The Hidden Lives of Viking Women

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.