Don’t
Underestimate Viking Women
“To assume that Viking men were
ranked above women is to impose modern values on the past, which would be
misleading,” cautions Marianne Moen. She has been studying how women’s status
and power is expressed through Viking burial findings. Her master’s thesis The
Gendered Landscape argues that Viking gender roles may have been more
complex than we assume.
Exploring new perspectives of Viking
society is a theme which also will be the focus of the forthcoming Viking
Worlds conference in March 2013, where Moen is a member of the organizing
committee.
Skewed interpretation
Our assumptions of gender roles in
Viking society could skew the way we interpret burial findings, Moen points
out. She uses the 1904 excavation of the Oseberg long boat to illustrate the
point. Rather than the skeleton of a powerful king or chieftain, the ship
surprisingly contained two female skeletons.
“The first theories suggested that
this must be the grave of queen Åsa mentioned in Snorri’s Ynglinga saga, and
that the other skeleton was her slave servant,” says Moen. Åsa Haraldsdottir
was the mother of Viking king Halfdan the Black.
However, later carbon dating
revealed that the buried ship was from around 834 AD - a date which made this
theory unfeasible. But the idea of a queen mother and her servant became
persistent amongst archaeologists.
Powerful Oseberg women
”Since the Oseberg mound contained
two women, the burial site has been analyzed as a unique find, without
reference to similar sites. The finding is very similar to the Gokstadskipet
long boat, which is regarded as the grave of a powerful and influential king.
So why isn’t Osebergskipet regarded in the same way?” asks Moen.
In Oseberg long boat the skeletons
of two women were found.
“There are several indicators that
these women were powerful in their own right – but by defining one of them as a
queen it is implied that her significance was due to who she was married to or
had mothered.”
Using literary sources
And although we accept that some
Viking women may have had a role as religious figures (as a ‘volve’) performing
rites, we do not accord them the corresponding power they would have had in a
society where religious and political power was intertwined, Moen argues.
“Our
perception of religion’s influence in the society is based on texts written
hundreds of years afterwards, by men from a different and more misogynistic
religion.”
Moen feels many archaeologists have
put too much emphasis on historical texts, such as Snorri Sturluson’s sagas.
“As archaeologists we have to base
our analyses on archaeological material. Historical material do have some
value, but only as secondary sources.”
Identifying male graves
The fact that far more graves of men
than women have been found from this era has also been seen as an indication that
men were more powerful. But it might not be that straightforward to identify a
grave as male or female, Moen suggests.
Usually archaeologists have to rely
on artifacts to gender identify a grave, due to a lack of human remains. But
the presence of male objects (such as swords, shields or spears) or female
objects (jewelry, fabric and weaving artifacts) does not conclusively prove the
gender.
“There have also been cases of male
graves with beads and woven cloths, and women were sometimes buried with smaller
weapons, for instance arrowheads. Generally it is fairly obvious what
constitutes male or female objects, but the lines were sometimes blurred.”
Prominent
female graves
Added to this, the larger metal
objects usually found in male graves are more likely to be discovered after
hundreds of years - while smaller female objects such as brooches (and hence,
female graves) can remain undetected.
“If it is the case that women
belonged to the private sphere of the home and men were in the public sphere of
society, this should be reflected in the burial landscape,” Moen points out.
But in the Kaupang area she has studied, female graves are side by side with
male graves – and just as prominent.
Victorian ideals of domestic women
“Since the Viking era became an
important part of building Norwegian national identity in the 19th century,
early archaeology was influenced by Victorian ideals. The contemporary ideals
of women belonging to the home and men being out in the public was imposed on
Viking society,” says Moen.
“The domestic role of Viking women
may have been less limited to the private sphere than it is today. The
large estates were contemporary seats of power, and the woman of the house had
the keys. How private or public this role was should be interpreted outside our
own cultural context.”
By: Arild S. Foss
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