sea raiders

The article explores the naval raid of the Slavic forces on the coastal Norwegian port-settlement of Konungahella in the mid 1130s.  The paper analyse the raid in the context of regional politics and from the perspective of Baltic Slavs.  It also encompasses a wider political context of a contemporary Imperial and Polish politics.  It addresses the issue of timing of the raid, participation of other than Pomeranian Slavs, and the reasons why and what for it took place.  It focus on reasons behind the raid which are surrounded by controversy and various interpretations.  The paper postulates an alternative explanation not necessary as much politically motivated as commonly accepted.

ABSTRACT: Lecture 21 ("Sea Peoples") appears in a variety of shorter, longer, and different forms in other courses I teach (e.g., Syria-Palestine; Ancient Mesopotamia; Imperial and Post-Imperial Egypt), and includes a summary of the 13th century BC decline, a ca. "1200 BCE" (1177 BC) "collapse," and the 12th century BC aftermath of the Late Bronze Age in the Aegean, Anatolia, Levant (mainly Syria-Palestine), and Egypt. It includes a summary and selected bibliography at the end, extracted from a recent overview article I wrote on the Sea Peoples (published in Fall 2018). REVISED: Adding some new text, slides, edits, and new formatting (April, 2024).