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Vers l’Orient et vers l’Occident : regards croisés sur dynamiques et les transferts culturels des Vikings à la Rous ancienne
Result of a Franco-Russian project (CNRS – Russian Academy of Sciences), this publication presents the latest advances of recent research on the Vikings in a multidisciplinary and comparative perspective across Eastern Europe. It proposes a reflection on the dynamics of cultural exchanges analysed as a process of interactions that have traversed ethnic or social groups, countries, religious beliefs and practices, generations, genders. Questions concerning the specificities of these processes and the reciprocal transformations of Scandinavian settlements and local societies (Frankish, Anglo-Saxon, Slavic, Finnish) are posed. A large part is devoted to the actors involved in these changes (elites, merchants, ecclesiastics, artisans, women, skalds, historiographers...), and the places or areas where they took place. This publication thus participates to the broader reflection on the notions discussed concerning acculturation, cultural transfers and the “middle ground” whose heuristic interest goes far beyond the phenomenon of Scandinavian expansion during the Viking era