To Heck with Sugar and Spice

Introduction: Viking women are commonly portrayed in the media as strong warriors in their own right. An example of this would be America Ferrera’s Astrid in the film How to Train Your Dragon, who is initially the most promising student in dragon training. There is little evidence to suggest that viking women were as prominent warriors as the media suggests. Traditionally vikings are considered to have been part of a culture of violent people who murdered, pillaged, and enslaved others, and as Judith Jesch notes, “women have had little opportunity to participate in war, murder, rape, and robbery.” The viking women may be portrayed as champions, however they were considered insignificant and were thus undervalued by their male counterparts.

2017

This short essay explores the importance of the study of gender to an understanding of Viking and Norse society. The paper was originally written for an MLitt in Viking Studies at the Institute of Northern Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands in Orkney, Scotland, but has since been re-edited and reformatted in its current form.

This thesis focuses on the concept of female warriors during the Viking age. I list seven cases from different parts of the Norse world where women have been buried with weapons and compare these archaeological sources with written sources using methods of material culture studies and theories of gender identity and feminist thought. By looking at these I found evidence of special ideas on- and treatments of- female warriors in line with a concept of third genders which could explain the rarity of their existence. However I concluded that female warriors did indeed exist in the Viking age, even though there were very few of them.

English: The study of women within the fields of history and archaeology has traditionally been somewhat neglected as both of these academic disciplines have been dominated by an androcentric approach to the study of the genders. Especially within the field of Viking Age studies women and children has been neglected and perceived mostly through their relation to the male gender having resulted in a quite biased approach to, and interpretation of, archaeological material. Through a critical discussion of relevant archaeological and historical academic publications from primarily the late 21st century, compared to arguments for and discussions of examples of Viking Age material culture, putting women in relation to weapons, this thesis argues the approach to objects of material culture exemplified in the social-Anthropological method of 'social biography'. This method, in relation to the principal of unbiased and equal approach to the study of archaeological material and gender as formulated within the field of feminist archaeology, is applied comparatively onto traditional interpretations of selected archaeological finds, in order to examine and discuss the development within the approach to archaeological material. The archaeological material, which in this thesis acts as primary sources to the relation between Viking Age women and weapons, is in the form of depictions from the Oseberg tapestry as well as in the form of Viking Age jewelry of women both with and without weapons; examples of female weapon graves from Denmark and Norway and the inclusion of a child weapon grave from Norway. Combined this material act as strong evidence of Viking Age weapons having not only been objects reserved for men, and it stresses the problems related to gender-automatic interpretations of Viking Age graves where weapons act as a gender marker, having resulted in a false representation of the genders within the archaeological registrations of weapon graves. Only through a continuous reevaluation and critical interpretation of the ever growing mass of archaeological material concerning the Viking Age, is it possible to approach a more accurate and reflected definition of the relations between women and weapons, free of traditional and biased auto-interpretations of gender and material culture. Dansk: Studier af kvinder indenfor både historie og arkæologi har traditionelt set været et forsømt område, da begge disse akademiske discipliner har været præget af en androcentrisk tilgang til køn. Særligt indenfor studier af vikingetiden har områder vedrørende kvinder og børn været negligeret og traditionelt set tolket udelukkende gennem deres relation til det mandlige køn, hvilket har resulteret i en meget ensidig tilgang til samt tolkning af arkæologisk materiale. Gennem en kritisk diskussion af relevant arkæologisk og historisk forskningslitteratur, primært fra sidste del af det 21. århundrede, sammenholdt med argumenter for og diskussioner af eksempler fra vikingetidens materielkultur, som sætter kvinder i relation til våben, argumenterer dette speciale for den tilgang til objekter som er eksemplificeret i den social-antropologiske metode ’social-biografi’. Denne metode, i samspil med det formulerede princip indenfor feministisk arkæologi om en upartisk tilgang til arkæologisk materiale og køn, bliver anvendt komparativt på traditionelle fortolkninger af udvalgte fund, for at undersøge og diskutere udviklingen indenfor tilgangen til arkæologisk materiale. De arkæologiske fund, der i dette speciale fungerer som primærkilder til vikingetidens kvinder og deres relationer til våben, består af afbildninger af kvinder med og uden våben fra Osebergtapetet og fra smykker, samt eksempler på kvindelige våbengrave fra Danmark og Norge og en enkelt børne-våbengrav fra Norge. Tilsammen udgører dette materiale et stærkt bevis for, at våben i vikingetiden ikke var objekter forbeholdt mænd, og viser det problematiske i at lave køns-automatiske tolkninger af grave hvor våben indgår, hvilket traditionelt set har forårsaget en skævfordeling af hh. det mandlige og kvindelige køn i forbindelse med registreringen af våbengrave. Kun gennem en kontinuerligt revurderende og kritisk tolkning af den konstant voksende totale funds-mængde fra vikingetiden, er det muligt at nærme sig en mere præcis definition af relationen mellem vikingetidens kvinder og våben, som er fri af traditionelle, ensidige automat-tolkninger af køn og materiel kultur.

The question of Norse female warriors (FW) in the Viking period, which before the onset of the early Twentieth Century was assured to be highly unlikely, has since been subject to considerable debate which will only intensify with time. The primary drivers of this debate can be attributed to the influences of Feminist thought on archaeology and literature, alongside the ever-growing corpus of new and re-assessed archaeological finds. From these developments, much has been presented to support the existence of FWs. However, many problems remain, such as the plethora of issues associated with the strongest archaeological evidence yet found and the scarcity of evidence within literature. With these issues considered, the existence of FWs remains unlikely, but not implausible.

Although the Viking Age (ca. 750-1050 CE) is often characterized as a time of violence, significant questions remain regarding how conflict was conducted during the period. For example, there have been few attempts to understand the cultural norms, attitudes, and practices that drove individuals to participate in warfare. This article reports the results of a study that sought to shed light on this issue by considering the process of enculturation during Viking Age childhood. This was achieved by exploring how the influences of militarism and hegemonic masculinity conditioned those living within Scandinavian societies to participate in conflict from a young age. Through examining the archaeological and literary evidence for childhood pastimes, the study found that everyday aspects of Viking Age society reinforced militaristic, hegemonic hierarchies of masculinity. This can be seen, for example, in the form of toy weapons that were modeled on full-sized, functional weapons; strategic board games that conveyed messages regarding the ideological power of kingship; and physical games that provided opportunities for successful individuals to enhance their social status. The evidence therefore suggests that Viking Age societies perpetuated a series of selfreinforcing cultural norms that encouraged participation in martial activities.

American University, 2020

Utilizing skeletal remains from the Viking Age in Denmark, this dissertation seeks to uncover how gender influenced lived experiences and identity formation during this period. Historically, biases regarding the inherent abilities of individuals of either gender have heavily influenced analysis in this area. Bioarchaeology offers a unique perspective on this query as skeletons reflect an individual’s life experiences and are a relatively unbiased source of information about the past. As identity is performed through the manipulation of the human body, analyzing the evidence of those experiences can provide a window into the past. Through an analysis of Viking Age burials from across Denmark, I explore how gender impacted identity formation and lived experience at the time. I utilize a bioarchaeological approach to discuss how individuals were impacted by gendered expectations at the time. Through assessing activity patterns, trauma prevalence rates, and the general health of individuals in the sample, patterns of behavior that may shed light on lived experiences that impacted identity formation during the Viking Age may be established. By combining that analysis with a discussion of the funerary treatment of the deceased the interplay between the deceased’s lived experiences and the social status ascribed to them by the community who buried them can be assessed. The results show that the relationship between ascribed social status and lived experiences is complex and cannot be solely attributed to the influence of gender on individual or social identity. The combination of skeletal and archaeological data help to provide a more nuanced understanding of how gender historically impacted lived experience and identity formation than either analysis could provide on its own.

Vinland Revisited; the Norse World at the Turn of the First Millennium, ed. Shannon Lewis-Simpson, Historic Sites Association of Newfoundland and Labrador Inc. 2003

It has been generally supposed that in Viking-age Scandinavia women had a higher status, greater freedom and fewer restraints on their activity than later, i.e. after the conversion to Christianity. This view was already current in the nineteenth century and was closely related to the belief that the freedom and equality supposed to characterize Germanic society survived longer in Scandinavia than elsewhere. 1 Few scholars still accept that interpretation of Germanic and Scandinavian society but belief in free Nordic women has lasted better and continues to influence discussions of the period. It is therefore necessary for modern students of women's history to consider how this idea originated and on what basis.

In the Old Norse literature, the term ‘shieldmaiden’ (Skjaldmær in Icelandic) tends to be used with reference to a Viking woman warrior, who decided to take up arms in battles and whose temper is equal to the most ardent and brave men. The literary sources which narrate the deeds of these women are not completely historically reliable: hence, many scholars affirm that shieldmaidens never existed in the Viking medieval society. Nonetheless, Carol Clover sustains that “collective fantasy has much to tell us about the underlying tensions of the society that produced it” (Clover, 1986, p. 36). Therefore, the intrinsic value of this literary figure needs to be understood regardless of its actual existence. For Clover, the archetypal shieldmaiden has to embody two essential qualities: she has to be an unmarried young woman and she has to dress and arm herself like a man. The freedom that derives from the absence of marriage ties is indispensable for a maiden to become what she wants to be. Saxo Grammaticus, a medieval Danish historian, describes hundreds of shieldmaidens in his chronicle Gesta Danorum (The Deeds of the Danes) but he as well as many other medieval sources, also asserts that the women warriors’ emancipation ceases the moment they get married. Several legendary shieldmaidens inspired countless modern cultural products, from Richard Wagner’s character Brünnhilde in the three-act opera Die Walküre, to Lagertha, the female protagonist in the on-going TV series Vikings. Kathleen M. Self problematizes the issue of the woman warrior’s representation in contemporary media, claiming, “She usually has an exaggerated feminine form, her large breasts and hips contrasting with a small waist” (Self, 2014, p. 167). The modern icon of a shieldmaiden is a hyper-sexualized and erotic image which refuses to take into account Clover’s indispensable feature of masculinity.