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REVIEW BY EMMA LOUISE THOMPSON
From Norwegian courts to Icelandic households and British burial grounds, the lives of Viking women were as intricate as the worlds they inhabited. The Hidden Lives of Viking Women offers a ‘kaleidoscopic review’ drawing on archaeology, literature, and law to move beyond reductive binaries, giving women a platform as active agents negotiating power, identity, and survival across the Viking world.
Nine thematic chapters explore topics including violence, migration, household management, trade, ritual(s), and cult leadership, across Scandinavia, Britain, and Iceland. The editors reject portrayals of women as passive or inherently confined to domesticity, instead foregrounding their influence across multiple spheres of operation. Contributors show women configuring or manipulating norms, shaping economies, and crossing social thresholds. The chapters draw from a variety of evidential sources, such as artefacts, burials, legal codes, literary sources, inscriptions, (place)names, isotopic data, and archaeogenetics. Its interdisciplinary approach is a clear strength.
Riisøy’s chapter on violence in legal contexts elucidates these actions outside the arena of the oft-debated female warrior trope, showing how more ‘everyday’ violence could intersect with familial obligations and social standing. This includes a valuable discussion around the legal freedoms and/or capabilities for legal manoeuvring of different types of women. Pedersen’s chapter on trade explores the potential for tradeswomen as much as tradesmen, while illustrating women as multifaceted players in the economy. Sanmark and Athanasiou’s chapter on household cooperation highlights the fluid and necessity-driven shift between seemingly gendered tasks. Across the volume, the lines between dichotomies such as public/private, inside/outside, and masculine/feminine are productively blurred. Nuanced interrogations of what is idealised versus what is pragmatic is another consistent throughline. These discussions are a key strength of the book, making it not only a valuable resource but a significant contribution to debates about gendered agency in Viking Age scholarship.
While the range of discourse is impressive, the final chapters lean heavily into magic and ritual. Though excellent and rich in detail, this narrowing of focus contrasts with the wider spread of earlier contributions. However, this is acknowledged by the editors as an emergent theme in the introduction. The absence of a concluding synthesis leaves some thematic threads open-ended. I also wonder if focusing on the ‘unexpected’ roles of women might overshadow the lives of ‘an average woman’ in the Viking Age. Although this is alluded to at several points, the nature of the evidence unfortunately means that we are often looking at ‘elite’ women, and these interpretations will not apply universally. This space is not necessarily a flaw, but rather an opening, and one this book invites future scholarship to fill.
This is a thought-provoking and engaging text for anyone interested in the complexities of gender in the Viking Age. Its interdisciplinary scope, focus on dynamic negotiation rather than static roles, and rejection of simplistic and homogenous categorisations make it both an excellent starting point for interested readers and an invaluable touchstone for ongoing research.
The Hidden Lives of Viking Women
Michèle Hayeur Smith and Alexandra Sanmark (eds)
Oxbow, £29.95
ISBN 979-8888571866
