Homicide and Suicide in Viking Age Scandinavia - a study of the society's perceptions and conceptions towards specific kinds of violent deaths as visible in written and archaeological sources

Violence and violent death in the pre-Christian Scandinavian Viking Age are both particular research topics for various reasons. The cultural and social entanglements in the complex system of interpersonal violence in this society are both fascinating and complicated. This thesis will focus on two specific kinds of death: homicide and suicide. While homicide and murder has been a topic of scholarly research on the Viking Age, suicide has largely been ignored until recently. By looking at different sources from various academic fields as sociology, literature studies, archaeology and history, I will examine the way in which homicide and suicide as manners of death were perceived in the society, and which cultural understanding was underlying this view. I will analyse medieval sources such as the Íslendingasögur, ‘Icelandic family sagas’, and the Konungasögur, ‘the Norwegian King’s sagas’, the early Icelandic law-codes, archaeological finds and sociological research in the field of violent death. I will study the two manners of death through the lens of these sources, present different cases from each source-group and will draw conclusions based on the described handlings with the dead/death. Based on the results of these inquiries, I will draw some conclusions on how homicide and suicide were perceived in the Viking Age society