Earth Wounds: Creative Explorations of Viking Age Funerary Customs presents Viking death and burial through visually striking photography and art grounded in scholarship. Experimental archaeologists Kevin Alexandrowicz and Devon Rawlings use both 35mm film and digital photography alongside line illustrations and excerpts from Old Norse poetry and literature. Carefully staged recreated burials are based on actual graves, creating a fresh way to engage with Viking funerary customs. The work connects material culture to deeper reflections on life and death, emphasizing memory, loss, and mortality. The book’s intimate format and meditative tone make it relevant beyond Viking history, offering comfort to people grieving a loss.
"Earth Wounds: Creative Explorations of Viking Age Funerary Customs is beautifully written and photographed, using both 35mm film and digital photography, by experimental archaeologists Kevin Alexandrowicz and Devon Rawlings. It is published by Hyldyr, a small, artisanal publisher in Washington State known for popularizing medieval and ancient materials, and includes introductions by archaeologists Leszek Gardeła and Giorgia Sottotetti."
"But Earth Wounds will make you see the archaeology of death in the Viking Age like never before with art that is grounded in scholarship. Through carefully and thoughtfully-staged recreated burials that are based on actual graves, Kevin and Devon have created a way to engage with the past that is fresh for modern audiences. Their unique approach started as an art project with the goal of illuminating an often misunderstood subject that turned into something much more."
"Though it has 200 pages, the book is tiny and fits in your hand like a small prayer book. As a historian who researches and teaches about the vikings, I found the photos and line illustrations, as well as the well-chosen excerpts from Old Norse poetry and literature, to be interesting and engaging. But there was also an overwhelming feeling that the book spoke to something deeper."
"The vikings are but a vehicle. The meditations on life and death feel universal in a way that I could imagine this book being helpful for someone experiencing and grieving a loss."
Read at Medievalists.net
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