Hi there everyone,

I just wanted to see if my people could offer me some help with a problem I've been having in my research.

First a little introduction. I'm a second year masters student at Ball State Univeristy studying Medieval Scandinavia. More specifically I've chosen to focus on Scandinavian mercenaries as I feel that they are a largely overlooked, yet instrumental part of Northern Europe until at least the end of the eleventh century.

For my thesis, I am attempting to create a digital project which will involve text analysis, GIS mapping, and honestly whatever else I can think of to impress my professors. However, my main goal is to show that Norse sellswords were first and foremost have been overlooked by history due to the nature of their profession. Despite this, the appear in historical accounts from Anglo-Saxon England, to Frankish Normandy, Muslim Spain even ranging as far as the Middle-East as well as North Africa. To add on to this, I would like to also help establish the connection that mercenaries were likely employed wherever merchants traveled and therefore, have walked those lands as well.

Secondly, I believe that the Norse mercenary played an instrumental role in developing the gift-giving economy of Medieval Scandinavia. Despite the presence of huge silver coin hoards in Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the most important gifts of this time period were not those of monetary value, but instead gifts which held symbolic importance. In order to reward loyalty, it was common to award a follower something like a ring, armband, or perhaps a ceremonial weapon, essentially something that was not currency. While silver could certainly be a part of the gift, it held little symbolic value among Medieval Scandinavians. In general, what I have found is that the more difficult the gift was to obtain, the more foreign it was to Northern European soil, the more valuable it ended up being. Therefore, besides merchants and raiding parties operating on foreign soil, the Scandinavian mercenary was one of the most important providers of these exotic tokens.

Finally and this brings me to my problem, I'm hoping to approach the topic of the Scandinavian mercenary from a more cultural/environmental approach. By that I mean I want to find if there was anything in the landscape of Denmark, Norway and Sweden that promoted the development of mercenary work as a viable way to live. I have already done some dabbling here and have discovered some interesting connections to the Baltic Sea, but I am always hungry for more.

This brings me to my request, do any of you scholars know of any good books on mercenaries or Scandinavian environmental history? I'm looking more so for stuff on mercenaries as I'm having more trouble with sourcework there. I've already dabbled into the standard military stuff like Machiavelli, Clausewitz and Keegan, but I was wondering if the family knew anything else I should be looking at? I'll take suggestions on most anything, however, I would prefer if the subject matter of the monograph or article was around my time period.

(tldr: Do you guys know any good books on mercenaries? Preferably their use in the Early to Mid Medieval period (600-1100ish)

I'm not quite sure if this is kosher or not but I asked on here before with some research problems that I was having and found the responses very helpful. Thanks in advance if you do reply.