West over Sea - Studies in Scandinavian Sea-Borne Expansion and Settlement Before 1300

This volume celebrates the 20th anniversary of Dr Barbara Crawford's Scandinavian Scotland (1987) and her wider contribution to the subject. Thirty contributions appear under the headings of ‘History and cultural contacts’, ‘The church and the cult of saints’, ‘Archaeology, material culture and settlement’, and ‘Place-names and language’. The range offered by a stellar list of scholars from many generations is warm and fitting testimony to a widely held, deep respect and affection for Crawford as a person, her networking prowess, and an impressive ‘can do’ attitude that so effortlessly overrides traditional academic boundaries, well conveyed in Nicholas Brooks's Foreword.

Festschrifts generally contain papers of mixed breadth, significance and levels of development, with authors using the opportunity to update thoughts on favoured subjects .