Women of the Viking Age

Women during the Viking Age on Scandinavian soil, played very important roles in their society. We already know that there were some women who were warriors, they took up arms and went to battle, although, there is little evidence to support that fact as being something they would usually do. Its impossible to generalize that but of course some women would go to war. However, women in the scandinavian society during the Viking Age had important roles in the household and land ownership, that was their frequent power.

According to archaeological findings, women had defined roles in cooking, knitting, taking care of the house and the children, managing the slaves they owned and taking care of the farm as well as the land within their properties. During times of war and the absence of their husbands, they would take up arms to defend their land, their properties.

During times of war, women were frequently left alone with their children and became widows. All the possessions of a warrior, including is land and belongings, went to his wife. Viking Age women in the scandinavian society need not to be married to another man upon their previous husband's death, it wasn't an obligation, they were absolutely free to choose to be without a husband or to find a new one. As such, women would take the role of their deceased husbands as being the head of the household and also as being warriors, so in these cases it was frequent to see a woman fighting with, taking up shield and weapons. If a male warrior and his wife died, their land and property would be passed on to their eldest child, regardless of gender, if they had children of course.

The reason the Viking warriors gave their land to their wives ,upon their deaths, was because a marriage in Scandinavia was a contract in which both parties entered as equals. All material possessions were recognized as given to the newlywed wife for protection. Thus, we may rightly infer that Viking Age women had more rights than their christianized descendants, for that newly monotheistic religion brought much suffering to women because of the negative view around the female gender. We might even assume that during those times and in the scandinavian society, women had more rights than most women of our era. It seems that the Vikings were not the mindless, bloodthirsty barbarians the christians depicted.