The Hidden Lives of Viking Women

Archaeological and Historical Perspectives

Michèle Hayeur Smith, Alexandra Sanmark (Herausgeber)

Buch | Softcover

192 Seiten

2025
Casemate Publishers (Verlag)
979-8-88857-186-6 (ISBN)

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Combines evidence from Icelandic sagas, law codes, poems, runic inscriptions and archaeology to provide and interpret direct evidence about Viking Age and Norse women, their status, roles in religion, place in law, and agency within a strongly male dominated society.

This edited volume brings together an international group of scholars to address the lives, roles, myths, mythology, and lived experiences of Viking women as well as the impacts of change on women during the turbulent period of the Viking Age. Through interdisciplinary perspectives, this is a book dedicated to the lesserknown aspects of women’s lives as active members of society. It provides an innovative way of bringing together work from archaeological, anthropological, historical, and literary perspectives to address questions about women in trade, in war, in magic, in the household and activities that provided women with power and respect in their communities.

Michèle Hayeur Smith is a research associate with the Smithsonian Institution, Arctic Studies Center, National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC. She holds a PhD from the University of Glasgow and is an anthropological archaeologist with research interests in gender, textiles, dress, adornment and material culture studies. She is largely known for her work in the North Atlantic and Iceland and has been undertaking National Science Foundation funded research projects focused on gender and the production and circulation of textiles from the Viking Age to the early 19th century. She is also a founding member of Osprey Heritage Consulting. Alexandra Sanmark undertook her undergraduate and postgraduate training at the University of London and obtained her PhD on the Christianisation of Scandinavia from University College London. She was then employed in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Uppsala, where she was Programme Leader for the MA programme Viking and Early Medieval Scandinavia. After two years as Research Fellow at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London, she started working for the University in 2009, first in Orkney and currently in Perth.

1. Introduction
Michèle Hayeur Smith, Alex Sanmark and Kevin P. Smith
2. Aspects of violence connected to women in the Old Norse legal systems
Anne Irene Riisøy
3. Migrants, conquerors, settlers: Viking women in Britain
Shane McLeod
4. Women in trade and exchange
Unn Pedersen
5. Women as partners – gender balance and cooperation in the Viking Age household
Alex Sanmark and Tara Athanasiou
6. Choosing the hero: drink and the institutionalization of heroism
Karen BekPedersen
7. The housewife and cult leader Friðgerðr Þorðardóttir in Viking Age Iceland
Olof Sundqvist
8. The Völva’s toolkit: Viking Age ritual specialists and the tools of their trade
Leszek Gardeła
9. Women’s Textile Magic in Viking Age Iceland
Michèle Hayeur Smith

Erscheinungsdatum	15.05.2025
Zusatzinfo	20 b/w illustrations
Sprache	englisch
Maße	170 x 240 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Archäologie
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Altertum / Antike
	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Mittelalter
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Weitere Religionen
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-13	979-8-88857-186-6 / 9798888571866
Zustand	Neuware