Horses in the viking world have long been considered a male affair. However, there are numerous connections between horses and women, expressed in the written sources, the art, and the archaeological material. This study examines the horsemanship of three burial contexts with horses and women: chamber grave 2 of Kosel-East, Schleswig (Viking Age Denmark), chamber grave Bj.581 of Birka, Uppland, Sweden, and the ship burial of Oseberg, Vestfold, Norway. In these graves, women had been laid to rest together with horses and horse tack. The combination of artefacts signalizes different roles in the viking equestrian world, indicating that women might have taken active parts in the Viking Age ‘horse industry’.
Abstract While many Old Norse myths and legends reflect their audiences’ values, it is more in doubt whether Old Norse gods were perceived as interested in human morality. Some past scholars have rejected connections between Old Norse religion and morality, and most modern handbooks ignore the topic entirely. I survey Old Norse poetry for instances in which the gods or other supernatural beings reward or punish human acts like altruism, violence, oath-breaking, and devotion and thereby demonstrate that at least some worshippers did conceive of supernatural agents taking an interest in their conduct. Modern observers only have access to behaviours that reflect the themes of that poetry, however, leaving open the possibility that the gods and other creatures were once supposed to judge a wider spectrum of activities.
Abstract This paper analyses the reliability of descriptions of drinking rituals in Old Norse sources depicting the Viking Age ( c. ad 800–1050), particularly with regard to the motif of the lady with the mead cup. The poems depict a god or hero receiving a cup of mead from an otherworldly woman in what scholars have interpreted as hieros gamos , a sacred marriage between a ruler and a female deity to legitimize his rule. However, using vernacular texts to analyse pre-Christian rituals and modes of thought is problematic at best. This paper is therefore inspired by Simon Nygaard’s interpretation (2018; 2022; 2023) that Old Norse poetry may contain fragments of ritualized oral performances. It employs the analysis of poetic metrics, potential ritual formulae present in runestones, and the reported roles of female ritual specialists to propose a reconstruction model for the ‘mead’ ceremony.
Abstract A notable resurgence of interest in skjaldmeyjar (commonly termed ‘shieldmaidens’) in the fields of archaeology and gender studies has been ongoing over the last decade. Yet most saga scholarship on the subject continues to assume a post-feminist critical position reading gender identities as social groups in a structural hierarchy. These perspectives highlight the problematic and anachronistic nature of the concept of gender itself, which has attained so many layers of polarization that applying it to premodern cultures inevitably carries over some contemporary bias. This article repositions the discourse on skjaldmeyjar by shifting critical focus away from gender and onto these figures’ individual modes of personhood. Instead of seeking to gender, this inquiry aims to emphatically un gender: not impose or coin any labels, but do away with labels altogether. What happens when all the familiar stereotypes are discarded? Close readings of skjaldmeyjar reveal the material objects with which they are semantically linked (shields, weapons, armour) are not passive props but play active roles in shaping and redefining the body-self parameters of their wielders and wearers. These observations are brought into dialogue with recently posited reassessments of mind and materiality in archaeological theory to illuminate the ways in which material objects actively contribute to identity formations and personhood configurations. Personhood is thus no static state of being, but an active embodied process. An extended exposure to the violence of war does not come without personal cost. This opens the door to investigating the psychosomatic dimensions in literary depictions of skjaldmeyjar , with particular emphasis on trauma and combat stress. From said observations, an apparatus is constructed to illustrate the dynamic of these psychosomatic effects.
Abstract Viking activity in the Iberian Peninsula is a field of study marked by fragmentary and limited sources that restrict the knowledge available to modern scholars. Yet despite their brevity and small number, it may be possible to extract additional information from the surviving texts if one reads them together with a comparative and contextual analysis that looks into the local geography, conditions, and history. The result is largely speculative, but bound by logic, and may open new avenues of inquiry that, while not filling every gap in our knowledge of the Viking Age in Iberia, may nonetheless offer a less restricted view of the period. This is my attempt at that exercise, focusing on a few episodes that hold a greater promise of additional information.
