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Female Vikings?

Could women be Vikings? Strictly speaking, they could not. The Old Norse word vikingar is exclusively applied to men, usually those who sailed from Scandinavia in groups to engage in the activities of raiding and trading in Britain, Europe and the East. But some Vikings stayed behind in these regions, and Scandinavian colonies were also established in the North Atlantic (Faroe, Iceland, Greenland).

Women could and did play a part in this process of settlement. Iceland, for instance, was uninhabited, and a permanent population could only be established if women also made the journey there. In regions with an established indigenous population, Viking settlers may have married local women, while some far-roving Vikings picked up female companions en route, but there is evidence that Scandinavian women reached most parts of the Viking world, from Russia in the east to Newfoundland in the west.

Most journeys from Scandinavia involved sea-crossings in small, open ships with no protection from the elements. Families heading for the North Atlantic colonies would also have to take all the livestock they would need to establish a new farm, and the journey cannot have been pleasant. The Viking colonists settled down to the farming life in their new home, or established themselves as traders and became town-dwellers. Both farming and trading were family businesses, and women were often left in charge when their husbands were away or dead. There is also evidence that women could make a living in commerce in the Viking Age. Merchants' scales and weights found in female graves in Scandinavia suggest an association between women and trade, while an account of a ninth-century Christian mission to Birka, a Swedish trading centre, relates the conversion of a rich widow Frideburg and her daughter Catla, who travelled to the Frisian port of Dorestad.

Viking women in England

The St Paul's stone  © The 'great Danish army' that criss-crossed and conquered much of England in the 860s and 870s probably had camp-followers, although these need not have been Scandinavian women. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle notes that a Viking army operating in the years 892-5 was accompanied by women and children, who had to be put in a place of safety while the army fought and harried. But this army arrived in England after raiding on the continent and at least some of the women may have come from there. The first Viking settlers who turned their swords into ploughshares are unlikely to have had Scandinavian wives.

However, place-names and language suggest that there was considerable Scandinavian immigration into those areas of England controlled by the Viking invaders, later known as the 'Danelaw'. Although the nature and extent of the Scandinavian immigration is contested by scholars, the most convincing explanation of the evidence is that there was a peaceful migration of Scandinavian families to parts of the north and east of England throughout the tenth century. Recent finds of large numbers of low-grade, Scandinavian-style female jewellery, particularly in Lincolnshire, have been taken to show the presence of Scandinavian women there in the tenth century. These finds correlate well with the distribution of Scandinavian place-names in the same region: taken together, the evidence does suggest a significant Scandinavian presence.

There was a further significant influx of Scandinavians into England during the reign of Cnut in the 11th century. These new, higher-class immigrants left their mark in London and the south, areas not previously subject to Scandinavian settlement. The rune stone from St Paul's, London, with its fragmentary inscription which tells us only that it was commissioned by Ginna (a woman) and T-ki (a man), shows two Scandinavians asserting their cultural affiliations at the heart of the English kingdom.

Scandinavian immigration

An elderly woman of high-status was buried at Scar with her possessions  © Scandinavian immigration had a greater impact on the more sparsely-populated areas of the British Isles, especially the Northern Isles and the Hebrides. In these rural and maritime regions, the settlement pattern is less like England and more like the Scandinavian colonies of the North Atlantic, with the difference that there were indigenous populations (such as the Picts) to contend with. Whether these were driven out or whether they reached some accommodation with the incomers, the place-name evidence is compatible with an almost total Scandinavian takeover of Orkney and Shetland.

Pagan graves provide plentiful archaeological evidence for early Scandinavian settlement in Scotland, and for female settlers. Two graves from Orkney show us two very different women: the young, stout and wealthy mother of newborn twins from Westness, and the high-status, elderly woman from Scar, buried in a boat along with a younger man and a child, a matriarch, perhaps even a priestess of Freya.

While the Northern Isles are completely Scandinavian in language and culture, the Viking-settled areas in and around the Irish Sea had a more varied population. The rich female grave from the Isle of Man, popularly known as the 'Pagan Lady of Peel', shows a woman with almost wholly Scandinavian affinities, but the 30 or so Christian runic monuments of that island reveal a much more mixed picture. These are basically Celtic crosses with some Scandinavian-style decoration, including mythological scenes. The inscriptions are in runes and Old Norse, but the personal names (both Norse and Celtic) and the grammatically-confused language suggest a thoroughly mixed community. At least a quarter of these monuments commemorate women, mostly as wives, though a stone from Kirk Michael appears to be in memory of a foster-mother, and the inscription notes that 'it is better to leave a good foster-son than a bad son'.

Daily life

A brooch found at the Scar burial ground  © The mythological poem Rígsþula, written down in medieval Iceland, accounts for the divine origin of the three main social classes. But it also gives us a snapshot of daily life in the Viking Age. The woman of the slave-class wears 'old-fashioned clothes' and serves bread that is 'heavy, thick, packed with bran... in the middle of a trencher', with 'broth in a basin'. The woman of the yeoman class wears a cap and a blouse, has a kerchief around her neck and 'brooches at her shoulders', and is busy with her spindle, 'ready for weaving'. The aristocratic woman is just busy preening herself: she wears a blouse of smooth linen, a spreading skirt with a blue bodice, a tall headdress and appropriate jewellery, and has very white skin. She serves silver dishes of pork and poultry on a white linen cloth, washed down with wine.

The archaeological evidence shows that women were often buried in their best outfits, including a pair of oval brooches of gilt bronze, which held up a woollen overdress worn with a linen underdress. Many spindle whorls have been found, as most women would have been engaged in spinning and other textile production much of the time. A Viking Age spindle whorl from L'Anse aux Meadows (in Newfoundland) is evidence that women also reached the New World.

The standard Viking Age house was rectangular and had just one room, in which everything took place around a central hearth. This house type has been found from Sweden in the east to Newfoundland in the west, in both rural settlements and in towns such as York and Dublin. As in most traditional societies, women spent much of their time indoors in such houses, cooking, making clothing and caring for children and the elderly, but they would also have had responsibility for the dairy.

Women of influence

The Oseberg ship  © Most women's lives were bounded by hearth and home, but they had great influence within this sphere. The keys with which many were buried symbolise their responsibility for, and control over, the distribution of food and clothing to the household.

Some women made their mark through exceptional status or achievement. One of the richest burials of Viking Age Scandinavia is that of the Oseberg 'queen', buried in a very grand style with a richly-decorated ship and large numbers of high-quality grave goods in 834. Later in that century, Aud the 'deep-minded' lived a veritable Viking Age odyssey. The daughter of a Norwegian chieftain in the Hebrides, she married a Viking based in Dublin and, when both her husband and son had died, took charge of the family fortunes, organising a ship to take her and her granddaughters to Orkney, Faroe and Iceland. She settled in Iceland, distributing land to her followers, and was remembered as one of its four most important settlers, and as a notable early Christian.

The Christianisation of Scandinavia in the 11th century gave women new roles, which are reflected in the rune stones from this period. On the Dynna stone from Norway, Gunnvor commemorates her daughter Astrid with pictures of the Nativity, while the Stäket stone from Sweden commemorates Ingirun, who went on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

Queen Emma sums up the cultural connections of the Viking Age. Her father was Duke Richard of Normandy, descended from its Viking founder Rollo, while her mother is said to have been Danish. Emma was married to two kings of England, the English Æthelred and the Danish Cnut, and was the mother of two more. With Cnut, she was a great patron of the Church, and after his death she commissioned the Encomium Emmae, a Latin account of Danish kings in England in the 11th century, ensuring that her portrait was included in the manuscript.

Find out more

Books

Women in the Viking Age by Judith Jesch (Woodbridge, Boydell, 1991). A general survey using archaeological, runic and literary evidence.

Women in Old Norse Society by Jenny Jochens (Cornell UP, 1995). Mainly about women in Iceland, based on the sagas.

Chronicles of the Vikings: Records, Memorials and Myths by RI Page (British Museum, 1995). A good introduction to different types of Viking Age texts, including poetry and runic inscriptions.

Vikings in Scotland by James Graham-Campbell and Colleen E Batey (Dinburgh University Press, 1998). An archaeological survey.

Scar: A Viking Boat Burial on Sanday, Orkney by Olwyn Owen and Magnar Dalland (Tuckwell, 1999). A detailed account of the Scar burial, with much useful material on Viking Age burials in general.

The Vikings by Else Roesdahl (Penguin, 2001). Newly-revised edition of a standard work.

Vikings and the Danelaw edited by James Graham-Campbell, Richard Hall, Judith Jesch and David N Parsons (Oxbow, 2001). A collection of essays on all aspects of the Scandinavians in England.

Links

. Take a tour of some of the British Museum's best artefacts on the web.

. Commemorating the 1,000-year anniversary of Leif Eriksson's arrival in North America.

Places to visit

. Important collections of Viking material, as well as displays relating to religions and beliefs from all over the world.

. Provides a fascinating insight into Christian life in Anglo-Saxon England just before the Viking Age.

. Explores many aspects of daily life in Viking York in the tenth century.

About the author

Dr Judith Jesch is Reader in Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham. She is the author of numerous studies of the Viking Age and Old Norse literature, including Women in the Viking Age (1991) and Ships and Men in the Late Viking Age (2001).