Keywords: Hall, cultic buildings, Iron Age, mythology, power, spatial ordering, communication, landscape, biography, practice theory. Other important aspects discussed is the strong connection between the hall and the dead, the use of space as a differentiating factor between social groups, and the hall as an arena for rituals, transformation and liminality, differentiation and negotiation. A recurrent theme throughout the thesis is the reciprocity between the built environment and the agents therein, as well as a focus on the biography of the hall buildings. The buildings’ construction, the finds related to the buildings, and the mythological ideas of the buildings are related to power struggle and power negotiations in the Iron Age societies.
The power relations of the Scandinavian Iron Age society are in the thesis interpreted as expressed through the hall buildings and their placement in a both genuine and cognitive landscape. The thesis examines the ordering, control and utilisation of space expressed through the Scandinavian hall buildings c. The Scandinavian hall building was a constructional and social innovation which emerged sometime in the Early Iron Age most scholars agree that it occurred in the second half of the Roman Period. Ultimately, the paper suggests that deposition of door rings in buildings with sacral qualities must be considered a practice holding a specific and powerful meaning, and that door rings and doors could have cultic-judicial connotations in the Viking Age. Rings are also connected with oaths – ‘swearing a ring oath’, associated with the god Ullr. Furthermore, the ring is a powerful sacral symbol in Norse worlds, and neck and arm-rings are archaeologically interpreted as expressions of leadership and social rank. In a few instances door rings have been intentionally deposited in sacral buildings. I focus particularly on ring-shaped door-handles, which in the Viking Age seem exclusively linked with cult buildings and aristocratic halls.
It is argued that the door constituted a meaningful boundary to sacral and domestic spaces in the Viking Age, a boundary with judicial and cultic implications. This paper considers a connection between the Viking-age door, judicial regulation, and the cult place.
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