Brit Solli: Seid. Myter,sjamanisme og kjønn i vikingenes tid. Pax Forlag A/S,Oslo, 2002. 327 pp. ISBN 82‐530‐2403‐7

This article develops the idea that the emergence of the Neolithic world was closely linked to discovering and becoming aware of new aspects and dimensions of reality. Practices such as pottery making and cultivation promoted attentiveness to new aspects of things and the environment, which in turn generated a new kind of lived world that was, in a sense, richer, larger and deeper than before. It is proposed that new forms of material culture and new material practices – new ways of engaging with the material world – expanded people’s horizons of perception and thinking. This cultivation of perception was an important mechanism through which new ways of life and thought associated with the Neolithic came into being.     

Catharina Raudvere,Anders Andrén and Kristina Jennbert: Myter om det nordiska. Mellan romantik och politik . Vägar till Midgård I. Nordic Academic Press,Lund, 2001. 191 pp. ISSN 1650-5905, ISBN 91-89116-19-4

A method of grouping early post‐glacial settlements is described. This is based upon Quaternary geological, archaeological and statistical methods. Hakes were measured from settlements dated ‐with a high degree of certainty through the agency of the natural sciences, and the results obtained were treated statistically.     

Kåre Lunden,Frå svartedauen til 17. mai: 1350–1814 [From the Black Death to the 17th of May 1350–1814], edited by R. Almås. Vol. 2. Norges landbrukshistorie (Oslo: Samlaget, 2002). 456 pp. ISBN 82-521-5584-7.

The French nobility offers the peculiar case of a category that in a very short period of time went from the envied position of unquestioned natural elite of the kingdom to complete political irrelevance, passing through outright detestation during the Revolution. The Revolution destroyed the political power of the nobility but it can hardly be argued that it destroyed the nobility itself. In fact, the French nobility managed to survive as a separate and significant category in French society. Even in the absence of actual political control, elements specific to the nobility remained strongly associated with the notion of elite in every regime that followed the Revolution. This paper reviews the status of the nobility before, during, and after the Revolution. It argues that, paradoxically, the nobility owes its survival in large part to a reconstructed mystique which grew more attractive as the aristocracy was losing its actual political power. Finally, images of profligacy and decadence, very popular in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, preserved the exceptionality of the French nobility which thus presents to the historian the case of a remarkably resilient elite.