SSN Seminar: Reflections on Geneticized Viking Identity with Anna Källén

Join the SSN for this interdisciplinary seminar with Professor and Chair of Museology Anna Hegardt Källén of Umeå University, Sweden. After her presentation, Anna will be joined in discussion by Heidi Colleran (Max Planck Institute) and Catherine Frieman (Australian National University).

The seminar, chaired by Professor Emma Kowal, will be in-person at Deakin Downtown, and live-streamed for our national and international audience.

With the recent surge of genetic analyses for historical purposes, in archaeology and commercial ancestry testing, a number of variations on Viking identity have caught the interest of popular media and the public. Homing in on two notable examples – the female Viking warrior from Birka and haplogroup I-M253, aka “the Viking gene” – this talk shows how Viking identity has been forged in obfuscated dances between scientific DNA analyses and cultural production of meaning. Much more than a source of new facts and insights into historic identity, it will be argued, DNA is in these cases used as an important component of cultural meaning-making, acting as a stamp of proof on desired stories and useful packages of cultural imagination. The talk is empirically grounded in two recent articles from the Code Narrative History project – I’m a Viking! and The Lagertha Complex – and reflects upon the potential social, political and ethical consequences of the construction of geneticized Viking identity.

Speaker Bio

Anna Källén is Professor and Chair of Museology at Umeå University in Sweden. With a background in archaeology and heritage studies in Southeast Asia and Scandinavia, she writes about the political and ethical implications of archaeological science and storytelling in academia, museums, and popular culture. From 2018–2022 she was PI of the multidisciplinary research project Code Narrative History – making sense of ancient DNA in contemporary culture. Among her recent books are Stones Standing (2015), Heritage and Borders (2019), The Archaeologist In-Between (2021), and Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA (2024), as well as the forthcoming The Trouble with Ancient DNA – Telling Stories of the Past with Genetic Science (Chicago University Press, January 2025).

Catherine J. Frieman is an associate professor of European archaeology at the Australian National University and an ARC Future Fellow. She is a material culture and technology studies specialist, and has conducted research in western Europe, the UK, Southeast Asia and Australia. Her research interests include the nature of archaeological enquiry, patterns of innovation and resistance, the role of aDNA for modelling past societies, social theory, feminist methods, and prehistoric stone tools. Her most recent monograph is Negotiationg Migrations: The archaeology and politics of mobility (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024). Her other monographs cover topics as diverse as skeuomorphism in the archaeological record, Bronze Age maritime trade, the deep history of innovation, and archaeological methods.

Heidi Colleran is an interdisciplinary anthropologist working at the intersection of socio-cultural anthropology, demography and cultural evolution. Her work focuses on the relationship between culture and population dynamics, and combines approaches from the humanities and social sciences. She maintains two field-based research projects in rural Poland and Vanuatu, and collaborates with researchers in aDNA, psycho- and socio-linguistics and developmental psychology. She currently leads the Lise Meitner Research Group, which focuses on the co-evolution of culture and demography and is co-Investigator on the ERC-funded Multilingual worlds – neglected histories. Uncovering their emergence, continuity and loss in past and present societies.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Deakin Downtown, Level 12, Tower 2, Melbourne, Australia