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• Thraldom: A History of Slavery in the Viking Age by Stefan Brink
• John Kennedy

In his foreword and acknowledgements, Stefan Brink identities Thraldom as a ‘revised’ and ‘extensively extended version’ of a book he published in Swedish in 2012. Though not further identified there, the book is Vikingarnas slavar: den nordiska träldomen under yngre järnålder och äldsta medeltid (Atlantis, 2012), which was republished as a paperback in 2018. Signs of this origin remain evident in the English language book, most notably and somewhat confusingly in the use of Scandinavian periodisation practice, so that the Viking Age is ‘prehistory’ and the twelfth century is ‘early medieval’. Some of the discussion, notably in the chapter devoted to Ålmeboda Parish in Småland, is most likely to have limited interest to an audience outside Sweden.

Despite its subtitle, this book is not a history of Viking Age slavery. As the author amply demonstrates, the sources do not permit such a chronological survey. But displaying mastery of a remarkably wide range of sources, including later literature and law codes but also encompassing archaeology, runic inscriptions, place names, personal names, DNA, and etymology, Stefan Brink provides a very rich, sound, and wide-ranging discussion about slavery in the Viking period. He clearly indicates that there seem to have been very diverse kinds of slavery and semi-slavery, and he argues that, except perhaps in Iceland, slavery was not as commonplace as some previous writers have believed. Much of the book focuses on comparing Nordic slavery to that elsewhere in the world, particularly the ancient world, the Islamic realms, and other parts of medieval Europe. (He argues that American antebellum slavery was not a comparable phenomenon.) The material relating to these societies is often fascinating, but perhaps it receives proportionally more attention than it deserves for purposes of comparison. [End Page 218]

A listing of Brink’s seventeen chapters is readily available online. It reveals a wide range of diverse topics and, arguably, a relatively loose structure. The chapter entitled ‘The Rise and Fall of Scandinavian Thraldom: When Did Slavery Appear in Scandinavia?’ is the fifteenth chapter, near the end of the book, and focuses almost entirely on the origins of slavery, its ‘fall’ being outside the Viking period. Some of the material that appears is at least mildly surprising in the context of this book. The long chapter ‘Terms for Thralls and their Meanings’ is largely a moderately in-depth study of etymology. Though Beowulf is of course set in Scandinavia, it is a little surprising, in a relatively concise book, to find several pages (pp. 167–72) in this chapter devoted to the poem’s ‘Wealhtheow’, a passage of only thirty-five lines quoted in the original Old English as well as translation.

There is some evidence that the editing process could have been stricter. The recruitment in the Ottoman Empire of non-Muslim boys who were trained to be Janissaries or officials is outlined on pages 13–14 and again in very similar terms on pages 17–18. Some of the runic inscriptions transliterated, presented in normalised Old Norse, and translated in the chapter on runes receive the same treatment again in the following chapter on ‘Terms for Thralls and their Meanings’. Sometimes the text seems to contradict itself. On page 105, we read in the first paragraph that ‘probably only six (perhaps nine) thralls are mentioned in around three thousand runic inscriptions from Scandinavia’, but a few lines later, we read that ‘not a single thrall is mentioned’ in the inscriptions. On page 207, we are told that Scandinavian sources do not provide evidence for the marking or mutilation of slaves to help identify them, but, on page 208, that ‘also in Scandinavia the bestial custom, common in other cultures, of physically mutilating the face of a slave was practiced’. Careful reading can resolve the apparent discrepancies, but it is fair to say that more than usual care is at times needed in following...

审阅者：

• Thraldom：维京时代奴隶制的历史 作者：Stefan Brink
• 约翰·肯尼迪

在他的前言和致谢中，Stefan Brink 将 Thraldom 视为他在2012 年瑞典语。虽然没有进一步确定，这本书是 Vikingarnas slavar: den Nordiska träldomen under yngre järnålder och äldsta medeltid（亚特兰蒂斯，2012 年），其中于 2018 年以平装本形式重新出版。这种起源的迹象在英语书中仍然很明显，最显着且有点令人困惑的是斯堪的纳维亚分期实践的使用，因此维京时代是“史前史”，而十二世纪是“中世纪早期” '。其中一些讨论，特别是专门讨论斯莫兰奥尔梅博达教区的章节，很可能对瑞典以外的读者兴趣有限。

尽管有副标题，这本书并不是维京时代奴隶制的历史。正如作者充分证明的那样，资料来源不允许进行这样的按时间顺序的调查。但斯特凡·布林克（Stefan Brink）展示了对广泛来源的掌握，包括后来的文学和法典，还包括考古学、符文铭文、地名、人名、DNA和词源学，他提供了非常丰富、合理和广泛的讨论关于维京时期的奴隶制。他清楚地表明奴隶制和半奴隶制似乎有很多种，并且他认为，也许除了冰岛之外，奴隶制并不像以前的一些作家所认为的那样普遍。本书的大部分内容侧重于将北欧奴隶制与世界其他地方的奴隶制进行比较，特别是古代世界、伊斯兰王国和中世纪欧洲的其他地区。 （他认为美国内战前的奴隶制不是一个可比的现象。）与这些社会有关的材料往往很有趣，但也许它所受到的关注比例超出了其应有的比较目的。 [结束第218页]

布林克的十七章列表可以在网上轻松获得。它揭示了广泛多样的主题，并且可以说是相对松散的结构。题为“斯堪的纳维亚奴隶制的兴衰：斯堪的纳维亚何时出现奴隶制？”的章节是本书的第十五章，接近结尾，几乎完全集中于奴隶制的起源，其“衰落”发生在维京人之外时期。本书中出现的一些材料至少有些令人惊讶。长章“奴隶术语及其含义”主要是对词源学的适度深入的研究。虽然贝奥武夫当然以斯堪的纳维亚半岛为背景，但在一本相对简洁的书中找到几页（第167-72页）有点令人惊讶本章专门讨论这首诗的“Wealhtheow”，这段文字只有三十五行，在古英语原文和翻译中都被引用。

有一些证据表明编辑过程本来可以更严格。第 13-14 页概述了奥斯曼帝国招募受训成为禁卫军或官员的非穆斯林男孩的情况，第 17-18 页也以非常相似的措辞进行了概述。一些符文铭文被音译、以规范化的古挪威语呈现，并在符文章节中翻译，在下一章“奴隶术语及其含义”中再次受到相同的处理。有时文本似乎自相矛盾。在第 105 页，我们在第一段中读到“在来自斯堪的纳维亚半岛的大约三千个符文铭文中可能只提到了六个（也许是九个）奴隶”，但几行之后，我们读到“没有提到一个奴隶”铭文。在第 207 页，我们被告知斯堪的纳维亚消息来源没有提供对奴隶进行标记或残害的证据来帮助识别他们，但在第 208 页，“在斯堪的纳维亚半岛，也存在其他文化中常见的野蛮习俗，即对奴隶进行身体残害”。奴隶的脸被练习了”。仔细阅读可以解决明显的差异，但可以公平地说，在以下过程中有时需要比平常更多的关注......