Shane McLeod

I am currently working on the Norse and the Sea project with a focus on maritime routes in Western Scotland. This complements my earlier work on the locations of 'viking' burials in Scotland (started at the University of Stirling) and my interests in migration and logistics. I continue to be fascinated by the 'great army' in 9th century England, and continue to work on aspects of that, including a forthcoming chapter in a book on Viking Camps.

I have a strong interest in the Viking migrations to Britain and Ireland, including issues of migration routes and demographics, cross-cultural identities and migrant adaptation. My work on migration led to an investigation of the sex ratios of Viking settlers, resulting in one of the formative articles in the surge of interest in ‘shieldmaidens’. I have worked extensively on the ‘great army’ in England, including a paper in-press which tries to locate the overnight camps used by the army on their campaigns. I am also interested in performative aspects of Viking funerals and was part of the Funeralscapes team who hosted re-enactments of medieval funerals at archaeologically attested burial sites on the Isle of Eigg in 2014. I dream of creating a Viking tourist trail of Britain, possibly as an app, to help people access Viking sites.

Dr Shane McLeod is originally from Australia, where he completed his PhD on The Beginning of Scandinavian Settlement in England: the Viking ‘Great Army’ and early settlers, c. 865-900 (published by Brepols in 2014) in 2011 at The University of Western Australia. He was an Impact Research Fellow at the University of Stirling 2013-2015 working on the landscapes of Viking burial sites in Scotland - Viking Burials in Scotland | Landscape and burials in the Viking Age (wordpress.com). He started at the Institute for Northern Studies in 2022.