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| · | Viking Social Structure | |
| · | Material Culture | |
| · | Gods, Goddesses, and Legends |
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| · | Viking Age Women | |
| · | Trade | |
| · | Vikings Head West | |
| · | Leif Eriksson's Voyage |
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| · | Links to Viking Sites | |
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Viking Age Women The traditional image of the Viking is of a bearded man, helmeted, horned, and
ready for battle. It's not surprising, then, that most people do not think of female
Vikings, despite the indisputable fact that every Viking male had a mother. And there's
a good chance that he also had a wife, sisters and daughters. Recent interest in
Scandinavian culture, especially material culture, has coincided with the growing
appeal of women's history to create new knowledge about the Viking past.
Specifically, archaeological evidence now provides us with images of domesticated Vikings - merchants and craftspeople - with more settled family lives. The artifacts found in these sites represent, according to historian Judith Jesch, "the other, pleasanter, side of Viking activities," including the activities of women as housekeepers and mothers but also as carpenters, weavers, leatherworkers, and traders.1 While recent scholarship indicates that women's lives were actually so varied as to defy generalizations, Jesch utilizes a variety of evidence to suggest the following four themes. 1) Women were an integral part of Viking settlements, including raiding and trading. 2) The Viking era of outward expansion provided women with opportunities not available to them during other historical periods. 3) Despite their participation in expansion, women did not find their way into the mythology, poetry, or pictorial art that survives. 4) Viking women faced the physical hardships of hard work, childbirth, male violence, slavery, and perhaps human sacrifice. The Lives of Ordinary Viking Women So how can historians use both traditional and new evidence to construct a fuller picture of Viking women's lives? It may be helpful to view the era of Viking expansion much the way we view the era of Westward expansion in the United States. And to think of Vikings as pioneers who, like their U.S. counterparts (albeit of a much later era), sought new lives for themselves and their families. Very few Vikings were wealthy or powerful. So what did their "ordinary" women do? One major problem with uncovering the history of the lives of ordinary women is that universally, they have tended to be the ones who took care of the everyday activities of their families and communities.
It should not be surprising that women did most of the food preparation. But it seems clear that they also provided much of the labor involved in growing and harvesting food, both plant and animal. Women also performed many of the outdoor physical tasks associated with settling a homestead - including selling or bartering surplus goods. This makes sense in an age of expansion when men could be away for long periods of time. Settlers and Warriors As settlers, women not only came as wives and mothers, but also as pioneers on their own. Many women arrived widowed. At least a few simply took over the decision-making in their families and provided the initiative to emigrate. This era of Viking expansion seems to have provided women with opportunities to be more than housekeepers and mothers. Especially with respect to places like Iceland and Greenland, which were both previously uninhabited.
Around the world and in other historical periods of great upheaval and movement, women and other non-dominant groups have exploited such turmoil to their own ends. During the American Revolution, for instance, many slaves took advantage of the commotion and fled their masters. There is evidence that there were a few Viking women warriors - similar to U.S. women's experiences during wartime. But according to Jesch, the legend of the "Red Maiden"( a woman warrior, who is said to have invaded Ireland 1000 years ago) remains more a part of the "mental universe" of the Scandinavians than of the historical universe. More commonly, women who lived in these pioneer settlements provided the major part of the labor while the men pursued military ventures. In Greenland, for instance, this often resulted in women inheriting land and using it to finance expeditions to the New World. When Leif Eriksson's brother Thorstein died, his widow Gudrid became the owner of half of the farm he had left in the Western settlements. She kept it when she remarried an Icelandic merchant - even though she left for some years (with her new husband) to accompany one of the expeditions to Vinland. It was Gudrid who gave birth to Snorri, the first European child born in the New World. When she returned to Greenland, she probably sold the farm to Leif before settling in Iceland. [Editor's note: Freydis, the daughter of Erik the Red, was another Viking woman notable for her seafaring exploits. Freydis led a commercial voyage to Vinland around 1010 A.D. The plan was to gather timber and sell it to the settlers back home in treeless Greenland. But when disagreements broke out during the long winter in Vinland, Freydis picked up a battle-axe and murdered her business partners. To quote the Graenlendinga Saga, "...after that no one thought anything but ill of her..."] How Others Saw Viking Women Finally, historians often use the writings of groups and individuals other than the ones they are investigating to gain a different perspective on their subject. While the descriptions by Muslim travelers of Vikings, for instance, are colored by their own religious and cultural experiences, they nevertheless provide good evidence of Viking activities "on the road," so to speak. In fact, Muslims were great travelers, diplomats and scholars. Their skills were in demand in many parts of the world. And the combination of their scholarly interests and religious values have given historians around the world great insights into the peoples they encountered. The Vikings were no exception.
Indeed, in assessing the status of women in many societies, it is important to investigate the impact and influence of the period's religious values. With respect to Vikings, the report is somewhat mixed, according to Jesch. This is, in part, because both pagan and Christian traditions existed among Vikings. For archaeologists, pagan burials are the most useful because men and women were buried along with many of their everyday possessions. However, evidence suggests that most Vikings by the time of expansion were Christianized to some extent. Many historians of women view the imposition of Christianity upon pagan societies as detrimental to the status of women (the Catholic Church in particular strove to reduce the power of women as healers and as economic participants in the community). Jesch, on the other hand, suggests that Christianity and its emphasis on pilgrimages may have provided Viking women with an impetus for travel and exploration. Conclusion Although I began this article by talking about the lives of "ordinary Viking women," it strikes me that when people - men and women, but perhaps especially women - strike out on their own seeking new places to live, they are surely rather extraordinary. I single out women here because they usually traveled with children, creating an extra "hazard of the road," so to speak. The Vikings remind us that over 1000 years ago, there lived a people who were unafraid to move beyond their horizons. While their interactions with the people they encountered were not always peaceful, they did interact with and were changed by these experiences. Vikings were cosmopolitan people. They were not the world's only global travelers - but were certainly among its most interesting. There is a lot we still don't know about them. But our interest in the lives of our ordinary ancestors not only tells a lot about our foremothers and fathers, but also about ourselves. And these are the best lessons of history. For more information on the lives of Viking women: Women in the Viking Age by Judith Jesch (Suffolk, UK: Boydell Press, 1991); The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America ca A.D. 1000-1500 by Kirsten A. Seaver (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), and their bibliographies. The non-English reading public will undoubtedly find even more sources. Publications oriented for young people have a lot of information about women's activities. Especially the illustrated How Would You Survive as a Viking? by David Salariya (New York: Grolier Publishing, 1995) and Eyewitness Books' Viking by Susan Margeson (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994). 1 Jesch, Judith.Women in the Viking Age (Suffolk, UK : Boydell Press, 1991), 2, 22. 2 Ibid., 17. About the Author: Alison L. Hepler is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Maine at Farmington, where she teaches women's history. She received her undergraduate degree in journalism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. In June 1996, at age 40, she was awarded her Ph.D. in history from Temple University. She has lived in Woolwich, Maine since 1983 where she worked for 8 years at the Shelter Institute, a school that teaches housebuilding. During that period, her late-husband, Bob, learned wooden boatbuilding at the Rockport Apprenticeshop. In 1996-7, he helped their friend Rob Stevens build Viking Voyage 1000's replica Viking knarr, Snorri. In addition to teaching, Hepler now assists at Rob Stevens' Hermit Island boat shop. Read her report on the local excitement stirred in Maine by the building and launching of Snorri. Top of Page |
