New experimental evidence of material objects from the Viking Age and textual analysis have revealed that gender roles during the Viking Age may be more complex and varied than once believed. This exhibit attempts to introduce and highlight several Viking Age material and textual sources that demonstrate unique or otherwise rare depictions of female roles and practices—but whose existence, nonetheless, is important for developing a more profound and robust understanding of Viking Age society. In addition to discussing Viking Age sources, this exhibit identifies temporally and culturally relevant analogs to Viking Age perceptions of females from medieval sources. The exhibit items fall into several categories, with a distinct focus placed on militaristic and violent conceptions of females, high-class or wealthy females, and females represented textually as non-living entities and objects. By highlighting these objects, we are able to consider females outside of their traditional domestic sphere and instead may consider them in discourse with males as individuals with prominence as warriors, religious figures, and in Viking Age society as a whole.
Despite the added layers of complexity that this exhibit aims to highlight about gendered representations during the Viking Age, our information still remains fragmented. Rather than providing explicit answers as to the relationship between females and several aspects of Viking Age society, this exhibition hopefully prompts several new questions that have yet to be answered—How were female warriors and females with societal importance enmeshed into culture and society on a day-to-day basis? How may our understanding of Viking Age females change as we move between geographic regions, and as we seek to compare these depictions temporally across the entirety of the Viking Age?
To end, it is important to ensure that our modern biases—and modern portrayals of Vikings in pop culture—do not skew our viewpoint of archeological research. While the relationship between archeological research and modern pop culture and entertainment (such as this exhibition) may be viewed as a “symbiotic relationship” (Walsh 2020, 71) to some, it is vital that the modern hypersexualization of female Vikings is clearly separated from female narratives (such as those discussed in this project). While the questions raised above and the relationship between Viking Age archeological evidence and modern pop culture depictions of female Vikings remain difficult to address, one thing is clear—Viking Age society, and specifically, females of the Viking Age engaged in unique and diverse practices that challenge many of our traditional views of Vikings.
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