Viking Women Status
Scandinavian R5B
The role and status of women in Viking Age
With the general growth of feminist work in many academic fields, it is hardly surprising that the research on the role and status of women in Viking age has attracted considerable attention in recent years. There is a substantial amount of research on this and the expanding corpus of research addresses itself to all of the major dimensions of Viking women 's lives. While some research has focused on evidence from literature, such as sagas, other work has sought to use evidence from archaeology, such as burials. This source difference results in a broad range of differing interpretation regarding the status and position of women in Viking Age.
Much of the earlier interpretation …show more content…
When interpreting two Norse female burials found in the 1904 excavation of the Oseberg long boat, Moen uses material evidence from archaeological findings, mainly their attire from grave goods and the skeleton remains, instead of writings, to determine how Oseberg women 's status and power is expressed. Rather than the skeleton of a powerful king or chieftain, the ship surprisingly contained two female skeletons. One was believed to be of high status, while the other as a slave. For those women who were buried as higher ranking individuals, the grave goods that they were buried with can help indicate what parts women were playing in the Viking culture. With the review of these artifacts and women found in the grave there are interpretations that the burial must be the grave of queen Åsa mentioned in Snorre 's Ynglinga saga, and that the other skeleton was her slave servant (Moen 2011). However, a later dating revealed that the buried ship was from "834 AD given by dendrocronology has safely discounted the possibility of the Åsa theory" (Moen 2011, 44-45). But the idea of a queen mother and her servant became persistent amongst archaeologists (Moen 2011). There was a similar male burial in the same area as the Oseberg ship burial, the Gokstad Ship burial. It was not quite as rich as the Oseberg burial, but the male seems to be the remains of a great Viking chieftain (Clements 2005). This shows that women can hold a status just as high as a male, and perhaps even higher within the Viking
The role and status of women in Viking Age
With the general growth of feminist work in many academic fields, it is hardly surprising that the research on the role and status of women in Viking age has attracted considerable attention in recent years. There is a substantial amount of research on this and the expanding corpus of research addresses itself to all of the major dimensions of Viking women 's lives. While some research has focused on evidence from literature, such as sagas, other work has sought to use evidence from archaeology, such as burials. This source difference results in a broad range of differing interpretation regarding the status and position of women in Viking Age.
Much of the earlier interpretation …show more content…
When interpreting two Norse female burials found in the 1904 excavation of the Oseberg long boat, Moen uses material evidence from archaeological findings, mainly their attire from grave goods and the skeleton remains, instead of writings, to determine how Oseberg women 's status and power is expressed. Rather than the skeleton of a powerful king or chieftain, the ship surprisingly contained two female skeletons. One was believed to be of high status, while the other as a slave. For those women who were buried as higher ranking individuals, the grave goods that they were buried with can help indicate what parts women were playing in the Viking culture. With the review of these artifacts and women found in the grave there are interpretations that the burial must be the grave of queen Åsa mentioned in Snorre 's Ynglinga saga, and that the other skeleton was her slave servant (Moen 2011). However, a later dating revealed that the buried ship was from "834 AD given by dendrocronology has safely discounted the possibility of the Åsa theory" (Moen 2011, 44-45). But the idea of a queen mother and her servant became persistent amongst archaeologists (Moen 2011). There was a similar male burial in the same area as the Oseberg ship burial, the Gokstad Ship burial. It was not quite as rich as the Oseberg burial, but the male seems to be the remains of a great Viking chieftain (Clements 2005). This shows that women can hold a status just as high as a male, and perhaps even higher within the Viking