The Centre for the Viking Age and the Middle Ages (CVM) forms the framework for Aarhus University researchers’ work with the Viking Age and the Middle Ages with a view to strengthening and expanding research, teaching and talent development among scholars working with the period from c. 500-1500 within disciplines such as history, archeology, art history, literary history, Nordic language and literature, religious history and legal history. This is the period which in European research is called the Middle Ages, and which in a Danish context includes the Viking Age and lasts until the introduction of the Reformation in 1536. The broad composition of researchers in the field at our university is something special, both in a national and an international context. The collaboration between the archaeologists and those who studies the written cultural heritage provides a unique interdisciplinary approach to working with sources such as texts, images and objects. The center will emphasize a broad European and transnational perspective, and the Danish and Nordic Middle Ages will be examined as an integral part of the larger context that Christian Latin culture constituted. The aim is to substantiate the strength position of this research area locally as well as internationally. The center will bring together researchers from Art History, Nordic Language and Literature, History, Archeology, Religious Studies, Theology and Legal History, but will of course be open also to scholars from other disciplines. It intends to work according to an ‘umbrella model’, where collaboration in research and teaching can be established across the academic disciplines.

This interdisciplinary research center for researchers at the Faculty of Arts (especially from the School of Culture and Society and the School of Communication and Culture) and the School of Business and Social Sciences also aims to establish both a national and an international research network.