Infopanel 23

The role of women

The actual domain of women was the house and farm, over which they literally held the keys. This was demonstrated by the keys worn demonstratively on the belt of the female costume.  The reason for this independent role of women was certainly also the Viking Age itself: with their husbands away for long periods of time, sometimes even years, on raiding expeditions, the peasant women had sole responsibility for the servants and slaves. It is therefore not surprising that numerous runic gravestones from the late Viking Age were commissioned by women – not only to commemorate their fallen husbands or sons, but also to establish that they were the legitimate heirs. 

Unlike most other European legal systems, women also had the right to demand divorce if their husbands were violent. In addition, as widows, they were allowed to remarry without the consent of a male guardian, which had implications for property and inheritance rights.

Queens and warriors

The idea of female Vikings fighting in battle, which has emerged in recent years, is not entirely unfounded, but it only applied in isolated cases: naturally, queens could lead their armies into battle if there were no male relatives available. There also seem to have been isolated cases of women being buried with weapons. However, given the attire of noble women in the Viking Age, it is rather unlikely that they fought themselves.

Generalizing the role of women in the Viking Age can only be misleading. And it can be assumed that, despite the isolated cases among queens, hordes of female Viking warriors were more likely the product of modern imagination.

Nevertheless, women in Viking-era Scandinavia enjoyed a strikingly greater degree of self-determination compared to other European cultures. Arab travelers were very surprised by the self-confident demeanor of Scandinavian women, among whom there were even queens.