Jóhanna Katrín Friðriksdóttir - Valkyrie: The Women of the Viking World

Valkyrie

Valkyrie

The Women of the Viking World

Jhanna Katrn Fririksdttir

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First published in Great Britain 2020

Copyright Jhanna Katrn Fririksdttir, 2020

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Contents

Cover image

Images in text

Colour plates

When I started working on this book in the autumn of 2017, my husband, Anders Winroth, had been suggesting to me for a couple of years that I should write a book about Viking women. It took time and persistent prodding for me to come round to the idea, but he was of course right, that I would hugely enjoy this project. I wish to begin by thanking him with all my heart for his encouragement through the years, and for patiently, generously and lovingly supporting me, academically and otherwise, while I was researching and writing the book. The other person who was most instrumental to this project is Carolyne Larrington, my longtime mentor and friend. When I told her that I was thinking about writing a book about Viking women, she immediately suggested structuring it along the life cycle and starting with Darraarlj . I am indebted to her for this and for her never-ending supply of knowledge, wisdom, warmth and humour. I am also enormously grateful to John Davis, who frequently kept me cheerful company over lunch when I was working in the British Library, and to both of them for their embracing hospitality over the years and especially in the summer of 2018. I wish to thank my parents, Kristn Bjrnsdttir and Fririk Mr Baldursson, and my friends and colleagues, Gurn Inglfsdttir, Helen Brookman, Merrill Kaplan, Dale Kedwards, Emily Lethbridge, Lukas Rsli and sa Sigurjnsdttir, who, during the course of writing this book, have variously shown unstinting enthusiasm, talked over scholarly issues with me and given me sustenance in various forms. My mother-in-law Eva Winroth and stepkids Elsa and Hjalmar patiently put up with my disappearing into the world of Viking women, and my rambling about them when on this side, more often than they probably hoped for, and I thank them for their humour and affection meanwhile.

This book is based on and synthesizes a great deal of research from many fields within the broad umbrella of Viking and Medieval studies. Many people have been extremely helpful to me during the writing of this book and I thank everyone who sent me their work or recommendations for reading when I was foraying into areas that were new to me. I also wish to thank all the people Ive interacted with in the Twittersphere for sharing their passionate interest in Vikings, as well as their knowledge and perspectives. During my time at Yale University, I was fortunate enough to teach a cohort of wonderful students whose astute questions and observations often gave me new ideas about this subject, and whose presence enriched my life in many other ways. My utmost gratitude goes to Ash Thayer for our stimulating discussions about the Viking Age, and for letting me contribute to her film Viking Women: The Crying Bones , which has helped me think about some of the material in this book. Rannveig rhallsdttir and Leszek Gardea patiently answered my questions about archaeology and Leszek let me read his work before publication. Kristel Zilmer and Marcus Smith helped me with questions about runic inscriptions. I am particularly grateful to Judith Jesch, author of the foundational and pioneering Women in the Viking Age and numerous publications besides. Professor Jeschs extensive work on the Viking and medieval period, whether on women or other subjects, is one of the pillars on which my own stands, and she kindly gave me words of encouragement when I told her, with some trepidation, that I had embarked on this project.

Chihiro L. Tsukamoto read a draft of the entire book and made many intelligent suggestions for improvement, and I thank her for her work as well as our lively discussions about Norse subjects in the last couple of years, which have greatly enriched my knowledge and thinking about the sources. Anders Winroth and two anonymous peer reviewers also read the book and I am very grateful for their positivity and helpful feedback. However, all potential errors of any kind remain mine alone. I wish to thank Alex Wright, who originally took this book on, for his enthusiasm and wisdom, Joanna Godfrey for her careful and insightful editing, and Olivia Dellow, for taking such good care of the book at all stages.

Many thanks are due to Ash Thayer and Mirosaw Kuma for letting me reprint their art, Ole Harald Flten at Oseberg Vikingarv for his photo of the Saga Oseberg ship and Leszek Gardea for his photo of the Manx stone. I am also grateful to all the museums and the photographers some of whom are anonymous for generously making photos available on online repositories for all to use, free of charge. I wish to thank Yale University for giving me a grant to pay for additional images, and Sterling Memorial Library at Yale, the British Library and the Bodleian Library at Oxford for their excellent resources, which enabled me to do the necessary research for this book. This book was written with the financial support of Hagenkir, the Association of Non-Fiction and Educational Writers in Iceland, and I gratefully acknowledge their funding.

This book is written for readers from a variety of backgrounds, and although learning material for Old Norse and related skills is easier to find than ever before, my aim is to make the content accessible for those who have not studied the Norse language or the history of the Vikings extensively. For that reason, quotations are given in translation, but I also provide the chapter or stanza number in endnotes, which will enable those interested to go to the source in the original language. For primary sources in ancient languages, I have generally cited the most recent and/or accessible English translations of these works, but many new and excellent translations are also available in other languages. I have normally chosen to reproduce Scandinavian words, titles and names in their normalized (West) Norse form, except when other forms will be more familiar to most readers. This is especially the case for Anglicized names of mythical figures and concepts (e.g. Odin, Thor, Valhalla), and, occasionally, modern Scandinavian forms of names (e.g. Estrid, Stiklestad).