SSNS Seminar – Tara Athanasiou – Who stole my cheese? The survival strategies of vagrants in the Norse period

The SSNS Seminar Series continues on Tuesday 22nd September 2026 with Tara Athanasiou for her talk Who stole my cheese? The survival strategies of vagrants in the Norse period

This is a free, ticketed event; please register below.

Abstract:

In Norse society, the household was far more than a place to live. It was the foundation of social status, legal rights, employment and protection. But not everyone belonged to a household. Men, women and children could find themselves living as vagrants, travelling in search of food and temporary employment and surviving outside the formal protection of kinship and household networks. This talk explores how these people survived. The laws and sagas reveal a surprisingly complex world of seasonal and itinerant work. People who lived outside of the formal membership of a household developed their own survival strategies. They adapted their skills, followed seasonal patterns of work, built temporary relationships and, in some cases, travelled in small groups that provided economic, physical and emotional support. Their stories show how people living on the margins navigated a world structured around belonging and found inventive ways to survive when they did not.

Bio:
Tara undertook her BA degree in social anthropology at the University of Cambridge and returned to further education, after some years, as a part-time student at the University of the Highlands and Islands’ (UHI) Institute for Northern Studies.  She was awarded the MLitt Viking Studies with Distinction in 2020. Her dissertation examined gendered identities in the Viking Age diasporic island hubs of Orkney and the Isle of Man and was awarded the Best Dissertation Award 2020 by the Institute for Northern Studies.  She has recently submitted her PhD thesis, Placing Women, Tracing Journeys – Networks and Mobility in the Norse North Atlantic. Her PhD research was undertaken at UHI and was supervised by Prof. Alexandra Sanmark, Prof. Stefan Brink and Dr. Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir.

Registration below. Details for the Zoom meeting will be emailed in advance of the seminar.