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Werewolves, Warriors and Winter Sacrifices: Unmasking Kivik and Indo-European Cosmology in Bronze Age Scandinavia
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Archaeology. (LAMP (Languages and Myths of Prehistory))
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Archaeology and Ancient History, Archaeology. (LAMP (Languages and Myths of Prehistory))ORCID iD: 0000-0001-7775-5434
2022 (English)Book (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

This study is the first to consider Sweden's enigmatic Kivik grave with its famous rock art slabs in an agricultural and Indo-European context. Building on the work of archaeologist V. Gordon Childe and anthropologist James G. Frazer, this analysis presents an in-depth cultural and cosmological worldview of the Scandinavian Bronze Age. Pastoralism and warrior bands were essential parts of ecology and cosmology; novices were initiated into these brotherhoods as werewolves. By putting on masks or cloaks, they became ancestors and played a key role in a series of winter sacrifices linked to the agricultural cycle. The werewolf myth contains remnants of all lifecycle rituals – from birth to initiation as warriors, marriage, death and becoming an ancestor. Ethnographically, the cultural and cosmological instituion manifested in Kivik can be identified through parts of Europe up to modern times.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2022, 1. , p. 256
Series
Occasional papers in archaeology, ISSN 1100-6358 ; 75
Keywords [en]
agriculture, brotherhood, carnival, cattle, Indo-European, initiation rites, Kivik, masks, sacrifices, warriors
National Category
Humanities and the Arts Archaeology
Research subject
Archaeology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-453469ISBN: 978-91-506-2900-2 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-453469DiVA, id: diva2:1595266
Funder
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, M19-0625:1Available from: 2021-10-18 Created: 2021-09-17 Last updated: 2022-10-24Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
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Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
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  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
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  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
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  • asciidoc
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