A Viking Goes Digging for Ancient Italians
Just who were the Etruscans, and what were they up to?
For those of you who follow my work regularly, you know I’m a medievalist who studies and teaches about the Vikings. But if I wasn’t doing that, you may not know that my heart would be in Rome. I love Italy for so many reasons — even though I’m not a sunny climate kind of gal — but Rome in particular. It’s old and gritty and decaying, but alive and beautiful at the same time. As a person with degrees in both History and Art History, I appreciate Rome because it provides no end to the mix of these two things and more. Art, History, Politics, Religion, Culture . . . “All roads lead to Rome,” they say, and there’s a reason for it.
And so it should come as no surprise that I would hang out with nerds who like the same thing, and top nerd on the list is my friend Davide. As a person who is half Dane and half Italian, he certainly has one foot in both of those camps. And as an archaeologist and historian, he is lucky to be spending his career researching in both areas, the Vikings in the north and the Italians in the south. So, this post is dedicated to Davide and some of the work he has done and is currently engaged in. It’s pretty cool stuff, and I thought you might find it interesting as well.
Davide and his very cool wife Colleen both work at Baylor University and head up the San Giuliano Archaeological Project. They have been spending summers in Italy (sans the COVID years), about 40 miles northwest of Rome, working and digging, looking for Etruscan history. As some of you may know, the Etruscans were an early Italian culture, pre-dating the Roman Empire, and it is from them that we get our modern word “Tuscany.”
They and their team are excavating both a medieval castle and also several tombs. Their findings have been published and also featured in the Discovery Channel show “Expedition Unknown.” Davide is a distinguished member of The Explorer’s Club.
Some fantastic stuff is being unearthed, painstakingly, one shovel or spade of dirt at a time.
Davide’s other foot is in the Viking world. If you’ve seen my podcast Vikingology, you’ll know my cohost C.J. and I spoke with him in a couple of episodes about another dig site he directed in Iceland for several years unearthing one of the largest Viking Age chieftain’s halls to exist there, which was possibly the last home and final resting place of the famous Viking warrior poet Egil Skallagrímsson.
If you haven’t seen the interviews, please do check them out (audio-only versions are also on the site, as well as Spotify and Apple Podcasts). In addition to being a very cool cat and great friend, Davide knows a ton of interesting stuff about what it meant to be a chieftain back then. His work is what drew me to Iceland in the first place years ago, and for that I thank him from the bottom of my heart. He also has a book on the Vikings coming out later this year, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, check out his projects in this post and enjoy the history :)
Skál and saluti!