Vendel Period
The Vendel Period is an archaeological period in Sweden, roughly AD 550–800, marked by richly furnished boat burials and distinctive elite metalwork.
Vendel boat burials: Burials at Vendel in Uppland, Sweden, in which high-status people were interred with weapons, equipment, and other grave goods. These graves gave the period its name and display its characteristic furnished boat burials.
Migration Period: A European archaeological and historical period conventionally spanning the fourth through sixth centuries. It immediately precedes the Vendel Period in Scandinavian archaeological chronology.
Scandinavian animal-style ornament: A tradition of Scandinavian decoration using stylized animal forms on objects such as weapons, fittings, and jewelry. Its motifs appear on metalwork that distinguished high-status Vendel Period burials.
Gamla Uppsala: An archaeological and historical site near Uppsala, Sweden, known for monumental burial mounds and a long-lived central place. Its nearby elite landscape helps place Vendel Period power within central Sweden.
Burial archaeology: The study of past societies through graves, funerary practices, and human remains. It frames what can—and cannot—be inferred from the period's richly furnished graves.
Valsgärde boat burials: A group of furnished boat graves near Uppsala, Sweden, dating chiefly to the Vendel Period and Viking Age. Their weapons, helmets, and equipment provide a major comparison with the graves at Vendel.
Merovingian Period: A period in early medieval Europe associated with the Frankish Merovingian dynasty, conventionally dated from the fifth to eighth centuries. Its chronology overlaps the Vendel Period, linking Sweden to wider continental change.
Garnet cloisonné: A decorative technique that sets small garnets into metal cells separated by thin partitions. The technique appears in prestige objects and signals specialized craft and access to valuable materials.
Uppsala mounds: Three monumental burial mounds at Gamla Uppsala, generally dated to the sixth century. They are contemporary monuments that invite comparison with Vendel's furnished graves.
Social stratification: The division of a society into ranked groups with unequal access to status, wealth, or power. Unequal grave wealth raises questions about how social rank worked beyond the buried elite.