coastal Comings and Goings: Pilgrimage, Trade, Memory and Watch-keeping during the Viking Age on the Isle of Man
The Isle of Man lies in the centre of the Irish Sea, between England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, on a sea-route that stretches all the way to Norway by way of Orkney and Shetland. Its varied, 140-km coastline was witness to every visit and departure during the medieval period, and was both a means of natural defence and a source of weakness, a closed barrier and an open place of opportunity.
The ways in which inhabitants and visitors made use of the coastline will be considered from a number of perspectives, through a wide-ranging survey of landing places and routeways, chapels, pilgrimage sites and beach markets, burial monuments and watch-sites. All of these would have been central to the way of life of the Vikings, who ruled the island until AD1265.
Andy Johnson is an archaeologist who works for Manx National Heritage, the heritage service for the Isle of Man, which lies at the geographical heart of the British Isles. He holds degrees in archaeology and the conservation of historic buildings.
His work requires wide-ranging knowledge of the archaeology and history of the Isle of Man and its regional setting in the Irish Sea, but his particular research interests lie in the early Christian and Viking eras and especially in medieval churches, chapels and shrines, coastal defence, upland archaeology, old roads, ruined farms and landscape history.
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