Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Social Networks Among the Vikings

Phy.org reports:
Pádraig Mac Carron and Ralph Kenna from [Coventry] University's Applied Mathematics Research Centre have carried out a detailed analysis of the relationships described in ancient Icelandic manuscripts to shed new light on Viking society...They mapped out the interactions between over 1,500 characters that appear in 18 sagas including five particularly famous epic tales. Their analyses show, for example, that although an 'outlaw tale' has similar properties to other European heroic epics, and the 'family sagas' of Icelandic literature are quite distinct, the overall network of saga society is consistent with real social networks.
See: Network analysis of the Íslendinga sögur – the Sagas of Icelanders, European Physical Journal B 86 (2013) 407.

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