from PART III - MATERIAL GROWTH (to c. 1350)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
Few studies of urbanisation have considered Scandinavia as a whole. Research is to a large extent presented in monographs on individual towns, published in the native language. Such presentations vary in age and quality but include works of a very high standard. There are, however, few comparative studies. National surveys were presented and ambitious discussions conducted at the Nordic historical conferences held in Århus in 1957 and Trondheim in 1977. Yet there was no real attempt at inter-Scandinavian comparison, and only occasional examples of this have appeared later.
Nevertheless, Scandinavia lends itself to a discussion of the causes, expressions and course of urbanisation. Not only does it cover a large area with a great variety of natural conditions; political and cultural conditions, too, could vary considerably. It is also possible to study many of the towns in question in the light of newly excavated archaeological material which is so far little known abroad. In some cases the early sites have not been overlaid by more recent settlements so that their structure is simpler to analyse than is often the case in more densely populated parts of Europe.
There is a long but uneven tradition of urban archaeology in Scandinavia. A trend towards larger investigations started with the great fire at the old wharf of Bryggen in Bergen in 1955, leading to what was then the largest archaeological excavation ever of an urban area in northern Europe, and in 1961 the first major excavation of medieval quarters in the centre of Lund was conducted.
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