Talk:Vanaja

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[edit] Reconstruction or actual name?

Anonymous user, thanks for your contributions. Some comments.

Vanaja as a name is not a reconstruction. It appears as the original name for the community around the Häme Castle and the lake (Vanajavesi, roughly translating as Lake of Vanaja) next to it throughout the time there have been documents about the area, and is still in usage today, however far less than in older times. It can be assumed that the Iron Age settlement in the middle of all that bore the same name, especially since a Russian document uses a very similar sounding name for the central settlement, "a town" as they put it. But there is no doubt in that the central area of Tavastia was called Vanaja. --Drieakko 17:07, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, as a regional name "Vanaja" is obviously ancient and authentic. But the association between the said name and the Iron Age settlement site described in this article (whose proto-urban character is not generally believed in anymore) seems to be purely speculative. After all, it was just one of the villages or hamlets in Vanaja.--217.112.242.181 06:40, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Have they found comparable settlements in Tavastia so far? --Drieakko 13:51, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, Tavastia is full of Iron Age settlement sites. The problem is that we do not really know how much the Varikonniemi site differs from the average settlements. It may have been a relatively ordinary village, which was over-interpreted as a "town" because the site had a lot structures and layers of post-medieval date.--217.112.242.181 14:23, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is fully possible. Without the comfortably fitting Novgorod chronicle mentioning the "town" of Vanai, this chapter might already have been closed. Hopefully they get to continue the excavations some time soon.

[edit] Hoax?

Could it be that the article is a hoax? There are no reliable sources. I have found no data about the site on Google Books, which contains many books about the Vikings. Furthermore, the Cambridge Medieval History estimates the size of Birka at 14 hectares. All this makes me wonder... --Ghirla ^-трёп- 17:58, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Article is not a hoax. Finland was not a Viking land, and Finland is usually omitted from Viking articles. Recent Nordic publications about the Scandinavian Iron Age have started to include Vanaja as a contemporary commercial center, though. Excavations were undertaken in the late 1980s by Hans-Peter Schultz, and the results have been properly published in detail. However, like stated in the article, the nature of the site has been contested, and hopefully gets resolved when there eventually surfaces enough funding to finalize the excavations. About the size of Birka, Cambridge seems to have included the large cemetaries outside the city. --Drieakko 19:04, 14 November 2006 (UTC)

Added reference to the publication going through the excavation results in detail. The articles are some 60 pages and written in German. --Drieakko 19:27, 14 November 2006 (UTC)