In a climate where the very mention of the word ‘Festschrift’ causes publishers to throw their hands up in horror and to inform, politely, the prospective editor(s) that their aspirations are simply not viable, Brill are to be commended for accepting this particular volume. The editors are likewise to be congratulated: not only for pursuing the project in the first place, but also for seeing through to completion a magisterial collection of essays in a manner that has ensured cohesion and very few infelicities—a remarkable achievement indeed given the nature of the book.
The reason for any publishers’ trepidation in committing themselves to ‘The Festschrift’ is of course, understandable. Such volumes, while providing an admirable form of tribute, enabling generations of scholars to express their respect for the honorand, can be unwieldy, disparate and uneven in the quality of the contributions. Early medieval art and archaeology, however, while being a truly weighty (and therefore physically unwieldy) tome, nevertheless manages to bring together a series of extremely high-quality essays that represent the extraordinarily wide range of James Graham-Campbell's impressive expertise and interests in a manner that is thematically coherent. In part, this is achieved by the organisation of the essays into four sections: ‘Objects’, ‘Hoards’, ‘Places’ and ‘Style, symbol, meaning’. The whole is neatly book-ended by a pair of essays on the life and work of Graham-Campbell, which neatly contextualise the range and varied subjects of the contributions set between them.
The way in which the essays have been arranged, however, is not the only means by which coherence has been achieved. Whether examining artefacts individually or collectively, the places associated with such objects and collections, or their style, symbolic references or meanings, the essays are linked by a number of themes central to Graham-Campbell's interests. The most prominent of these is the historiography underpinning current scholarship. While a number of the essays are explicitly historiographical, for almost all this is an area of concern. Furthermore, the essays contextualise their subjects, not only in the light of the history of scholarship, but also in terms of the history of the material culture relevant to their topic. With such strong thematic undercurrents, the varied subjects treated in the essays enjoy an overall cohesion.
For this volume, perhaps more than for other Festschriften, this sense of coherence is crucial. Between its covers lie 44 essays, including the preliminary address and endnote, a list of Graham-Campbell's own publications up to 2011, and a substantial index. Indeed, the sheer number of contributions, while admirably reflecting the impact of Graham-Campbell on colleagues and friends working on the art, archaeology, history and literature of Northern Europe in the first millennium, is reflected in the fact that the project was initially conceived as a two-volume publication (an ambition confusingly retained in the preliminary information). Although the price of the final single volume is truly eye-watering, it is nevertheless hard to imagine how the essays, numerous though they are, could have been divided across two volumes—a further testament to their thematic unity.
In a review of this nature it is not practical to discuss the individual contributions, but together they provide the reader with a wealth of knowledge relating to the period spanning the Late Roman through to the High Middle Ages, as it pertains to a geographical area extending from Iceland to Iberia, Ireland to Poland, and Scotland to Asia Minor. Thus, the section on ‘Objects’, which forms by far the largest collection of essays (20 in total), presents studies on individual items of jewellery (some known only through antiquarian accounts), to groups of weaponry, ceramics, and vessels and tools of various kinds—ecclesiastical and secular, ritual and utilitarian. Together these demonstrate the invaluable nature of object studies and the wonderfully varied evidence that can be brought to bear in such studies. The section on ‘Hoards’ that follows (comprising six essays), situates such artefactual examinations, and continues to exhibit the value of disparate (empirical and historical) approaches to the subject. The last two sections consist of eight essays each, with the ‘Place’ section nicely continuing some of the ideas introduced in the object studies and taken further in the discussions of the hoards, while maintaining the varied approaches to the subjects under consideration, which here range from almost forensic empirical analysis to broad surveys and historical investigation. The final section, ‘Style, symbol, meaning’, is perhaps the least successful of the four; it is unclear, for instance, why some contributions are included here rather than in the first section. Nevertheless, it does make explicit the potential for studying objects according to their style, or as symbols, and exploring their latent meaning(s), not simply iconographically, but also theoretically and historiographically.
Overall, this is a collection of essays that indubitably honours James Graham-Campbell, his expertise and his interests, and pays lasting tribute to the impact he has had on successive generations of scholars; in this it rightly fulfils the expectations of a Festschrift. More than that, however, it provides an up-to-date overview of the scholarship on the art and archaeology of early medieval Northern Europe, an invaluable set of bibliographies, and real insight into how such work can be carried forward. In this, it ensures that Graham-Campbell's influence will continue, long into the future. This is the real tribute.
