Shieldmaidens to Homesteaders: The complex Roles of Viking Women
This is the first part of our three-part series on the role of women in viking life and times.
for the second part follow this link to read about Viking women and their Power in Old Norse Society or follow this link to read about Viking women as warriors and leaders.
Based on our current societal values it is often difficult to view other cultures and societies in an unbiased light. Current western society has been shaped on centuries of patriarchal ideas in which women’s position in society has been less valued – fundamentally driven by Christian values. Right up until recently, women have been placed in the back seat both with regard for their own self-determination and their interpreted societal value with regards to women’s role in the workplace, at home and in their communities as a whole.
In the rugged fjords and expansive green lands of the Viking Age, women navigated a community that was complex, nuanced and, in many ways, ahead of its time. While the image of the Norse world is often painted with the broad strokes of warrior raids and fierce battles, a closer examination reveals a very different view on women, particularly regarding the legal rights and societal standing of the Viking woman. To a large extent these women were self-deterministic beings and in many regards considered equal to men.
In this post series we want to highlight some of these ideas, which may for many seem foreign and in may ways unbelievable, considering the societal norms we currently live by.
Context
The Scandinavian Viking Age lasted approximately from year 793 to 1066. However, in the following we will likely take a somewhat broader view on old Norse society and consider evidence stretching as far back as the Nordic Bronze Age (about 2000/1750-500 BC), through the Iron Age and up to the Migration Period (300-800 AD), where Scandinavian society is generally not as well-documented as the latter periods, right up to past the Viking age and into the middle ages, maybe even up to 13th century, while parts of Scandinavia still held on to some pre-Christian customs.
Evidence of women’s position in society has been re-constructed based on burial sites and graves, as well as based on the sagas and the female characters portrayed therein. The former may in many regards be considered the more accurate science, as burial sites often produce hard evidence between the buried and the artifacts found, but the number of such graves found is also of limited quantity, forcing us to use the little written evidence we have to fill in gaps in our understanding.
Even though many stories about women exist in the saga canon, including a large number of descriptions of the various roles and situations these women found themselves in, it has been argued that some of these roles are purely fictional and represents a male imagination of women (Jenny Jochens, Old Norse Images of Women, 1996). Some of these fictional characters or groups could include the valkyries, shield-maidens, sorceresses and volvas. Furthermore, it has been suggested that these fictional characters have no relation to actual women or their lives in old Norse society, meaning we should not extrapolate interpretation from the sagas onto women living in that time. According to some researchers the stories of the sagas and the actual life of viking women are two different, completely separate entities.
It is beyond doubt that most of the sagas were written by men, even if the provenance of some of the stories are unknown, meaning that many of the stories may contain a male bias. It is however unlikely for the stories to be without some grounding in reality. It would be unthinkable for there to exist stories about female warriors and heroes, if there were no female warriors and it was unthinkable for such a thing to exist. It does however not mean that we can take the sagas as a blueprint of how women lived during the period, but using it as a stepping stone for our understanding is not unreasonable, such as with all the other characters the sags tell us about.
It should equally be noted that there are researchers on viking society and women’s role therein that are of the exact opposite view of the one mentioned above. For example Gro Steinsland suggests that female divinities and women’s significance in old Norse society has been downplayed by mainly male researchers throughout the ages.
There is however no hiding the fact that old Norse society was patriarchal just like many societies that lived before and after. Men were generally the rulers and family leaders. Nonetheless Viking women were offered a degree of autonomy and influence that was rare in Europe at the time, and would be for a long time after.
Viking Women’s Rights and Legal Standing
Viking women held significant legal rights that were enshrined in the laws of the time comparable to women in other societies at the time. They could own property, initiate divorces, and even represent themselves in the legal assemblies.
In the Gulaþingslög – the oldest known Nordic law, where the oldest parts are dated to before 900 BC -, but also in other laws of the time, it states that women, upon marriage, shall receive a reverse dowry – more accurately a “bride-dowry” or dower – known as a morning gift. This was a lump sum paid directly to the bride which provided economic security and a form of independence, as women could manage, inherit, and bequeath this property, at her own control. This might be considered exceptional compared to current-day societies in which dowry is still a custom. For us the idea is most often that the bride’s family pay the groom, such as later in European society or in current-day countries such as India. Even in societies where the groom or groom’s family pay a bride-dowry, this has usually been paid to the bride’s family and not to the bride herself, such is in China or Thailand. The most common comparable tradition would be the Islamic custom of Mahr, however in some countries this also is paid to the bride’s family.
This practice should also be seen in relation to the -generally strong- divorce rights awarded women, relative to other societies at the time. Marriage was for the most part considered a contractual agreement and men and women were considered equal parties to this contract. That meant that if the contractual terms underlying the marriage was broken, divorce could be an alternative, initiated by either party. Grounds for divorce included mistreatment, such as domestic violence (if a man hit his wife three times she could divorce him), financial negligence, and even a husband’s impotence.
Furthermore, widows had the right to inherit their husband’s estate, ensuring their welfare beyond their spouse’s death. This is, for example, attested in series of rune stones known as the Snottsta and Vreta stones, where Inga inherited what is believed to be an estate of considerable size after her husband Ragnfast. Curiously these rune stones also reference another woman, Æstriðaʀ. This is likely to refer to Estrid, another rich and powerful woman of the same time, whose life was documented on a series of rune stones and whose grave is believed to have been found next to one of these rune stones.
The inheritance rights for women extended further than to nearest family, where the paternal aunt, niece and granddaughter would all be entitled to inheritance after a man. A suggestion of the reference to Estrid in the aforementioned rune stone is that this is related to an inheritance dispute after Ragnfast, where Estrid was his sister and likely entitled to inherit some of his property upon his death.
At the age of 20 any unmarried woman was in Viking society considered independent. This meant she was allowed to make decisions about where she would live, what profession she would take and her ability to represent herself in legal matters. This same right applied to widows as well.
A notable exception to this freedom was the ability to choose their partner. Marriage was in many instances a question of building connections between family clans and, as such, a female would not be allowed to choose her partner freely. It should be noted that the strategic importance of marriages in most instances went beyond the wishes both for female and male children and as such the inability to chose your partner might in many instances not have been a question of sex.
Viking women as head of family
A term known from old Norse society is baugrýgr. Baugrýgr refers to an unmarried woman, normally an only child who, upon the death of her father and/or brother(s), would inherit the estate and equally the rights associated with the position as head of the family. Normally, the head of the family would be the oldest male heir to an estate, but in the absence of any such heir, the rights would fall to the eldest female heir.
The interpretation of what a “head of family” meant is in many ways still a topic of discussion. However, an important aspect of this role was the ability to take others to court – or the þing (Thing) as it was called – and to receive fines and repayments for the death of her family members, among other things. Due to the construction of old Norse society, the family unit functioned as a pivotal structure in peoples’ lives. Feuds between individuals often meant whole families would get involved and serious feuds between families could often result in death of complete blood lines. Equally, a bad family reputation would likely haunt a blood line for generations. Being the head of a family therefore came with a very significant responsibility and it meant you held the honor and respectability of your whole future blood line in your hands.
Women in the family
It is worth noting that Viking society considered all children, whether they were born out of wedlock or not, as fully legitimate children of their parents, meaning all children had the same rights of inheritance. The was no distinction made between “illegitimate” and “legitimate” children – an idea later introduced with Christianity. At first glance this might seem insignificant with respect to women’s rights however, due to the construction of society and the importance of family, even if inheritance was passed on to a son, it provided a security for women as she could and would be provided for by her son.
Matronymics in the Viking age
The importance of family as discussed above extended to the naming of children. Norse individuals were typically known by a given name followed by a name denoting their family. The most common case was to have a patronymic deriving from one’s father’s name such as Haraldsdottir or Halraldsson, given a female or male child of a father named Harald. A curios situation in Norse culture was that the importance of one’s bloodline would determine this last name. If a child’s father was generally considered of lower social standing than their mother, the child could be given a matronymic, i.e. a last name derived from their mother’s name. This was less common than a patronymic but not unheard of, evidently also reflecting that one most often inherited their name from their parent most likely to be or to later become head of the family clan.
Some examples of matronymics include Ravn Gudrunson from “Hrafns þáttr Guðrúnarsonar”, Eilífr Goðrúnarson – a skald know for writing “Þórsdrápa” -, and Steinn Herdísarson – a skald know for the poem “Rekstefja”. Another interesting person is Bersi Skáldtorfuson, the court skald of King Sveinn Hákonarson, whose name derives from his mother, Skáld-Torfa, who was also a skald and the likely reason why he was known by a matronymic, in an attempt to carry on and to inherit the skaldic abilities of his mother.
The most important use of a matronymic is associated with the god Loki from the story Lokasenna. Lokasenna is the story about an argument between Loki and the other Gods, implied to be the precursor to Ragnarok, in which Loki says:
Léttari í málum
vartu við Laufeyjar son, …You were lighter in speech,
towards Laufeyjar’s son, …
i.e. Loki is referring to himself as Loki Laufeyson. Laufey was Loki’s mother, a somewhat obscure goddess, but still it implies a situation that was not unknown in Norse society.
It should be noted that the old Norse Viking sagas were written down in a Christian time period and stories generally follow the male blood lines. Therefore, without considering the relatively stronger importance of the male in Christian tradition and the male bias this would have introduced in the sagas, it would make sense to use patronymics in the stories as this would allow one to follow the blood lines naturally, based simply on the naming convention. For example Eiríkr Haraldsson (Eric Bloodaxe) is the son of Haraldr Hálfdanarson (Harald Fairhair) who is the son of Halfdanr Svarti (Halfdan the Black).
It is however not at all unlikely that people in old Norse society would refer to themselves using both their matronymic or patronymic, switching between them based on whichever would bring the greater benefit in a specific situation. For instance, assuming you were visiting distant family extending from you mother’s blood line, you were likely to refer to yourself as your mother’s child in an attempt to derive kinship, and vice versa. But in the rare occurrence your father was a king, you would definitely refer to yourself as your father’s child, as this would bring about the greatest amount of respect regardless.
Honor
Honor in the viking age was probably one of the most important currencies and explains the importance of the family clan. Dishonorable actions were expected to be handled seriously and were most often dealt with on a family level, where shame directed towards a single individual was usually considered an attack on the family clan as a whole. A phenomenon of Norse culture relates to women’s position in this honor culture.
Women were left outside of this type of conflict and were, for the most part, safe from repercussions from this and were unlikely to be victims of murder and violent attacks. The men who were violent towards women would be considered a níðingr – an honorless person.
This stands in stark contrast to situations where the same individuals were not past committing infanticide. Even more curious is the situation in which a women’s actions caused dishonor for a family, for example via infidelity. In such a situation, a man of the family clan was expected to reclaim the honor by fighting – sometimes to death – another man of the offending family.
This can obviously be seen as a disfranchisement of women, and would most definitely in modern society be considered quite unequal. However it also reflects a situation in which women were offered a protection above men in society, as opposed to other contemporary and later societies in which women may have been given lesser protections than men, for example through honor killings or similar punishments.
Looking deeper
Exploring the role of women in a family and personal setting gives some idea of their position in old Norse society. Ultimately we glimpse into a society where women navigated with a degree of freedom and respect that challenges our preconceptions and contrasts the ideas of the civilizations that would follow. As we trace the outline of Viking women’s lives, from the dower rights securing their independence to the honor codes that protected them from the violence so prevalent in old Norse society, we uncover a picture of substantive contribution and influence. The legal frameworks and societal norms of the Viking Age underscored a nuanced understanding of gender roles, offering women avenues for autonomy, influence, and respect that were remarkably progressive for their time.
The sagas, with their tales of mythical shieldmaidens and divine figures, may often blur the lines between fact and fiction, yet they nonetheless echo the esteem in which women were held. This is the topic for the second part of this series where we look at the actual role of women in power-roles by Unveiling the Power of Women in Old Norse Society.
