Talk:Birka

message: I find the statement "Generally regarded as Sweden's oldest town" to be fairly odd, as the article itself states that the settlement was established in the 8th century, while the Uppåkra article describes that town as having already been prominent for centuries by that point. Either one of the articles is way off on the dating, or that sentence is. I guess some people might argue that Uppåkra wasn't located in Sweden at the time, but there wasn't really any Sweden for Birka to be located in at the time either. - Alltat (talk) 13:57, 7 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Note that Köping(todays Köpingsvik) on the island of Öland is as atleast five times larger than "Birca" and existed before and after it. It´s almost unknown by the public and historians and archeologist hardly never mention it. There have been several small excevations but no large ones i Köping. The findings show that it´s several times larger and much older than "Birca". The problem is that the evidence doesn´t fit into the ruling view on Swedens early history. Especially since Köping is a much better candidate to be Ansgars Birka. So if Köping existed and it did so, then Swedens early history needs to be rewritten. It´s "en het potatis"(a hot potato) that no one wants to deal with, since the establishment have embrassed "Birka" on Björkö and even got it classified as a world heritage. Arneke (talk) 09:12, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Oldest?

message: Hmm. I don't know how or if this should be fitted into the article, but I thought I'd throw it up here since it deserves mention: There's a picture of the 17th century map of Björkö from Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna. It was known at that time that Björkö had had some historical significance, but it was not known that it was Birka. (This is mentioned) 
What's a bit interesting is that Suecia also has a map of 'old Sweden' with Birka on it, where the location was erroneously guessed to be somewhere up in the middle of Uppland. Maybe we could get a picture of that detail of the map? It'd be a good illustration of the fact that they didn't know where it was. --BluePlatypus 07:53, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Untitled

message: There seems to be a critical opinion among a group of scholars that dates the earliest phase of the Björkö settlement only in the mid-9th century and its growth to town-size at the end of the 9th century. Finds from the massive graveyards outside the city do not go further back in time than the late 9th century. This questions Björkö's position as the legendary Birka. It does not seem to have been there yet when Ansgar arrived in Birka in 829 and was already destroyed when Adam told about it in the 1060s. Claims about Björkö town being already established in the mid-8th century seem to have originated from the fact that since Ansgar arrived in a full-grown town in 829, it must have been established well before. I have failed to find reliable data dating Björkö town earlier than the mid-9th century. As Björkö town faded away along with eastern trade collapsing around 975, it probably was created when the eastern trade originally took off with the Varangians in control of the Kievan Rus from the 850s onwards. --Drieakko 18:23, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Drieakko, there is no evidence that the Varangians were ever "in control" of "the Kievan Rus" as you term it, but it's not my point. I agree that the dating of the site is dubious but my doubts go further. What do we know about Birka from sagas and other Norse sources? Why scholars assign so much weight to this name, placing it on a par with Hedeby? The article leaves it all in a haze. I've got the impression that Birka as a great medieval emporium was born from the 19th-century nationalist hype, which sought to spot a Viking site in Sweden and to place it on an equal footing with Danish Hedeby. Am I being naive? Many books mention that Birka was preceded by Helgo, an important Vendel Age site located 10 km to the southeast. Do we have an article about it? --Ghirla -трёп- 18:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As Varangians are not the topic of this article, I say no further words about that :) Existence of Birca is completely based on two German accounts, one from the 9th and the other one from the 11th century. Both give plenty of credit to it. The problem rises from the fact that Birca (or any similar location) is missing from the Scandinavian saga space. Especially since the key locations in Uppland area like (Old) Sigtuna and (Old) Uppsala are decently covered in saga sources, silence around Birca is strange, if it too was supposed to be in their close vicinity. To put it bluntly, the Björkö settlement looks like a short-lived ghetto built for foreign traders that flooded into Sweden along with the flow of Varangian goods. It had no political, religious or military importance, but the foreign traders could live there sufficiently safely. I bet no free Viking man lived there. Hedeby was a way more massive construction, and there is a truth in your opinion that the status of Björkö settlement is quite buffed with nationalistic tones that have made it the jewel of the Swedish past. Part of that is the forced connection with Birca mentioned in German chronicles. About Helgö, it existed on a near-by island and was probably a big estate of a powerful Svea family ruling the trade well before Viking Age. It being a "predecessor" of Birca is a very simplified opinion.--Drieakko 18:50, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birka dating 

message: Is there academic speculation somewhere whether Björkö was inhabited only in the summertime and abandoned for winters? If the tiny island of Björkö was inhabited also in winter, its population was isolated from the mainland every autumn and especially every spring even for a month. Because of this, the medieval royal residence in Adelsö is known to have been only for summer usage. --Drieakko 10:56, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Björkö uninhabited during winters? 

message: I was surprised, when I read about one of the relatives of our first hungarian leader (not king) Árpád. This family member was namely Lachyn. Lachyn was the uncle of Almysh ibn Selkej, father of Arpad. Lachyn went into Russian history later, as I. Rurik. When I checked the page on Wiki about Rurik, I found he was born in Birka. It is very interesting that, in hungarian language birka means - sheep. I searched for another articles about Birka, and i found that sheep grazing is one of the oldest traditions in Birka. I dont know, what it means, maybe nothing, but a town with the name like Birka, and a leader like Rurik (who, as i read here in the discussion page, maybe was finno-igric just like hungarians) you should think about the possible consequences of this informations. 
Djagfar Tarihi in English
Xxlrutin (talk) 15:12, 18 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Birka - Sheep? - a possible and vague hungarian connection 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: In the section of dihram coins, the following is quoted:"There is no deity but Allah alone he has no equal For God Muhammad is the messenger of God". 
As I understand, dihram coins were shipped back to Scandinavia by the boatload - many boatloads. Obviously, coins from Muslim lands would often have included the Islamic profession of faith. But in this case, so what? In the context of this article, the inclusion seems to add nothing. By definition, dihrams are 'Muslim' coins. The inclusion of the words is, I suspect, more about contemporary religion than the history of Birka. 
MarkinBoston (talk) 16:26, 16 February 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  I don't see the value