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only the language, but also, as far as possible, the practice of ecclesiastical
government and governance.

Above all, Ramseyer’s book makes a fascinating read because it

retrieves a lost world of religious and ecclesiastical life, and because it
uses this act of retrieval to ask wider questions about centre and periphery,
about universal norms and their regional or local application. Because
of this, it also provides a model for how those interested in other parts of
the medieval west may want to approach regional and local ecclesiastical
organization, its deviation from and its compliance with what we have
come to perceive as the norm of religious life in high medieval Europe.
This book makes an important contribution, not just to the study of
the Italian church in the Middle Ages, but to the the wider field of
medieval European history.

Aberystwyth University

BJÖRN WEILER

West over Sea. Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and
Settlement Before 1300. A Festschrift in Honour of Dr. Barbara E.
Crawford. Edited by Beverley Ballin Smith, Simon Taylor and Gareth
Williams. The Northern World 31. Leiden: Brill. 2007. xxix + 581
pp. + 22 b/w illustrations + 7 tables. $135. ISBN 978 90 04 15893 1.

This handsome volume, a fitting tribute to Barbara Crawford on her
retirement from St Andrews, reflects the breadth and depth of her interests.
It is divided into four main sections – History and Cultural Contacts, The
Church and the Cult of Saints, Archaeology Material Culture, Settlement
and Place-Names and Language – mirroring Barbara’s interests. There are
thirty papers in all written by colleagues and friends and it includes a
list of her publications produced over some forty years. As Elizabeth
Okasha says and this list reinforces: ‘Barbara Crawford’s interests have
never been closely confined by geography, modern or medieval’ (p. 69).

A glance at some of the chapter headings give a flavour of the wide

range of topics covered: Icelandic sagas (Paul Bibre), Anglo-Saxon
inscriptions outside the British Isles (Elizabeth Okasha), Christian
conversion in the Hebrides (Lesley Abrams), the Shetland chapel sites
project (Christopher Morris), sculpture from the Faroes (Ian Fisher
and Ian Scott), manuring practices (Jo McKenzie), the gata element
outside the Danelaw (Gillian Fellows-Jensen) and papar names (William
Thomson). Some of the thirty may appear at first glance uninviting,
perhaps even obscure, but on the contrary plunge in and you are soon
hooked. Take, for example, James Barrett’s tightly argued contribution
on ‘pirate fishermen’ that explores the political economy of the Orkney

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Early Medieval Europe

2008 16 (3)

© 2008 The Authors. Journal Compilation © 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

earldom. What turned a rural community into a wealthy society? How
wealthy was the territory? Barrett reminds us that Orkney was well
placed to service seaborne traffic between the north Atlantic, the Irish
and the North Seas. Pilotage, provisioning and collection of tolls were
all potential sources of income, but piracy and fishing were probably
the mainstays of a competitive hierarchy of powerful magnates.

Beverley Ballin Smith’s short interim report on the excavations at

Norwick, Shetland provides some substance for the arguments suggesting
contacts between Norway and Scotland before the raiding phases
described in the annals starting in the late eighth century. Bjørn Myhre
has previously argued for earlier contacts and Birthe Weber reached a
similar conclusion based on the evidence of reindeer antler combs from
Pictish sites in Orkney. Now Ballin Smith has uncovered ‘Shetland’s
first Viking settlement’ on a multi-period site that includes an Iron Age
settlement and a medieval chapel on the east coast of the island of Unst.
The steatite assemblage from the site is remarkable, with Norwegian
vessels predominating; remarkable, too, is the presence of locally
manufactured pottery in the Iron Age tradition in Viking levels. C14
dates suggest occupation well before the late eighth century. All in all,
therefore, a very significant site, and interim findings that whet the
appetite for promised final reports.

Okasha identifies thirteen Anglo-Saxon inscriptions from the Continent

and Scandinavia, some of which she has published previously, but her
discussion of their places of manufacture and possible links to Anglo-
Saxon pilgrims is useful. Thomson shows that the five secure Orkney
papar names cannot be linked to late medieval ecclesiastical estates, but
rather to estates belonging to the earls of Orkney and perhaps originally
estates in Pictish hands. McKenzie looks at anthropogenic soils in
Scotland and the plaggen soils of Germany and the Netherlands,
created by spreading turves from animal bedding on poor sandy soils.
Coring in Scotland, however, revealed a lack of deep anthropogenic
soils in most areas. Turf does not seem to have been widely used for
manuring in Scotland; seaweed was preferred. However, there is some
evidence for plaggen manuring around some monasteries such as Iona,
perhaps suggesting continental influence on the church.

Christopher Morris, Kevin Brady and Paul Johnson report on the

ongoing Viking and Early Settlement Archaeological Research Project
(VESARP) started in 1997. In examining chapel sites in Shetland,
VESARP continues work done by Morris on Orkney and follows up
issues raised by Barbara Crawford in Scandinavian Scotland 1987).
Desk-based surveys of Unst, Fetlar and Yell have been followed by
walkover field surveys, the results from which dictated selected plane-
table and geophysical surveys. Maps showing the sites studied and plans

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2008 16 (3)

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of some of them are included. Site clearances and area excavations are
recommended in some instances, the latter essential if these sites and
associated features are to be dated.

For anyone interested in either the area or the period under study,

this volume is a delight to be dipped into and savoured. The editing is
admirable and the inclusion of bibliography and references at the end
of each paper is to be commended.

University of Exeter

DEREK GORE

Dark Speech: The Performance of Law in Early Ireland. By Robin
Chapman Stacey. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press. 2007. 368 pp. £39. ISBN 978 0 812203989 8.

This is a fascinating and important book for historians of early medieval
Ireland and for legal historians. It places performance at the centre of
interpretation, in particular ‘the notion of law as a gestural and verbal
art, practiced to varying degrees by individual litigants and the jurists
and kings who presided over their disputes’ (p. 225). Such performance
‘helped to distinguish everyday actions from those charged with special
significance; it imparted to particular persons an authority which others
did not have and which even that individual might possess only in
specific contexts’ (p. 225). However, ‘even the most exalted of performers
can never be entirely certain whether his claims to mastery – whether
over lawsuit, province, or professional discipline – will be accepted until
the audience indicates its approval. Performance is in this sense the
most dangerous business of all: not merely a distraction, but an occasion
of unparalleled artistic and political exposure’ (p. 227). Throughout
there is very considerable matter to interest historians of language,
particularly of the vernacular, and to draw the attention of other historians
to important features of language use, such as code-switching. There are
also discussions of note for those more interested in, for example, the
impact of conversion to Christianity or the nature of political power
in early medieval Ireland: ‘the equation between lordship and public
speech is . . . only one part of a whole. For implied in the speech of the
dominant is the silence of those subordinate to them. To the elite, few
things were as frightening as the unchecked speech of those who should
be silent’ (pp. 137–8).

The core of the discussion, however, is of matters legal, in a broad

sense and a broad context: ‘procedures we would describe as “legal”
occurred and were interpreted within a broad tradition of public speech
and action, one in which specialists and nonspecialists alike participated’