Olwyn Owen


Olwyn Owen, FSA Scot, is a British archaeologist and academic specialising in Scandinavian Scotland.
She is an expert in Viking material culture and has commented on the Galloway Hoard for National Geographic magazine.
She has excavated widely in Scotland and Scandinavia and has had a long career in various heritage management roles.
Owen is also an archaeological consultant and in March 2017, she was made Visiting Reader at Orkney College, University of Highlands and Islands.

Education

She was awarded a BA in English from Durham University in 1976, during which time she also took archaeology classes under Rosemary Cramp.
In 1979, she completed her MA degree at Durham University, with a thesis on the English Urnes Style.

Career

Owen has written extensively on Scandinavian links with Scotland and introduced audiences to Scotland's Viking past, for example, in her book Things in the Viking World.
She appeared in the Time Team series 5 episode 3, at Sanday, Orkney, which aired on 18 January 1998.

Selected works

The Sea Road, Edinburgh,.Scar: a Viking boat burial on Orkney The Sea Road: a Viking voyage through Scotland.Kebister, Shetland: the four thousand year old story of one Shetland township. ‘A decorative mount from the Brough of Birsay, Orkney’, in Morris, C D, The Birsay Bay Project 3.
  • ‘The strange beast that is the English Urnes Style’, in Graham-Campbell, J, Hall, R, Jesch, J and Parsons, D N, Vikings and the Danelaw, 203-22.
  • ‘The Southwell lintel, its style and significance’, in Graham-Campbell, J, Hall, R, Jesch, J and Parsons, D N, Vikings and the Danelaw, 203-22 . Shetland and the Viking World: Papers from the Proceedings of the Seventeenth Viking Congress, Lerwick.
  • ‘Sound Foundations: Archaeology in ’s towns and cities and the role of the Scottish Burgh Survey’, Antiquity 76, 802-807.
  • ‘Inveresk and Historic Scotland: managing and protecting the archaeological remains’, in Bishop, M C, Roman Inveresk: Past, Present and Future, 81-87. Armatvra Press.
  • ‘Curiouser and curiouser: mysteries of Scar and Tuquoy, Orkney’, in Waugh, D J, The Faces of Orkney: ''Stones, Skalds & Saints, 138-160.
  • ‘The Scar boat burial - and the missing decades of the early Viking Age in Orkney and Shetland’, in Adams, J & Holman, K, Scandinavia and 800-1350, Contact, Conflict and Coexistence, 3-33.
  • ‘A brief guide to saga sites to visit in Orkney’, in Owen, O The World of Orkneyinga Saga – ‘The Viking Broad-cloth Trip’, 224-231.
  • ‘History, archaeology and Orkneyinga saga: the case of Tuquoy’, in Owen, O The World of Orkneyinga Saga – ‘The Viking Broad-cloth Trip’, 192-212.
  • ‘’s Viking towns: a contradiction in terms?’, in Mortensen, A & Arge, S V, Viking and Norse in the North Atlantic, 297-306.
  • ‘Norse influence at Govan on the Firth of Clyde, Scotland’, in Sigmundsson, S, Viking Settlements and Viking Society, 333-46 .Things in the Viking World. Lerwick, Shetland Amenity Trust, Viking Unst: Excavation and Survey in Northern Shetland 2006-2010. Lerwick  .
  • 'The legacy of the Viking Unst project', in Turner, V E, Bond, J M and Larsen, A-C, Viking Unst: Excavation and Survey in Northern Shetland 2006-2010, 234-52.
  • 'Galloway's Viking treasure: the story of a discovery', British Archaeology'', no 140, 16-23.