Carolingian region, we can note an important innovation in house-building technique
comprising large parts of southern Scandinavia in the late tenth and eleventh centuries
(Meier 1994 ). House building with the weight of the roof resting on the posts in the
wall had been developed much earlier in Continental western Europe. This way of
building the house gave better access to the entire indoor surface of the house. Probably
there was also a social and cultural aspect to this change. The posts in the earlier post-
built, mostly three-aisled main buildings had religious and mythical significance. This
means that the idea of the house as a micro cosmos changed. It is significant that this
change comes simultaneously with the consolidation of Christianity in south-western
Scandinavia. The house-building technique is introduced from German territory and
from Jutland expands east to contemporary south-western Sweden.
When the Scandinavian production of traditional dress ornaments collapsed c. ad
970 – 80 , dress at all levels of Scandinavian society was strongly influenced from the
south (Kaland 1992 ). This influence from the south however begins already in the first
half of the tenth century when round brooches are introduced as an innovation inspired
by the fibula fashion of the Continent. In Scandinavia at first the small round brooches
were incorporated in the traditional Scandinavian feminine status dress. Whereas most
other brooches were almost only produced in bronze (sometimes gilded), small round
brooches are more often produced in silver. The ornamentation on the round brooches
may feature traditional animal figures but it is more common that the bronze specimens
show interlace patterns and patterns connected with the filigree decoration on silver
specimens. At the end of the tenth century the round fibula is the only one to survive the
demise of the old canon of dress ornament.
In the final century of the Viking Age the main stream of innovations from the south
and from the west passed through the territory of the German kingdom. Major cultural
concepts and models with this origin were adopted. This does however not mean that
the Frisian regions were completely eclipsed but rather that Frisian influence gradually
became restricted to south-western Jutland. Insular influence is not altogether non-
existent but mainly becomes restricted to certain centres like Lund in eastern Denmark,
where people from the west also played a role in the royal administration.
THE WESTERN SLAVS ON THE SOUTHERN
COASTS OF THE BALTICWhen we now turn to the Slavic cultural milieu to the east of the Continental Saxons we
meet a culture and socio-economic patterns that in many respects are basically similar
to those of the Scandinavians. The culture of the Continental west was stronger and,
in general, when Scandinavians were confronted with elements of that culture the
Continental patterns were ultimately accepted. The northern part of the Continent to
the east of the Elbe had a cultural history quite different from that of the west. Parts of
the most probably once Germanic population in the area had migrated towards the
south-west in the fifth century, but still minor groups remained in the area in the sixth
century. Slavic colonisation from the south-east reached the Baltic coast in the seventh
century. The important question of how these populations with different traditions
interacted is unfortunately still insufficiently elucidated. In contrast to the former
inhabitants on the southern coast of the Baltic the new ones were, notwithstanding
certain parallels, in many details culturally rather different from the Scandinavians and
–– Johan Callmer––