Viking-age Communities: Pap-Names and Papar in the Hebridean Islands

Sculpted stones and carvings in caves and rock faces testify to an unexplored facet of early Christianity across a zone stretching from the Scottish coasts to Iceland. Though recent work paves the way for a more nuanced interpretation of this material, key uncertainties pose significant hurdles for scholarship. This book highlights the ambiguities surrounding Viking-Age Scandinavian and early Christian communities (called papar by later Norse literature), and focuses upon the Pap-place-names of the north Atlantic islands in order to shed new light on our understanding of the relationships between the peoples of this zone in the early medieval period.