Thursday, April 13, 2017 at 6:00 p.m. at the National Humanities Center

Popular sources present the Vikings as ruthless warriors yet also take great pains to portray their decorated weapons, jewelry, clothing, houses, and ships—that is, their art.

In this talk Nancy Wicker will discuss the patrons who sponsored that art, the artisans who made the objects, and the men and women who used the works, at home in Scandinavia as well as across the diaspora where Vikings raided, traded, and settled, from the North Atlantic to Russia and beyond.

Nancy Wicker is professor of art history at the University of Mississippi where her interdisciplinary research interests encompass the art of Scandinavia during the early medieval period as well as gender in archaeology, female infanticide during the Viking age, runic literacy, and metal technology. She is also co-director of Project Andvari, an international collaborative project to create a free digital portal that will provide online access to dispersed collections of early medieval artifacts. This year, as the Allen W. Clowes Fellow at the Center, she is working on Viking Art in Scandinavia and Across the Viking Diaspora: Patrons, Producers, and Consumers from the Fifth through the Eleventh Centuries.