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Book SynopsisThis volume is a collection of 30 papers on the broad subject of the Scandinavian expansion westwards to Britain, Ireland and the North Atlantic, with a particular emphasis on settlement. The volume has been prepared in tribute to the work of Barbara E. Crawford on this subject, and to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the publication of her seminal book, Scandinavian Scotland. Reflecting Dr Crawford's interests, the papers cover a range of disciplines, and are arranged into four main sections: History and Cultural Contacts; The Church and the Cult of Saints; Archaeology, Material Culture and Settlement; Place-Names and Language. The combination provides a variety of new perspectives both on the Viking expansion and on Scandinavia's continued contacts across the North Sea in the post-Viking period. Contributors include: Lesley Abrams, Haki Antonsson, Beverley Ballin Smith, James Barrett, Paul Bibire, Nicholas Brooks, Dauvit Broun, Margaret Cormac, Neil Curtis, Clare Downham, Gillian Fellows-Jensen, Ian Fisher, Katherine Forsyth, Peder Gammeltoft, Sarah Jane Gibbon, Mark Hall, Hans Emil Liden, Christopher Lowe, Joanne McKenzie, Christopher Morris, Elizabeth Okasha, Elizabeth Ridel, Liv Schei, Jón Viðar Sigurðsson, Brian Smith, Steffen Stumann Hansen, Frans Arne Stylegård, Simon Taylor, William Thomson, Gareth Williams, Doreen Waugh and Alex Woolf.Table of ContentsCONTENTS Foreword .. ix Nicholas Brooks Preface .. xiii List of Contributors .. xv List of Illustrations .. xvii List of Tables .. xxi County Abbreviations .. xxiii Barbara E. Crawford—A Bibliography .. xxv PART ONE: HISTORY AND CULTURAL CONTACTS On Reading the Icelandic Sagas: Approaches to Old Icelandic Texts .. 3 Paul Bibire Becoming Scottish in the thirteenth century: the evidence of the Chronicle of Melrose .. 19 Dauvit Broun Living on the Edge: Scandinavian Dublin in the Twelfth Century .. 33 Clare Downham Image and Imagination: The Inchmarnock ‘Hostage Stone’ .. 53 Christopher Lowe Anglo-Saxon Inscriptions found outside the British Isles .. 69 Elisabeth Okasha From Scotland to Normandy: The Celtic Sea Route of the Vikings .. 81 Élisabeth Ridel The appearance and personal abilities of goðar, jarlar, and konungar: Iceland, Orkney and Norway .. 95 Jón Viðar Sigurðsson ‘Lords of Norroway’ The Shetland estate of Herdis Thorvaldsdatter .. 111 Frans-Arne Stylegar and Liv Kjørsvik Schei BALLIN_ ‘These people were high-born and thought well of themselves’: The family of Moddan of Dale .. 129 Gareth Williams The Wood Beyond the World: Jämtland and the Norwegian Kings .. 153 Alex Woolf PART TWO: THE CHURCH AND THE CULT OF SAINTS Conversion and the Church in the Hebrides in the Viking Age: “A Very Difficult Thing Indeed” .. 169 Lesley Abrams A Norwegian in Durham: An Anatomy of a Miracle in Reginald of Durham’s Libellus de admirandis beati Cuthberti .. 195 Haki Antonsson, with contributions by Sally Crumplin and Aidan Conti Irish and Armenian Ecclesiastics in Medieval Iceland .. 227 Margaret Cormack Medieval Parish Formation in Orkney .. 235 Sarah Jane Gibbon The Church of St. Clement in Oslo .. 251 Hans-Emil Lidén The Shetland Chapel-sites Project 1999–2000 .. 265 Christopher D. Morris, with Kevin J. Brady and Paul G. Johnson PART THREE: ARCHAEOLOGY, MATERIAL CULTURE AND SETTLEMENT Norwick: Shetland’s fi rst Viking settlement? .. 287 Beverley Ballin Smith The Pirate Fishermen: The Political Economy of a Medieval Maritime Society .. 299 James H. Barrett ‘Like stray words or letters’ The development and workings of the Treasure Trove system .. 341 Neil G. W. Curtis Early Medieval Sculpture from the Faroes: an illustrated catalogue .. 363 Ian Fisher and Ian G. Scott Liminality and Loss: The Material Culture of St Serf ’s Priory, Loch Leven, Kinross-shire, Scotland .. 379 Mark A. Hall Manuring practices in Scotland: deep anthropogenic soils and the historical record .. 401 Jo McKenzie Stobister, Sinnabist and Starrapund: three wilderness settlements in Shetland .. 419 Brian Smith Governor on Antiquarian Mission: Christian Pløyen—a Faroese Link between Copenhagen and Shetland .. 431 Steffen Stummann Hansen PART FOUR: PLACE-NAMES AND LANGUAGE The Scandinavian element gata outside the urbanised settlements of the Danelaw .. 445 Gillian Fellows-Jensen An ogham-inscribed plaque from Bornais, South Uist .. 461 Katherine Forsyth Scandinavian Naming-Systems in the Hebrides—A Way of Understanding how the Scandinavians were in Contact with Gaels and Picts? .. 479 Peder Gammeltoft The Rock of the Irishmen: an early place-name tale from Fife and Kinross .. 497 Simon Taylor The Orkney Papar-names .. 515 William P. L. Thomson Placing Papa Stour in Context .. 539 Doreen Waugh General Index .. 555

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Book SynopsisAbu ’l-Qāsim ʿUbayd Allāh b. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn Khurradādhbih (d. c. 911 CE) is one of the earliest geographical writers in Arabic whose writings have survived more or less in their original form. The Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-mamālik (‘The book of itineraries and kingdoms’) made his reputation. In this edition, Ibn Khurradādhbih’s geographical text is published alongside an excerpt from Qudāma Ibn Jaʿfar’s Kitāb al-Kharāj, which relied on the same sources as Ibn Khurradādhbih. Qudāma b. Jaʿfar was a prominent philologist and historian who died between 940 and 948 CE.

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Book SynopsisThis is a reprint of Kitāb Futūḥ al-buldān by Aḥmad b. Yaḥyā al-Balādhurī (d. c. 892 CE), edited by M.J. de Goeje and originally titled Liber expugnationis regionum (Leiden,1866). The work offers an account of the early conquests of the Islamic polity. It has the form of a geographical survey of the Caliphate’s territories, describing how each location came under Muslim rule.

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Book SynopsisThe Quest for Forbidden Lands: Nikolai Przhevalskii and his Followers on Inner Asian Tracks is a collection of biographical essays of outstanding Russian explorers of Inner Asia of the late nineteenth – early twentieth century, Nikolai Przhevalskii, Vsevolod Roborovskii, Mikhail Pevtsov, Petr Kozlov, Grigorii Grumm-Grzhimailo and Bronislav Grombchevskii, almost all senior army officers. Their expeditions were organized by the Imperial Russian Geographical Society with some assistance from the military department with a view of exploring and mapping the vast uncharted territories of Inner Asia, being the Western periphery of the Manchu-Chinese Empire. The journeys of these pioneers were a great success and gained world renown for their many discoveries and the valuable collections they brought from the region.Trade Review"[...] an extremely useful introduction to the broader place of Przhevalskii’s explorations [...] The Quest for Forbidden Lands admirably succeeds in its stated mission of introducing to a wider audience the influence of Przhevalskii on the expeditions of a range of scientists and geographers, while simultaneously placing his expeditions in a greater context. Seven maps of expeditions, along with countless pertinent drawings and photographs, richly enhance this volume." - Helen Hundley, Wichita State University, in: The Russian Review 78.2 (2019), p.340Table of ContentsContents Preface  Andreyev, M. Baskhanov, T. Yusupova Acknowledgements  Alexander Andreyev, Tatiana Yusupova List of Illustrations A Note on Transliteration, Terminology and Dates List of Abbreviations Introduction: Into Inner Asia, in Search for the Unknown: The Russian Explorations and Explorers of the Region  Alexander I. Andreyev  1 A Glimpse of History: Early Travelers in the ‘Forbidden Lands’ (From the 13th to the Mid-19th Century)  2 The Imperial Russian Geographical Society, P.P. Semenov, and the Onset of Exploration of Inner Asia  3 The IRGO – War Ministry Cooperation. The ‘Epic Era’ of Przhevalskii’s Expeditions  4 Exploration and the Great Game  5 Ethnographic Research and the ‘Imperial Visions’  6 The Final Stage of Explorations: The Academy of Sciences Taking the Lead  7 Some Concluding Remarks 1 Nikolai Mikhailovich Przhevalskii (1839–1888)  Alexander I. Andreyev 2 Mikhail Vasil’ievich Pevtsov (1843–1902)  Mikhail K. Baskhanov 3 Vsevolod Ivanovich Roborovskii (1856–1910)  Alexander I. Andreyev 4 Pyotr Kuzmich Kozlov (1863–1935)  Alexander I. Andreyev, Tatiana I. Yusupova 5 Bronislav Liudvigovich Grombchevskii (1855–1926)  Mikhail K. Baskhanov 6 Grigorii Efimovich Grumm-Grzhimailo (1860–1936)  Tatiana I. Yusupova Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisTibet’s Mount Kailas is one of the world’s great pilgrimage centres, renowned as an ancient sacred site that embodies a universal sacrality. But Kailas Histories: Renunciate Traditions and the Construction of Himalayan Sacred Geography demonstrates that this understanding is a recent construction by British colonial, Hindu modernist, and New Age interests. Using multiple sources, including fieldwork, Alex McKay describes how the early Indic vision of a heavenly mountain named Kailas became identified with actual mountains. He emphasises renunciate agency in demonstrating how local beliefs were subsumed as Kailas developed within Hindu, Buddhist, and Bön traditions, how five mountains in the Indian Himalayan are also named Kailas, and how Kailas sacred geography constructions and a sacred Ganges source region were related.Trade Review'The book under review is a significant contribution to studies of trans-Himalayan pilgrimages and sacred places. Contrary to popular perceptions of an ancient history of mount Kailas, Alex McKay, however, unravels a rather recent history of the holy mountain that he argues evolved over the past hundred years or so.' Soumen Mukherjee, newbooks.asia 'In this formidable study, Alex McKay provides the first historical account of the development of Mt. Kailas as an iconic site of Himalayan religiosity (...) In historicizing the multiple genealogies that fed into the current construction of Kailas-Manasarovar as a sacred space, the book more than accomplishes its goals.The span of data, their analyses, and contextualisation are a feat of considerable importance, rendering it indispensible for those interested in the religions of South Asia, the Himalayas, and Tibet, as well as for scholars of sacred geography writ large. While the pervasive impact of modernity on the construction of Kailas as a site of timeless sanctity is clearly demonstrated, this interpretation relied on the staggering overlay of anterior conjunctions of divergent readings originating in multifarious cultural worlds in the Himalayan borderland. In this respect, McKay amply delivers on his initial qualification of Kailas as “a dynamic process as well as a place” (20), while reminding us of the very human agency and motivations of those involved in the construction of sanctified spaces in the Himalayas and beyond.' Arik Moran, University of Haifa, Israel, Asian Ethnology 75/2 (2016) 'Kailas Histories is, overall, an indispensable guide to the many texts and traditions that have shaped sacred Himalayan geographies over time.' Kyle Gardner, University of Chicago, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 79 (3/2016)

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Book SynopsisIn English Explorers in the East (1738-1745). The Travels of Thomas Shaw, Charles Perry and Richard Pococke, Rachel Finnegan offers an account of the influential travel writings of three rival explorers, whose eastern travel books were printed within a decade of each other. Making use of historical records, Finnegan examines the personal and professional motives of the three authors for producing their eastern travels; their methods of researching, drafting, and publicising their works while still abroad; their relationships with each other, both while travelling and on their return to England; and the legacy of their combined works. She also provides a survey of the main features (both textual and visual) of the travel books themselves.Table of ContentsContents Preface Acknowledgements List of Figures 1 Historical Context of Shaw, Perry and Pococke 2 Literary Context of Shaw, Perry and Pococke 3 Biographies and Interrelationships 4 Development of the Three Travel Books 5 Itineraries 6 Shaw’s Travels 7 Perry’s View 8 Pococke’s Description 9 Conclusion Appendix Bibliography Index

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