User:Stefan Brink

Stefan Brink is a Professor of Scandinavian Studies, affiliated to the University of Cambridge, Uppsala University and the University of Highlands and Islands.

Brink has a pronounced inter-disciplinary approach in his research. His main fields of research are: Society, Culture and Languages of Early Scandinavia; The Christianisation and Early Church Organisation in Scandinavia; Landscape Studies (Scandinavia); Language and History in the Early Germanic World; Viking Slavery; Germanic Place-Names; Early Law in Scandinavia; Old Norse Mythology.

Brink became a Dr. Phil. in Scandinavian Languages at Uppsala University in 1990 on the dissertation 'Parish Formation and Parish Names: Studies in early territorial divisions in Scandinavia'. He became a Docent (Associate Professor) at Uppsala University in 1991. He was a Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge in 2004.

He has i.a. written 'Viking Slavery' (in Swedish) and 'The Viking World' (Routledge 2008). Brink is editor-in-chief of the journal 'Viking and medieval Scandinavia' (Brepols) and the academic series 'Acta Scandinavica' (Brepols). He has been a visiting professor at universities such as Harvard University, the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), the University of Aarhus and the University of Bergen. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Gustav Adolfs Academy of Swedish Folk Culture in 1997; Fellow of the Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in 2009; and of the Scottish Academy of Sciences (Royal Society of Edinburgh) in 2017. During 2017, Brink was Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, USA. In 2019–20 he has been invited as the Heinz Heinen Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Bonn, Germany.

Selected Bibliography

''Sockenbildning och sockennamn. Studier i äldre territoriell indelning i Norden''. [Parish-formation and Parish-names. Studies in early territorial division in Scandinavia.] (Acta Academiae Regiae Gustavi Adolphi 57) Uppsala 1990. [Doctoral thesis.]

“Cult sites in northern Sweden”, in Old Norse and Finnish religions and cultic place-names (Scripta instituti Donneriani Aboensis XIII.) Åbo 1990.

“Political and social structures in early Scandinavia 2. Aspects of space and territoriality – the settlement district”, ''Tor. Journal of Archaeology'' 29 (1997).

“Names and Naming of Slaves”, The Historical Encyclopedia of World Slavery I & II. Gen. ed. J. P. Rodriguez. Santa Barbara: Cal. 1997.

“The formation of the Scandinavian parish, with some remarks regarding the English impact on the process”, in ''The Community, the Family and the Saint. Patterns of Power in Early Medieval Europe'', ed. J. Hill & M. Swan (International Medieval Research 4.) Brepols: Turnhout 1998.

“Social order in the early Scandinavian landscape”, in Settlement and Landscape, ed. Ch. Fabech & J. Ringtved. Århus 1999.

“Husby”, Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 15 (2000) pp. 274–278.

“Mythologizing Landscape. Place and Space of Cult and Myth”, in Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der Religionsgeschichte, ed. M. Stausberg (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 31.) Berlin & New York: de Gruyter 2001.

“Legal Assemblies and Judicial Structure in Early Scandinavia”, in Political assemblies in the earlier Middle Ages, ed. P. Barnwell & M. Mostert (Studies in the Early Middle Ages.) Turnhout: Brepols.

Namenwelten, ed. S. Brink, L. Elmevik & A. van Nahl (Ergänzungsband zum Reallexikon der germanische Altertumskunde), Berlin & New York: de Gruyter 2004.

“Some New Perspectives on the Christianization of Scandinavia and the Organisation of the Early Church”, in Scandinavia and Europe, ed. K. Holman & E. Adams (Texts and Cultures in Northern Europe 4.) Turnhout: Brepols.

“Legal Assembly Sites in Early Scandinavia”, in Assembly places and practices in medieval Europe, ed. Aliki Pantos & Sarah Semple. Dublin: Four Courts Press 2004.

“Verba Volant, Scripta Manent? Aspects of the Oral Society in Scandinavia”, in Literacy in medieval and Early Modern Scandinavian culture, ed. P. Hermann (Viking Collection 16.) Odense 2005.

“How uniform was the Old Norse religion? ”, in ''Old Norse world. Essays in Honour of Margaret Clunies Ross'', ed. J. Quinn et al. (Medieval texts and cultures in northern Europe 18), Turnhout: Brepols 2007.

“The Kingdom of Sweden” (together with Nils Blomkvist and Thomas Lindkvist), in ''Christianization and the Rise of Christian Monarchy. Scandinavia, Central Europe and Rus' c. 900-1200'', ed. N. Berend, Cambridge: CUP 2007.

“People and land in early Scandinavia”, in ''Franks, Northmen, and Slavs: Identities and State Formation in Early Medieval Europe, ed. P. Geary et al. (Cursor Mundi 5) (Brepols 2008).

''Lord and Lady – Bryti and Deigja. Some Historical and Etymological Aspects on Family, Patronage and Slavery in Early Scandinavia and Anglo-Saxon England''. (The Dorothea Coke Memorial Lecture in Northern Studies 2005.) London: Viking Society 2008.

The Viking World, ed. Stefan Brink (in collaboration with Neil Price), (Routledge World Series), London & New York: Routledge 2008.

“Place Names in Scandinavia”, The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. Ed. Robert E. Bjork. Oxford: OUP 2010.

“Early Ecclesiastical Organization of Scandinavia, especially Sweden”, in England and the Continent in the Tenth Century: Studies in Honour of Wilhelm Levison (1876-1947), edited by David Rollason, Conrad Leyser, and Hannah Williams (Studies in the Early Middle Ages37), Turnhout: Brepols 2010.

Vikingarnas slavar ['Viking Slavery'; book]. Atlantis förlag: Stockholm (2012). Paperback in 2018.

“The Creation of a Scandinavian Provincial Law: How was it done?”, Historical Research vol. 86 (nr 233) (2013): 432-42.

''Sacred Sites and Holy Places. Exploring the Sacralization of Landscape Through Time and Space'', ed. by S. Walaker Nordeide and S. Brink (Studies in Early Middle Ages 11) (Brepols 2013).

“Early Ecclesiastical Organization of Scandinavia, especially Sweden”, in ''Medieval Christianity in the North. New Studies'', ed. by K. Salonen, K. Villads Jensen and T. Jørgensen (Acta Scandinavica 1) (Brepols 2013), pp. 23-39.

“Die Christianisierung Skandinaviens”, in ''Credo. Christianisierung Europas in Mittelalter'', vol. 1. Ed. by Ch. Stiegemann, M. Kroker & W. Walter (Petersberg: Imhof 2013), pp. 250-60. New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia, ed. by Stefan Brink and Lisa Collinson (Acta Scandinavica 3) (Brepols 2014).

“The Hälsinge Law between South and West, King and Church, and Local Customs”, in New Approaches to Early Law in Scandinavia, ed. by Stefan Brink and Lisa Collinson (Acta Scandinavia 3) (Brepols 2014), pp. 37-56.

“Reading Cult and Mythology in Society and Landscape: The Toponymic Evidence”, in Nordic Mythologies: interpretations, intersections, and institutions, ed. T. Tangherlini (Berkeley: North Pinehurst Press 2014), pp. 157-72.

“The Origins of the Swedish Medieval Laws – a State of the Art, from my Perspective”, in ''How Nordic are the Nordic Medieval Laws? – Ten Years After'', ed. by P. Andersen et al. (Copenhagen: Djøf Publ. 2014), pp. 129-44.

“Transferred Names and Analogy in Name-formation”, in The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming, ed. C. Hough (Oxford UP 2016), pp. 158-66.

“Gesellschaft und Kultur”, in Wikinger!, ed. M. Helmbrecht (Rosenheim: Koehler im Maximilian Verlag GmbH & Co 2016), pp. 78-89.

Stefan Brink (Aberdeen), and John Lindow (Berkeley), ‘Place Names in Eddic Poetry’, in ''A Handbook in Eddic Poetry. Myths and Legends of Early Scandinavia'', ed. C. Larrington et al. (Cambridge University Press 2015) (pp. 173-89)

“Law, Society and Landscape in Early Scandinavia”, in Comparative Law and Anthropology, ed. by James A. R. Nafziger (Research Handbooks in Comparative Law Series) (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2017), pp. 319-37.

Theorizing Old Norse Myth, eds S. Brink and L. Collinson (Acta Scandinavica 7), Turnhout: Brepols 2017.