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ARCHITECTURE, SOCIETY, AND RITUAL IN VIKING
AGE SCANDINAVIA

In this book, Marianne Hem Eriksen explores the social organization of

Viking Age Scandinavia through a study of domestic architecture, and in
particular the doorway. A highly charged architectural element, the door
is not merely a practical, constructional solution. Doors control access,
generate movement, and demark boundaries, yet also serve as potent ritual
objects. For this study, Eriksen analyzes and interprets the archaeological
data of house remains from Viking Age Norway, which are here synthe-
sized for the first time. Using social approaches to architecture, she demon-
strates how the domestic space of the Viking household, which could
include masters and slaves, wives and mistresses, children and cattle, was
not neutral. Quotidian and ritual interactions with, through, and orches-
trated by doorways prove to be central to the production of a social world
in the Viking Age. Eriksen’s book challenges the male-dominated focus of
research on the Vikings and expands research questions beyond topics of
seaborne warriors, trade, and craft.

Marianne Hem Eriksen is Associate Professor of Archaeology at the

University of Oslo. From 2017 to 2019 she was a Research Fellow at the
University of Cambridge. An elected member of the Young Researchers of
Norway under the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, she was
awarded His Majesty the King's Gold Medal for Younger Scholars of
Excellence in 2016.
ARCHITECTURE,
SOCIETY, AND RITUAL
IN VIKING AGE
SCANDINAVIA
DOORS, DWELLINGS,
AND DOMESTIC SPACE

MARIANNE HEM ERIKSEN

University of Oslo
University Printing House, Cambridge cb2 8bs, United Kingdom
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© Cambridge University Press 2019
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
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First published 2019
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A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
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names: Eriksen, Marianne Hem, author.
title: Architecture, society, and ritual in Viking Age Scandinavia : doors, dwellings,
and domestic space / Marianne Hem Eriksen, University of Oslo.
description: Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2019. |
Includes bibliographical references.
identifiers: lccn 2018035538| isbn 9781108497220 (hardback) | isbn 9781108739603
(paperback)
subjects: lcsh: Architecture, Viking–Themes, motives. | Architecture and
society–Scandinavia–History–To 1500. | Domestic space–Scandinavia–
History–To 1500. | Doorways–Social aspects–Scandinavia.
classification: lcc na7370 .e75 2019 | ddc 721/.82209480902–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018035538
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We are never real historians, but always near poets, and our emotion is
perhaps nothing but an expression of a poetry that was lost
– Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
For Lotte Hedeager
CONTENTS

List of Figures page ix

Preface xiii

part i opening doors to the viking age 1

1 ENTRY POINTS 3
On the Threshold 3
New Gateways to the Vikings 4
The House: Ordering Space, Bodies, and Social Relations 6
Towards a Social Archaeology of the Viking Age 10
Architecture of the Argument 13

2 T H E P OW E R OF T HE D OO R 16
Architecture and Affect 16
Betwixt and Between 21
Viking Doors 25

part ii ordering settlements and landscapes 39

3 FL E S H I N G OU T T H E P A S T : H O U S E S A N D H O U S E H O L D S
OF T HE V IK ING A GE 41
Introducing the Scandinavian-Style Longhouse 41
Mapping Settlements in Space and Time 48
Social Spaces of the Longhouse 52
Women, Slaves, Animals, Children: Heterogeneous Vikings 68

4 CROSSING THE THRESHOLD: INTERIOR SPACE 80

Controlling Access, Controlling Bodies 80
Movement and Affect in the Longhouse 90

vii
viii CONTENTS

Privacy, Proxemics, and Performance 101

Differentiated Access, Differentiated Affect 108

5 N E T W O R K E D L A N DS C A P E S : E X T E R I O R SP A C E 110
Settlement and Landscape 110
Physical and Mental Boundaries 120
Placing the House 124
Placing the Door 134
Networked Landscapes 141

part iii ritual objects, ritual spaces 143

6 ‘LIFT ME OVER DOOR-HINGES AND LINTELS’: DOORWAYS,

BODIES, AND BIOGRAPHIES 145
Houses and Bodies 145
Doors and Sexualized Ritual 146
Two Eerie Tales 150
Guardians of Space: Doors and Depositional Practices 163
Houses, Bodies, and Biographies 176

7 T H R E S H O L D S T O OT HE R W O R L D S 179
A Significant Boundary to Cross 179
The House and the Dead 189
Doors to the Dead 200
Doors as Spaces between: Moulding Ritual Practice 211

8 E X IT S: A SO C IA L A R C H A E O L O G Y O F T H E
V I K I N G A GE 212
The Door as a Portal to the Past 213
The Vibrant House, the Evocative Door 215
Reanimating the Past: A Call for a Social Archaeology
of the Vikings 216

Appendix House Sites from Late Iron Age Norway 219

References 233
Endnotes 265
Index 267
Color plates are to be found between pp. 146 and 147.
FIGURES

2.1 The door reproduces the axial symmetry of the bodies page 19
2.2 Three ways the door can create vision lines, manipulating the
perception of space and objects 20
2.3 False door from an Egyptian tomb, exhibited at the British Museum 24
2.4 Preserved door from the Viking town of Kaupang, Norway 28
2.5 Reconstruction drawing of the complete door found in Hedeby 29
2.6 Picture stone from Lillbjärs, Gotland, Sweden, ‘keyhole’ shaped 30
2.7 Three iconographical representations of houses with doorways 31
2.8 The hogbacks allude to Scandinavian longhouses 32
2.9 The door from twelfth-century Stålekleivsloftet, Norway,
with repeatedly painted and carved crosses and ornamentation 34
2.10 Urnes stave church portal with its characteristic keyhole shape 34
3.1 Scandinavian-style longhouses at approximately 1,000-year intervals 44
3.2 Illustration displaying the varying length of the longhouses 46
3.3 Map of the sixty-five archaeological sites constituting the primary
empirics of this book 50
3.4 The longhouse from Sørbø, Rogaland, is an example of a house
with two separate hearth rooms 55
3.5 Three examples of houses with a possible ‘room beyond the byre’ 61
3.6 Miniature chair in silver from a woman’s chamber burial
from Björkö, Sweden 65
3.7 Buildings interpreted to include hall function 67
3.8 Helganeset – a small and unevenly built longhouse 78
4.1 The different types of door identification evident in the corpus 82
4.2 Longhouse with an extended entrance 83
4.3 Overview of the entrance types of forty-three longhouses
with complete entrance patterns from Late Iron Age Norway 84
4.4 Not all entrance patterns are equally frequent 85
4.5 The stone-walled Viking Age longhouse from Oma, Rogaland,
is an example of a dwelling with opposing entrances 86
4.6 Four buildings and their corresponding gamma maps 89
4.7 Legend of different labels used in the access analyses 89
4.8 An assortment of gamma maps from the longhouses, all ‘deep’
or tree-like 90
4.9 Visualizations of the four models of movement identified
in the gamma maps 92

ix
x LIST OF FIGURES

4.10 Line chart showing the average depth values of the social spaces
of the longhouse 95
4.11 The longhouse at Moi I/V with a socio-spatial interpretation 98
4.12 Gamma maps of houses interpreted as buildings with hall function 100
4.13 Suggestion of how different territories from proxemics theory
might be spatially situated within a Late Iron Age longhouse 104
4.14 Access analysis of courtyard site from Bjarkøy, Troms 107
5.1 Angled settlements from different sites in Scandinavia 112
5.2 Interpretation of phases of the Late Iron Age settlement
at Skeie, Rogaland 113
5.3 Overview of the four phases of settlement at Golvsengane,
Sogn og Fjordane 115
5.4 Overview of the different phases at the central place Åker, Hedmark 116
5.5 Model of the relationship between the social boundaries examined
through proxemics theory in Chapter 4, and the boundaries mentioned
in the Hälsingeland law 124
5.6 Topographical model displaying five types of landscape placement 125
5.7 The average length of the longhouses vs. their topographical placement 127
5.8 Radar graph displaying the orientation of ninety-nine longhouses
in Late Iron Age Norway 128
5.9 Illustration of the movement patterns at Birkelandsstølen, Rogaland 138
5.10 Movement patterns at Skeie, Rogaland, in the Merovingian Period 139
6.1 Small, anthropomorphic figurine of bronze, often interpreted
as Freyr because of his erection 149
6.2 Entangled Concepts 150
6.3 Artistic interpretation of the girl being lifted over the doorframe 153
6.4 Figural gold foils showing embracing couples, potentially
standing in doorways 157
6.5 Overview of artefact types in the placed deposits 165
6.6 Overview of the spatial context of the deposits 166
6.7 Plans of longhouses with deposition occurring in connection
with the door 168
7.1 The rune ring from Forsa, Hälsingeland, Sweden 182
7.2 The Uppåkra ring was found standing vertically in one of the massive
postholes in the small cult building 184
7.3 The Järrestad deposit consisted of an adze, hammerhead, anvil,
and the possible door ring 185
7.4 The mortuary house at Gulli during excavation, with added posts
to display the closing of the doors 192
7.5 Stylized illustration of the lifespan of buried longhouses. 194
7.6 Examples of houses constructed above mortuary monuments 195
7.7 Two examples of incorporating the dead with the house. On the left,
the small house Krågeland 2 was constructed touching a
centuries-old mound 196
7.8 The longhouse at Jarlsberg superimposed by monumental burial mounds 198
LIST OF FIGURES xi

7.9 Otnemstova, exhibited at the open-air museum in Sunnfjord, Norway,

has a clearly visible corpse-door in its back wall 202
7.10 Artistic reconstruction of the sixth-century Åby portal, Sweden 204
7.11 Example of dwelling with a mortuary monument directly
outside the door 206
7.12 Illustration of Storrsheia 2, Rogaland, indicating its entrance burial 206
7.13 Visualization of the free-standing portals, based on the Helgö
and Äby portals 208
PREFACE

As is so often the case, this book has been a long time in the making. Some of
the ideas argued herein were conceived nearly a decade ago now, while others
are relatively recent developments, as my knowledge has expanded and my
thinking has moved. If we are to accept Chris Fowler’s (2013) argument that
archaeological theories and interpretations are actants in producing the past
en par with humans, material objects, structures, and so on, this book is the
result of what has been a dynamic aggregate of input and inspiration from
texts, lectures, encounters with wonderful and generous individuals, random
conversations, places visited, and thresholds crossed.
Hence, a great number of people have contributed in material and imma-
terial ways towards writing this book. For their support and encouragement
I want to especially extend my gratitude to Lotte Hedeager, Neil Price, and
Runar Hilleren Lie. For their generosity in reading and critiquing chapters at
various stages of completion I warmly thank Lotte Hedeager, Richard Bradley,
Rebecca Cannell, Kevin Kay, Frands Herschend, Howard Williams, Vibeke
Viestad, Unn Pedersen, Karianne Aamdal Lundgaard, Elise Naumann, and
two anonymous reviewers.
I am especially grateful to the five archaeological university museums in
Norway for providing guidance to their archives and granting permissions to
reproduce plan drawings of houses from their excavations: Archaeological
Museum, University of Stavanger; University Museum of Bergen; the
Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo; NTNU University
Museum; and Tromsø University Museum, The Arctic University of Norway.
A number of other institutions and individuals have given me permission to
reproduce plan drawings, illustrations, and photographs, as noted in the illus-
trations list, and I am deeply thankful.
During parts of the revision stage, I have been placed in the Material
Culture Lab at the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Univer-
sity of Cambridge. Many thanks to the McDonald Institute, especially to Marie
Louise Stig Sørensen and James Barrett, and the great group of postdocs, staff,
and PhD students I have encountered there, for making me feel welcome, and
for pushing me intellectually. I also warmly thank my college, Clare Hall,
where I held a Research Fellowship while in Cambridge.

xiii
xiv PREFACE

Some of the ideas making up this book have been published previously.
Chapters 1–6 have never been published. Chapter 7 is a revised and reworked
compilation of two previously published articles: ‘The Power of the Ring:
Door Rings, Oath Rings and the Sacral Place’, published in an edited volume
by Oxbow (Eriksen et al. 2015), and ‘Doors to the Dead: The Power of
Doorways and Thresholds in Viking Age Scandinavia’, published in Archaeo-
logical Dialogues in 2013. I am grateful for the publishers granting permission to
publish reworked versions here.
I would also like to thank everyone at Cambridge University Press, and
especially my editor, Beatrice Rehl, for bringing this book to life in its best
possible iteration.
No woman is an island. From the side lines colleagues, friends, and family
have cheered me on, and I extend my deepest gratitude. However, there is one
person I would like to thank in particular. I came late into Lotte Hedeager’s
career as professor, Chair of Prehistoric Archaeology, supervisor extraordinaire,
and colleague. Since 2013, however, Lotte has read pretty much every word
I have written. She responds to e-mails faster than I can check my social media
accounts. She tells me in no uncertain terms when article drafts are poor, ideas
faulty, and arguments weak. She once, after a fifty-page thesis chapter groaning
under the weight of its own bulky analyses, had a single concluding remark:
“Putin!” It took me a while to figure out how Vladimir fit into the picture, but
needless to say, he did.
Lotte has encouraged me when I needed support, shown compassion when
life got in the way, and laughed with me through many a meeting. I am
honoured to be among those that can call her mentor, and for all these reasons
I dedicate this book to Lotte Hedeager, force of nature.
PART I

OPENING DOORS TO THE VIKING AGE

ONE

ENTRY POINTS

ON THE THRESHOLD

Most of us take doors for granted. We pass through doorways tens of times
each day, without reflection. The door is, however, a powerful feature of
human mentality and life-practice. It controls access, provides a sense of
security and privacy, and marks the boundary between differentiated spaces.
The doorway is also the architectural element allowing passage from one space
to the next. Crossing the threshold means abandoning one space and entering
another, a bodily practice recognized both in ritual and language as a transition
between social roles or situations. Doors and thresholds are thus closely linked
with rites de passage, the word ‘liminality’ itself stemming from Latin limen,
‘threshold’. This does not imply that each and every crossing of a threshold
constitutes a liminal ritual, but rather that passing through a doorway is an
embodied, everyday experience prompting numerous social and metaphorical
implications. A volume on thresholds in fiction asks why the threshold exer-
cises such a riveting grasp on human imagination; why it is such a resonant
space (Mukherji 2011:xvii). The characterization of the threshold as a resonant
space precisely captures its affect. The threshold is evocative, a locus of
heightened anticipation.
The seeds for this book were sown nearly a decade ago when, during data
collection for my master’s thesis, I noticed a strange concurrence between two
written sources related to the Viking Age. One text, ibn Fadlān’s Risãla, was

3
4 ENTRY POINTS

from the Arabic Caliphate, containing an eyewitness report of a ship burial of a

Viking chieftain on the river Volga in 922 CE. The other was an episode from
Flateyjarbók, a late Icelandic saga of which the oldest surviving copy dates to the
fourteenth century, recounting a strange fertility ritual on a remote farm in
Viking Age Norway.1 Even though the texts were transcribed centuries apart
and in vastly different geographical and cultural contexts, they both touched
on the same, eerie topic: a woman being lifted – or asking to be lifted – above a
doorframe, to enable her to see into a different realm.
This image took root in me; I started wondering if doors were related to
ritual practices in the Viking Age. Simultaneously, I had started realizing the
vast and largely untouched potential in considering the archaeological remains
of the built environment of the period not only as functional-economic
constructions but as social expressions, producers, and agents. Gradually, these
two themes forged one question: How can an in-depth study of an everyday
material object – the door – generate new knowledge of social, ritual, and
affective experience of the Late Iron and Viking Ages? In answering that
question, this book offers a fresh approach to the (pre)historic period often
termed the Scandinavian Late Iron Age (c. 550–1050 CE); it is a social explor-
ation of the houses and homes of the Vikings in a pivotal period of European
history. The crux of the book is that it uses a highly charged architectural
element as an entryway to explore the households, hierarchies, and rituals of
the Viking Age.

NEW GATEWAYS TO THE VIKINGS

The Vikings are well known to us. We can conjure images in our minds
without blinking – long-haired, bearded, frenzied warriors, swords in hand.
And, equally obvious, the conjured image is to some extent false, or at the very
least it is one-dimensional and stagnant. In a thought-provoking article, Neil
Price points out that the Vikings we study today are very different from the
ones under scrutiny twenty years ago – or even further back. ‘They have
grown’, he writes, ‘they have gained more depth and resolution’ (Price
2015:7). To my mind, that is only partially true. In arenas such as religion
and ritual, dress and gender, and especially mortuary practices, the Vikings
have gained more depth. But in terms of everyday life, in the Vikings’
households, and their use and conceptualization of domestic space, I argue
that there is still room to grow. In a recent assessment of Viking archaeology,
Sarah Croix (2015) claims that Viking studies are to some extent regressing.
After the last decades’ gender critique and a focus on Viking ritual, craft, and
especially trade, an international exhibition launched in 2013 unapologetically
focussed on the stereotypical Viking: the male raider and warrior (Williams
et al. 2014). With the enormous popularity of the Vikings in mainstream
NEW GATEWAYS TO THE VIKINGS 5

culture, Croix (2015:93) contends that the field of Viking studies is feeding the
public what it expects, ‘and repeating itself within a simplified and ever more
narrowing frame’. In my opinion, while the perceptions of Vikings as warriors,
traders, and colonists are in the forefront of public discourse, as well as the
object of a substantial amount of research on the Viking Age, the domestic
sphere is still perceived as an unproblematized, familiar, and somewhat trivial
sphere.
In contrast, the empirical basis and the point of departure of this work are
the fragmented remains of the doors, but also the dwellings, of the Vikings.
Even though the door will be on centre stage in this study, it makes little sense
to discuss entryways without considering the space to which they lead. I thus
draw on the latent possibility in using architecture and the built environment
to answer questions of social organization, architectural templates of
movement, ideology, affect, and ritual behaviour. The question of how one
particular material construction can elucidate the social fabric of the Viking
Age relates to a broader attempt to develop more theoretically engaged
perspectives in Viking archaeology. More important, though, is the question:
How does the Viking Age look from the point of view of the house?
In recent years, developments in excavation technique have unearthed
thousands of prehistoric houses in Scandinavia. This new dataset provides
novel opportunities to examine the practice of dwelling through physical
remains of architecture. This book draws on the generally unexploited poten-
tial embedded in the archaeological record of house remains from Late Iron
Age Scandinavia, with a primary focus on Norway. The corpus, presented in
the Appendix and referenced throughout, consists of 99 longhouses and 17
shorthouses, in total 116 buildings interpreted as dwellings, from 65 archaeo-
logical sites. Embedded in the corpus is a substantial archaeological material of
doors and entrances, with a total number of 150 doors. The primary attention
on Norway is a strategy to limit the scope of inquiry, and to present Norwe-
gian settlements of the period into one publication, as this material has not
been compiled previously. However, I will use settlement material from other
parts of Scandinavia, mainly south Scandinavia (Denmark and Scania), and the
Norse worlds comparatively, in order to explore differences and similarities
between the south and central Scandinavian architectural expression. I will also
briefly discuss other building types such as courtyard sites, cult buildings, and
mortuary houses.
Research on Iron and Viking Age settlement has traditionally focused on
functional, economic, and agricultural aspects of settlement. While these topics
are clearly important, there are still unrealized possibilities in using the material
remains of houses in discussions of the spatiality and social organization of
dwellings. By drawing on the potential embedded in postholes, doors, and
hearths, this study complements existing research by considering access and
6 ENTRY POINTS

entry to domestic space, the composition of the household, and the affective
webs of the house. It investigates the ritualization of doors and thresholds in
the Viking Age, the relationship between houses, doors, and the dead, and the
significance of everyday, domestic life. Material objects are herein considered
as more than economic commodities, status symbols, or, in the case of
architecture, climate shelters; and are rather explored as social entities forming
relational assemblages, in line with much of current archaeological thinking
(e.g. Fowler 2013; Jones and Boivin 2010; Lucas 2012, 2016; B. Olsen 2010).
I will repeatedly argue that Viking longhouses have forms of agency and
vibrancy, that they can have social lives, and that the inhabitants’ lives were
very much entwined with that of the house. Significantly, I hope to map a
more comprehensive universe of the Vikings, where the people of the Viking
Age are fleshed out and embodied.
I therefore aspire to see the Vikings as more complete human beings
specifically through their relation to and use of social space. This work cannot and
will not be a complete social archaeology of the Viking Age; it does not
consider for instance the Viking raids, colonization, or trade. The aim is rather
to carve out, from the grey block often termed ‘the domestic sphere’, a higher-
resolution picture of lived experience in Viking Age Norway. Everyday life is
the foundation of this work; consumption, seating arrangements, sleeping
patterns, everyday movement through domestic space. In some chapters, the
slaves of the Vikings are considered, and their everyday life experience. Viking
children, and women, and males of different status are brought into the
picture. In other chapters, I consider rituals, and deposition, and the house as
an active agent in the creation of a social world. I hope to portray the Vikings
to a higher extent as real people, with desires and aversions, agendas and affects,
anxieties and beliefs. I embed them within a physical, architectural frame that
not only significantly shaped their movements, thoughts, and actions, but that
was part of them and of which they were a part in turn. In short, the aim is to
contribute to the development of a social archaeology of the Viking Age. And
my gateway for doing so is through the door of the domestic house.

THE HO USE: ORDERING SPACE, BODIES, AND

SOCI AL RELATIONS

. . . the house we were born in is physically inscribed in us. It is a group of organic habits. After
twenty years, in spite of all the other anonymous stairways; we could recapture the reflexes of
“the first stairway”, we would not stumble on that rather high step. . . . The house we were born
in is more than an embodiment of home, it is also an embodiment of dreams.
(Bachelard 1994 [1964]:14–15)

Whereas social anthropology, sociology, and several subfields of archaeology

have long been interested in houses and households as analytical categories, as
THE HOUSE: ORDERING SPACE, BODIES, AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 7

well as the connections between the built environment and social organiza-
tion, such issues have arguably received limited attention in Scandinavian Iron
and Viking Age studies. People, and their everyday social, political, and ritual
practices, are often more or less invisible in discussions of houses and settle-
ments. Ruth Tringham’s famous statement that the inhabitants of prehistoric
houses are merely ‘faceless blobs’ (1991) rings no less true in the late 2010s than
it did in the early 1990s.
The earliest studies of Iron and Viking Age settlement in Norway were
rooted in a cultural-historical framework, and generally of a descriptive char-
acter (Grieg 1934; Hagen 1953; Petersen 1933, 1936). A particular research
strand in Norwegian archaeology has been the tradition of using written
records, cadastres, maps, and toponyms to chart Iron and Viking Age
settlement, as historical farms are seen as the natural successors to postulated
prehistoric farms (Gjerpe 2014; Pilø 2005). This relates partly to Norwegian
archaeology’s emergence in a national romanticist framework in the nine-
teenth century (see also Chapter 3).
Subsequent works in the second half of the twentieth century became
increasingly attentive to questions of economy and subsistence, in line with
the developing processual framework (e.g. Jacobsen 1984; Kaland 1987; Rand-
ers 1981). Publications primarily focus on calculations of produce, cultivation
intensity, and the number of livestock, and rarely contain plans of the houses
and settlements. In line with the predominant archaeological thinking of the
day, this points to an underexplored analytical consideration of the house
structures themselves. Yet, there were other voices in the settlement debate.
Through several works, Bjørn Myhre considered the settlement of southwest
Norway (1980, 1982a, 1982b, 1982c, 1983). Even though Myhre was influ-
enced by the processual and functionalist way of thinking, he also pinpointed
socially oriented questions of settlement and used models from social anthro-
pology. Likewise, Trond Løken’s work on the Bronze Age to Early Iron Age
site Forsandmoen, Rogaland, incorporates more socially oriented questions
springing from the architecture itself (Løken 1998).
Other works have taken a political angle, focusing on the development of
estates and petty kingdoms, and the role land ownership played in state forma-
tion (Iversen 2008; Skre 1998). Especially the works of Dagfinn Skre (1997,
1998, 2001) significantly rejected the idealized egalitarian perception of Viking
settlement and illuminated the role of freed dependants and slaves in large-scale
settlement patterns. Skre opens for a debate of ideological and political aspects of
settlement, where his focus is primarily on landholding, tenancy, and social
economy explored mainly through burial material and written sources (Skre
2001). Yet, there is limited consideration of everyday, domestic life, or indeed
the house structures themselves; the estates identified in later written sources are
the important elements, as pawns in large-scale power plays.
8 ENTRY POINTS

In the same period the number of excavated settlements in Norway started

to increase dramatically due to the methodology of excavating with mechan-
ical diggers underneath cultivated land. However, accumulating a larger data-
set of houses from the Iron Age did not in itself increase explorations of social
aspects of space. In contrast, British prehistoric archaeology, especially during
the peak of post-processualism, has offered cognitive takes on architecture,
such as tracing symbolic spaces or viewing houses and monuments as cosmo-
logical expressions (e.g. Bender et al. 2007; Parker Pearson 1999b; Tilley 1994),
yet, I would argue, again often at the cost of lived experience. Such approaches
moreover rarely seeped into Scandinavian considerations of architecture and
households, at least in Iron Age scholarship. In Scandinavia, limited consider-
ation of the British-centred phenomenology of space has taken place, or the
lived experience of architecture. I argue that there has been a tendency of a
dichotomy between mortuary archaeologists focusing on ritual, social organ-
ization, and ideology; and settlement archaeologists – at least those working
with non-elite settlements – concentrating on typology, economy, and func-
tion. As a result of this division of research agendas (and here I am painting
with a broad brush), a picture emerges where the manner in which a past
society handled their dead may provide knowledge of ideas, rituals, and
ontology, while the built environment is reduced to a neutral backdrop to
social practice.
In recent years, however, studies of built environments in Scandinavia and
the wider Viking world that transcend a homo economicus perspective have
started generating new knowledge in a range of areas: social and political
process (Boyd 2013; Dommasnes et al. 2016; Hadley and Harkel 2013;
Herschend 2009; Holst 2010), structure and practice (Webley 2008), ritualiza-
tion (e.g. Carlie 2004; Eriksen 2015b; Kristensen 2010), the relationship
between the living and the dead (Eriksen 2013, 2016, 2017; Thäte 2007), and
gender relations (Croix 2014; Milek 2012). A key Scandinavian scholar has
been Frands Herschend, who in a series of works has explored notions of
ordered space and considered landscapes as social agents in the Iron Age
(Herschend 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2009).
It is also increasingly accepted that many, if not most, agrarian, economic
practices, such as planting crops, ploughing, grinding, cooking, or weaving,
had ritual and mythological overtones in the Iron Age world view (e.g. Fendin
2006; Gräslund 2001; Kristoffersen 2000; Welinder 1993). The house was also
the central locus of many forms of feasts and seasonal celebrations, as well as
rites de passage: burials, births, and weddings took place within the house. All
deities in the Norse pantheon had their own, named hall buildings over which
they ruled; when warriors died, they expected their bodies to go live in
another house – Valhǫll or Fólkvangr. Moreover, the world itself is in kennings
and Eddic poetry likened to a hall or house, the sky as a roof, and so on (e.g.
THE HOUSE: ORDERING SPACE, BODIES, AND SOCIAL RELATIONS 9

Rigsþula, Vǫluspá 64). A foundation of this book is thus that the longhouse not
only had ritual connotations, but was deeply entwined in the Late Iron Age
ontology, and moreover, that social, ritual, and economical practices were
interwoven into a tapestry that could not be unravelled (sensu Bradley 2005).
The built environment is an accumulated and influential assemblage of
social practice, repeated actions, spatial ideals – in other words, of lived space.
Architecture is always the result of past action (e.g. McFadyen 2013). The
house and its praxis has been placed in the very centre of the social fabric of
pre-industrial societies, as it has been argued that in cultures without literacy,
inhabited space and the house constitute the primary objectifications of social
schemes (Bourdieu 1977:89–90). The house is, in Bourdiean terms, both a
structuring and structured structure – i.e. both a cause and effect of social process,
and a primary field for inscribing the body with a specific habitus. However,
John Robb suggests that instead of simplistically applying ideas such as habitus
in prehistory or ‘look for agency’ in the archaeological record, we should
rather understand action as genres of behaviour: ‘a set of institutionalized practices
recognized as a distinct activity’ (Robb 2010:507). Feasting, warfare, mortuary
rituals, or cultivation would constitute different genres of behaviour. Moreover,
Robb stresses that agency is not necessarily embedded in disparate individuals
but in relationships, and that these relationships are fundamentally material.
Agency can thus be defined as ‘the socially reproductive quality of action’
within relationships among human and non-humans (Robb 2010:494). Houses
create the contexts for many different fields of action and genres of behaviour.
Moreover, the influence of the built environment is certainly part of a recipro-
cal relationship between the house and its inhabitants, and their daily, unre-
flected and embodied practices; the house as the product of the social choices
of the builders and inhabitants, and a reification of past action, in turn affecting
new generations emerging within the house.
To consider the lived experience of dwelling it is necessary, I argue, to
consider bodies in space: bodies building space, using space, navigating space,
and transforming space. Increased attention has been directed towards the
senses and the body recently, within the Iron Age (e.g. Hedeager 2010; Lund
2013) and especially in European later prehistory at large (e.g. Borić and Robb
2008; Hamilakis 2013; Rebay-Salisbury et al. 2010; Robb and Harris 2013).
Bodies are ambiguous, simultaneously objects and subjects, a site where both
the self and the other are negotiated and performed. Bodies are places of desire,
but also of violence, biological processes, abjection, and alienation.
Embodiment can be defined as the way people engage with the world through
their bodies. The way we experience the built environment, as the rest of the
world, is through our corporeality (Bourdieu 1977; Merleau-Ponty 2012
[1958]). Mauss (1979) famously observed that the techniques of the body: the
way we walk, sleep, dance, run, and make love, are all socio-cultural
10 ENTRY POINTS

idiosyncrasies. Children in particular are inscribed with, or rather, imitate, the

adults’ movements of the body, and thereby acquire sets of socially condi-
tioned body movements that constitute culturally specific strategies for experi-
encing and mediating the world (Bourdieu 1977; Mauss 1979; Wilson
1988:153).
The perspective of bodily learnt practice and experience is highly relevant
for a study of doors and dwellings. Movements through domestic space,
seating arrangements, the order in which food is served, the room you are
not supposed to enter, the threshold only some are allowed to cross – these
small, household practices are both executed by and absorbed into the body,
creating and recreating the social world. And as the social systems are institu-
tionalized in the architecture, differentiated power structures are legitimized
and euphemized (Bourdieu 1989). Harris and Robb (2013b:3) offer the useful
working concept body worlds, which they define as ‘the totality of bodily
experiences, practices and representations in a specific place and time’. Eman-
ating from embodiment, some scholars emphasize the performativity of archi-
tecture, of how it is only when bodies, architecture, and things come together
that a space becomes a place (Kaye 2016). Other scholars stress that the built
environment can be understood as a producer of affective fields (Harris and
Sørensen 2010), engendering certain forms of emotional responses in its users
(Harris 2016; Love 2016), or specific atmospheres (Sørensen 2015). I consider
doors, doorways, and the house at large, not only as mediators of habitus, but
as things which shape, move, and merge with people, in a process where
houses and people together engage in an embodied process of dwelling.

TOWAR DS A SO CIAL AR CHAEOLOGY OF THE VIKING AGE

Novel theoretical perspectives have opened the door to new questions and
new answers in Viking archaeology. The eclectic internally conflicted wave of
approaches hurtling forth from the beginning of the third millennium has been
collectively termed ‘new materialism’ (Thomas 2015). Although controversial
and provocative, this shift to relational thinking offers a vast range of new
perspectives in archaeology. Among the perplexing strands of symmetrical
archaeology (Olsen 2003; B. Olsen 2010; Witmore 2007), meshworks (Ingold
2007), Actor-Network Theory (Latour 2005), assemblages (Fowler 2013;
Hamilakis and Jones 2017), entanglements (Hodder 2012), vibrancy (Bennett
2010), and the ontological turn (Alberti et al. 2011; Marshall and Alberti 2014)
I wish to emphasize three points because they explicitly and implicitly cast the
story of this work.
The first is that material culture, animals, landscapes, things, and people
form relational assemblages (Bennett 2010; Fowler 2013, 2016; Hamilakis and
Jones 2017; Lucas 2012); a wave of thinking in current archaeological discourse
TOWARDS A SOCIAL ARCHAEOLOGY OF THE VIKING AGE 11

that springs primarily from the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari (2013
[1987]) and the subsequent work by DeLanda (2006). While I argued that
architecture is always the result of past action, it is certainly not merely the
result of humans acting ‘upon’ dead materials. Rather, the Iron Age longhouse
is an excellent example of an assemblage of builders, materials, landscapes,
inhabitants, weather, guests, animals, things, practices, technologies (Eriksen
2016), all engaging in a process of perpetually becoming a house, at an
intersection between construction and decay (e.g. Harris 2016; Jones 2007;
Lucas 2013). A reductionist view of houses as merely the physical construction
of the walls and posts; or only the (human) inhabitants; or the actions that take
place within, becomes arguments ad absurdum – the house is the emerging
aggregate of all these entities, inextricably entwined.
The second point is that everyday things have to some extent been over-
looked in current discourse. However, everyday things are interwoven with
human lives; they are aggregates of lived experience, and by studying mundane
things we access other perspectives on the Viking Age than fine metal work,
monumental burials, or warrior swords can allow. An implicit motivation for
this study is thus to illuminate the mundane, the ordinary, the non-spectacular.
For example, in a thought-provoking article about emotion and material
culture, Harris and Sørensen (2010) argue that archaeology should engage with
questions of emotion and affect. They contend that emotions are not only
internal and immaterial phenomena, but occur in the encounter with a
material world, and use the case study of a spectacular Late Neolithic monu-
ment, the henge at Mount Pleasant, to discuss the role of emotion in building
and rebuilding such a site over an extended period of time. In her comment to
the text, Åsa Berggren, however, points out that the enormous monument is
an example where it is relatively simple to argue that materiality elicits
emotional responses. She writes: ‘It would, for example, have been interesting
to see [Harris and Sørensen] apply their ideas to some of the more mundane
archaeological materials, from, for example, settlements that would be more
explicitly connected to everyday life’ (Berggren 2010:164). The critique reson-
ates with this project. Archaeologists have for a long time, through virtually all
archaeological paradigms, favoured the monumental: the richest finds, the largest
mounds, and the most elaborate monuments.
In a sense, this book starts where Nicole Boivin ends her stimulating Material
Cultures, Material Minds (2008). Boivin lists a number of ‘. . . mundane, but
powerful objects and environments that create us as we create them’, such as
pots and pans, fishing hooks, pendants, carpets, parks, artworks, pacemakers,
and yes, even doorways. She concludes by stating that we have only just begun
to explore how ‘this mass of simple things has shaped and transformed our
thoughts, emotions, bodies, and societies’ (2008:232). This study is intended as
exactly that, an exploration of how an everyday material feature, the door,
12 ENTRY POINTS

shaped and transformed thoughts, emotions, bodies, and societies in a specific

prehistoric period. It is, after all, everyday life that builds a social world.
Third, this work is intended as a contribution towards a social archaeology of
the Viking Age. Some prominent thinkers in current discourse see a clear
opposition between social archaeology and a materialist archaeology (Latour
1992, 2005; Webmoor 2007). The sharpest critique of social archaeology was
presented by Webmoor and Witmore (2008), closely shadowing Latour, in
arguing that the social has become ‘both the explanandum and the explanans for
archaeological inquiry’, an invisible force that somehow is both cause and
effect, with a significant anthropocentric bias (see also Webmoor 2007). It is
largely proponents of Actor-Network Theory and symmetrical archaeology
that are refuting the concept of social, because it in their view inherently
describes relations between humans and other humans, upholding a Cartesian
dichotomy between the ‘material’ and ‘social’ world. Although the critique has
merit in criticizing the use of social as a universalist and a catch-all phrase, I still
claim ‘social archaeology’ has significance. First because, as it has been argued
against Latour, if ‘the social’ should be banished from our vocabulary, how can
we continue to speak of equally ephemeral concepts such as ‘the economic’ or
‘the political’ (Rowland et al. 2011)? Second, Webmoor and Witmore
(2008:55) imply that the social has superseded its role ‘as a corrective’ in
archaeology. While that may or may not apply to the Anglophone world,
there are large territories of archaeology where the post-processual wave did
not become quite as ubiquitous as in, e.g. British prehistory (cf. Ribeiro 2016),
and Viking studies is certainly among those lands. The use of social in this
work is indeed intended as a corrective to traditional, largely economic
perspectives on the Viking Age: a heuristic to shift the focus from agrarian
practices to people, from trade relations to affective relations, from typology to
agency. And third, social archaeology is herein understood as inherently
relational, springing from the view that societies are formed not merely by
humans, but by wider, heterogeneous agencies (Boivin 2008; Lucas 2012). In
line with Gavin Lucas’ ‘new’ social archaeology (2012:258–265), the social
emerges through networks and relationships among humans, animals, and
things, rather than somehow existing ‘behind’ or ‘previous’ to them. We can
expand on the old analogy referenced by Malafouris (2013:25), where the
archaeologist searching for the social behind a stone axe (or indeed a long-
house), can be compared with a visitor to Cambridge, who, after seeing the
colleges, departments, and the library, asks to be shown the university.
Consequently, these building blocks – relational ontology, everyday mater-
ials, and social archaeology – form the foundation of the pages ahead. Instead
of seeing material culture as a ‘representation’ of the world, materials are the
world, physically and socially. Not only household things but also the house
itself is inextricably entwined with human lives.
ARCHITECTURE OF THE ARGUMENT 13

ARCHITECTU RE OF THE ARGUMENT

Many pathways lead to a more socially grounded approach to the Viking Age;
mine has been through the door. Or, to put it another way, I have chosen to
place a specific architectural element under scrutiny – though not in isolation –
and to let the doorways and entrances speak.
Some practical concerns and definitions should be clarified. This book
addresses the time between 550 and 1050 CE. In Northern Europe, this
timeframe has several chronological definitions and names (e.g. late Germanic,
Merovingian, Vendel, Viking, Early Medieval), and a common chronological
framework has not yet been developed. In Norwegian archaeology, this
chronological scope consists of the Merovingian period (c. 550–800) and the
Viking Age (c. 800–1050); the two periods are collectively termed the Late Iron
Age and are regarded as belonging to prehistory. In this work, Late Iron Age
and Viking Age are used as synonyms for the second half of the first millen-
nium, i.e. sixth to eleventh centuries. At points where a more finely tuned
chronology is of relevance, I will point out the dating in more explicit terms;
however, as stated in the Appendix, many houses cannot be dated very
precisely, and chronological development is therefore not at the forefront of
this study. I have already stated that Norway constitutes the primary research
area. Regarding geographical nomenclature, the modern nation-state Norway
had of course not yet formed in the Late Iron Age. When ‘Norway’ and
‘Norwegian’ is used in this text, areas of modern-day Norway are implied.
At this juncture, I will also briefly state the book’s stance on using written,
medieval sources to understand societies centuries older than the oldest surviv-
ing manuscripts. With the exception of short and formulaic inscriptions in the
runic alphabet, Late Iron Age Scandinavia was a society without text. The first
longer Scandinavian texts were written in the Latin alphabet after the consoli-
dation of the State and the conversion to Christianity in the beginning of the
second millennium. The relationship between medieval written sources con-
cerning the Late Iron Age and the material record of the period has been
subject to changing academic approaches since the emergence of Viking
studies. From a somewhat uncritical reading of textual sources (e.g. Munch
1852) to a critical approach refuting almost any source value (Weibull 1911,
1918); most researchers today seem to aim at a middle ground (e.g. Andrén
2005, 2014; Hedeager 1999, 2004, 2011; Price 2002, 2010, 2014). In general,
today’s scholars neither take medieval sagas and poetry at face value, nor
disregard their insight into twelfth to fourteenth-century reflection and com-
memoration of a not-too-distant past. The written sources do reflect a high-
medieval world view, but at a time where oral traditions stood strong. Late
Iron Age Scandinavia is often understood as an oral culture where narratives
and legal rule were remembered through formalized language (Andrén et al.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
Si notais ao mentecapto
A compra de Conselheiro,
O que nos custa dinheiro,
Isso nos sae mais barato:
E si na meza do trato
Da bolsa, ou da Companhia,
Virdes levar senhoria
Mechanicos deputados;
Crede que nos seus cruzados
Sangue esclarecido mora.
Entendeis-me agora?

Si hoje vos falla de perna

Quem não podia hontem ter
Ramo, de quem descender,
Mais que o da sua taverna;
Tende paciencia interna,
Pois foi sempre Dom dinheiro
Poderoso cavalheiro,
Que com poderes reaes
Faz eguaes aos deseguaes,
E conde ao villão cada hora.
Entendeis-me agora?

Si na comedia ou sainete,
Virdes que um Dom fidalgote
Lhe dá no seu camarote
A chicara do sorvete;
Havei dó do coitadete,
Pois numa chicara só
Seu dinheiro bebe em pó,
Que o senhor, cousa é sabida,
Lhe dá a chupar a bebida,
Para chupa-lo noutra hora.
Entendeis-me agora?
Não reputeis por favor,
Nem tenhais por maravilha
Vê-lo jogar a espadilha
Co’o marquez, co’o grão senhor;
Porque como é perdedor
E mofino adredemente,
E faz um sangue excellente
A qualquer dos ganhadores,
Qualquer d’aquelles senhores
Por fidalgo egual o afóra.
Entendeis-me agora?
 A UMA BRIGA
QUE TEVE CERTO VIGARIO COM UM OURIVES POR CAUSA DE
UMA MULATA

Naquelle grande motim,

Onde acudiu tanta gente,
A titulo de valente
Tambem veiu o Valentim:
Puxou pelo seu faim,
E tirando-lhe a barriga,
Você si quer que lh’o diga,
Disse ao ourives da prata,
Na obra d’esta mulata
Mette muita falsa liga.
Briga, briga.

É homem tão desalmado,

Que por lhe a prata faltar,
E estar sempre a trabalhar
Bate no vaso sagrado?
Não vê que está excommungado
Porque com tanta fadiga
A peça da egreja abriga
Numa casa excommungada,
Com censura reservada,
Pela qual Deus o castiga?
Briga, briga.
Porque com modos violentos
A um vigario tão capaz,
Sôbre os quatro que já traz,
.. lhe põe quatrocentos?
Deixe-se d’esses intentos,
E reponha a rapariga,
Pois a repô-la se obriga
Quando affirma que a possue;
E si ésta razão não conclue,
Vai ésta ponta á barriga.
Briga, briga.

Senhor ourives, você

Não é ourives de prata?
Pois que era essa mulata,
Que cobre ou tambaca é?
Restitua a moça, que
É peça da egreja antiga;
Restitua a rapariga,
Que se vingará o vigario
Talvez no confessionario,
Ou talvez na desobriga:
Briga, briga.

Á mulata ja lhe pêja

De trocar odre por odre,
Porque o leigo é membro podre,
E o padre é membro da egreja:
Sempre esta telha gotteja,
Sempre dá grão esta espiga:
E a obra da rapariga
Quer desfazer esta troca,
E deixando a vossa toca,
Quer fazer co’o padre liga:
Briga, briga.
Largue-lhe a mulata, e seja
Logo logo a bom partido,
Que como tem delinquido,
Si quer recolher á egreja:
Porque todo o mundo veja
Que quando a carne inimiga
Tenta a uma rapariga,
Quer no cabo, quer no rabo,
A egreja vence o diabo
Como outra qualquer estriga:
Briga, briga.
 A PRISÃO DE DUAS MULATAS
POR UMA QUERELLA QUE D’ELLAS DEU O CELEBRE
CAPITÃO DOMINGOS CARDOZO, DE ALCUNHA O MANGARÁ,
PELO FURTO DE UM PAPAGAIO

CLAUSULAS

A quem não causa desmaio

Esta querella recente,
As mulatas na corrente
Em falta do papagaio?
Eu de verdade não caio
Nesta justiça em rigor:
Ora este tal prendedor
Quem seria, ou quem será?
Mangará.

Diz que em tudo tinha graça

A Jandaya, abrindo a boca,
Dizendo o seu toca toca,
Meu papagaio, quem passa?
Mangará, que vai á caça.
Porém na presente perda
Passará a beber ...,
Que não faltará quem vá.
Mangará.
As mulatas no seu mal
Vão disfarçando a paixão,
Pois lhe deu dura prisão
O papagaio real.
Diz que para Portugal
Lindamente dava o pé;
Mas uma articula que
O contrario provará.
Mangará.

Provará que elle gostára,

E que não satisfizera,
E muitas cousas dissera
Si o papagaio fallára:
Que o capitão intentára
Pagar-lhe em bens de raiz,
Pois sendo mangará quiz
Transfigurar-se em cará.
Mangará.

Pondo-se o pleito em julgado,

Dar testimunhas procura.
Com o primo Rapadura,
E um compadre seu Melado:
Mas ha de ficar borrado,
Como o tal primo ficou,
Quando a mulata o purgou
Naquelle triste araçá.
Mangará.
Na gaiola ou passarada,
Onde as duas pobres vejo,
A primeira entrou sem pejo,
Mas a segunda pejada:
Arrebentou de embuchada
Um presozinho pequeno,
Que creado com veneno
Damno jámais lhe fará.
Mangará.

Todo o povo, que isto vê,

Pergunta em seu desabono,
Não ao papagaio, ao dono,
Que casta de passaro é:
Eu por lhe fazer mercê
Dou definição cabal:
Um contrafeito asnaval,
Empenhado em Pirajá.
Mangará.
 EPIGRAMMA
SOBRE VARIOS ASSUMPTOS

Sahiu a satyra má,

E empurraram-m’a os perversos,
Porque em quanto a fazer versos
Só eu tenho geito cá:
Noutras obras de talento
Só eu sou o asneirão;
Mas sendo satyra, então
Só eu tenho entendimento.

Acabou-se a Sé, e envolto

Na obra o Sete-caveiras
Enfermou de. .....,
E fez muito verso solto:
Tu, que o poeta motejas,
Sabe que andou acertado
Que pôr na obra o louvado
É costume das egrejas.

Correm-se muitos carneiros

Na festa das Onze mil,
E eu com notavel ardil
Não vou ver os cavalleiros:
Não os vou ver, não se espantem,
Que algum testimunho temo,
Sou velho, pelo que gemo,
Não quero que m’o levantem.
Querem-me aqui todos mal,
E eu quero mal a todos,
Elles e eu por nossos modos
Nos pagamos tal por tal:
E querendo eu mal a quantos
Me têm odio tão vehemente,
O meu odio é mais valente,
Pois sou só, e elles tantos.

Algum amigo que tenho,

Si é que tenho algum amigo,
Me aconselha que o que digo
O cale com todo o empenho:
Este me diz, diz-me este outro
Que me não fie d’aquelle;
Que farei, si me diz d’elle
Que me não fie aquelle outro?

O Prelado com bons modos

Visitou toda a cidade.
É cortezão na verdade,
Pois nos visitou a todos;
Visitou-se a pura escripta
O povo e seus comarcãos,
E os réus de mui cortezãos
Hão de pagar a visita.

A cidade me provoca
Com virtudes tão commuas,
Ha tantas cruzes nas ruas,
Quantas eu faço na boca:
Os diabos a seu centro
Foi cada um por seu cabo,
Nas ruas não ha um diabo,
Ha-os de portas a dentro.
As damas de toda côr,
Como tão pobre me veem,
As mais lástima me têm,
As menos me têm amor:
O que me têm admirado
É fecharem-me o poleiro
Logo acabado o dinheiro:
Deviam ter-m’o contado.
 DESCREVE
O P. RACIONAL E VERDADEIRAMENTE QUEIXOSO OS
EXTRAVAGANTES MEIOS COM QUE OS EXTRANHOS
DOMINAM INDIGNAMENTE SOBRE OS NATURAES NA SUA
PATRIA

ROMANCE

Senhora Dona Bahia,

Nobre e opulenta cidade,
Madrasta dos naturaes,
E dos extrangeiros madre.

Dizei-me por vida vossa

Em que fundais o dictame
De exaltar os que aqui vêm,
E abater os que aqui nascem.

Si o fazeis pelo interesse

De que os extranhos vos gabem,
Isso os paisanos fariam
Com conhecidas vantagens.

E supposto que os louvores

Em bocca propria não valem,
Si tem força essa sentença,
Mór força terá a verdade.

O certo é, patria minha,

Que foste terra de alarves,
E inda os resabios vos duram
D’esse tempo e d’essa edade.
Haverá duzentos annos,
Nem tantos podem contar-se,
Que ereis uma pobre aldêa,
Hoje sois rica cidade.

Então vos pizavam Indios,

E vos habitavam Cafres,
Hoje chispais fidalguias,
E arrojais personagens.

A essas personagens vamos,

Sôbre ellas será o debate,
E Deus queira que o vencer-vos
Para envergonhar-vos baste.

Sae um pobrete de Christo

De Portugal ou de Algarve,
Cheio de drogas alheias
Para d’ahi tirar gages.

O tal foi sóta tendeiro

De um christão novo em tal parte,
Que por aquelles serviços
O despachou a embarcar-se.

Fez-lhe uma carregação

Entre amigos e compadres,
E ei-lo commissario feito
De linhas, lonas, beirames.

Entra pela barra dentro,

Dá fundo, e logo a entonar-se
Começa a bordo da nau
Co’um vestidinho flammante.
Salta em terra, toma casas,
Arma a botica dos trastes,
Em casa come balêa,
Na rua antoja manjares.

Vendendo gato por lebre,

Antes que quatro annos passem
Já tem tantos mil cruzados,
Conforme affirmam pasguates.

Começam a olhar para elle

Os paes, que já querem dar-lhe
Filha e dote, porque querem
Homem que coma e não gaste.

Que esse mal ha nos mazombos:

Têm tão pouca habilidade,
Que o seu dinheiro despendem
Para haver de sustentar-se.

Casa-se o meu matachim,

Põe duas negras e um pagem,
Uma rede com dous Minas,
Chapéu de sol, casas grandes.

Entra logo nos pelouros,

E sae do primeiro lance
Vereador da Bahia,
Que é notavel dignidade.

Já temos o canastreiro,
Que inda fede aos seus beirames,
Metamórphosis da Terra,
Transformado em homem grande:
E eis-aqui a personagem.
Vem outro do mesmo lote,
Tão pobre e tão miseravel,
Vende os retalhos, e tira
Commissão com coiro e carne.

Co’o principal se levanta,

E tudo emprega no Iguape,
Que um engenho e tres fazendas
O tem feito um homem grande.
E eis aqui a personagem.

De entre a chusma e a canalha

Da maritima bagagem,
Fica ás vezes um christão,
Que apenas benzer-se sabe.

Fica em terra resoluto

A entrar na ordem mercante,
Troca por covado e vara
Timão, balestilha e mares.

Arma-lhe a tenda um ricaço,

Que a terra chama magnate,
Com pacto de parceria,
Que em Direito é sociedade.

Com isto o marinheiraz

Do primeiro jacto ou lance
Bota fóra o .. breado,
As mãos assimilha em guantes.

Vende o cabedal alheio

E dá com elle em levante,
Vai e vem, e ao dar das contas
Diminue, e não reparte.
Prende aqui, prende acolá,
Nunca falta um bom compadre,
Que ou entretenha o credor,
Ou faça esperar o alcaide.

Passa um anno, e outro anno,

Esperando que elle pague,
Que uns lhe dão para que ajuncte,
E outros para que engane.

Nunca paga, e sempre come,

E quer o triste mascate,
Que em fazer a sua estrella
O tenham por homem grande.

O que elle fez foi furtar,

Que isso faz qualquer birbante,
Tudo o mais lhe fez a terra,
Sempre propicia aos infames:
E eis aqui a personagem.

Vem um clerigo idiota,

Desmaiado como um gualde,
Os vicios com seu bioco,
Com seu rebuço as maldades.

Mais sancto do que Mafoma

Na crença dos seus Arabes,
Lettrado como um matullo
E velhaco como um frade.

Hontem simples sacerdote,

Hoje uma gran’dignidade,
Hontem selvagem notorio,
Hoje encoberto ignorante.
A tal beato fingido
É força que o povo acclame,
E os do governo se obriguem,
Pois edifica a cidade.

Chovem uns e chovem outros

Co’os officios e os logares,
E o beato tudo apanha
Por sua muita humildade.

Cresce em dinheiro e em respeito,

Vai remettendo as fundagens,
Compra toda a sua terra,
Com que fica um homem grande:
E eis aqui a personagem.

Vêm outros lotes de requiem,

Que indo a tomar o caracter,
Todo o Reino inteiro cruzam
Sobre a chança viandante.

De uma provincia para outra

Como dromedarios partem,
Caminham como camellos,
E comem como selvagens.

Mariolas de missal,
Lacaios missa-cantantes,
Sacerdotes ao burlesco,
Ao serio ganhões de altares.

Chega um d’estes, e toma amo,

Que as capellas dos magnates
São rendas que Deus creou
Para estes Orate fratres.
Fazem-lhe certo ordinario,
Que é dinheiro na verdade
Que o Papa reserva sempre
Das cêas e dos jantares.

Não se gasta, antes se embolsa,

Porque o reverendo padre
É do sancto neque demus
Meritissimo confrade.

Com este cabedal juncto

Já se resolve a embarcar-se,
Vai para a sua terrinha
Com fumos de ser abbade:
E eis aqui a personagem.

Vêem isto os filhos da terra

E entre tanta iniquidade,
São taes que nem inda tomam
Licença para queixar-se.

Sempre vêem, e sempre callam,

Até que Deus lhes depare
Quem lhes faça de justiça
Esta satyra á cidade.

Tão queimada e destruida

Te vejas, torpe cidade,
Como Sodoma e Gomorra,
Duas cidades infames.

Que eu zombe dos teus visinhos,

Sejam pequenos ou grandes,
Gozos, que por natureza
Nunca mordem, sempre latem.
Porque espero entre os Paulistas
Na Divina Magestade,
Que a ti São Marçal te queime,
E a mim São Paulo me guarde.
 RETRATO
DO GOVERNADOR ANTONIO DE SOUSA DE MENEZES
CHAMADO O BRAÇO DE PRATA

SYLVA

Oh! não te espantes não, dom Antonia,

Que se atreva a Bahia
Com expremida voz, com plectro esguio,
Cantar ao mundo teu rico feitio,
Porque é já velho em poetas elegantes
O cahir em torpezas similhantes.

Da pulga acho que Ovidio tem já escripto,

Luciano do mosquito,
Das rans Homero, e d’estes não desprézo,
Que escreveram materia de mais pezo
Do que eu, que canto cousa mais delgada,
Mais chata, mais subtil, mais esmagada.

Quando desembarcaste da fragata,

Meu Dom Braço de prata,
Cuidei que a esta cidade, tonta e fatua,
Mandava a Inquisição alguma estatua,
Vendo tão expremido salvajola,
Visão de palha sobre um mariola.

O rosto de azarcão afogueado,

E em partes mal untado,
Tão cheio o corpazil de godilhões,
Que o tive por um sacco de melões,
Vi-te o braço pendente da garganta,
E nunca prata vi com liga tanta!