Did you know female warriors are depicted in the tales from Norse culture?
Hello and welcome to World History Encyclopedia! My name is Kelly and today's video is all
about legendary female Viking warriors, Valkyries and goddesses. Don't forget,
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Since the Victorian Age, a common misunderstanding of Viking women is that they followed the same
social expectations of women in the 1800s. That is, that they stayed at home with their
main role in life being having children and tending to their household. A Viking warrior
burial was initially discovered in Birka over 100 years ago, and when DNA was tested in 2017,
the results shook the world of Viking scholarship because this ultimate Viking warrior burial wasn't
that of a man but a woman. Viking studies started in earnest in the 1800s where women, especially
elite women, were told to concern themselves with their children, the church, and their kitchen,
but if you look at both the archaeology and the sagas there wasn't the same emphasis put on Viking
women during their time. If you want to learn more about the female warrior burial from Birka
and the idea that it wasn't gender that decided whether you were going to be a warrior
but rather size, strength, ability, and ambition, make sure to check out our interview with Nancy
Marie Brown, author of "The real Valkyrie", which looks at the burial, women, and female warriors
from the Viking Age. Although the common belief is that there were no female Viking warriors,
there are many other burials of women from the Viking Age who were accompanied
in the afterlife with weapons and other characteristically Viking warrior burial goods.
Along with the grave goods evidence, there is also Norse literature - although written a few hundred
years after the Viking Age - which depict a number of legendary women, both mortal and deities,
as active warriors. The writers of these pieces namely Snorri Sturluson and Saxo Grammaticus,
describe strong women, fearsome deities, and warrior women. It's important to keep in mind that
even though we found this female warrior, many Viking women did stay home and run the household,
but they weren't confined to the strict societal rules like the women of the Victorian Age.
We know that Viking women had a comparatively high level of freedom; many ran households and farms,
doing all the tasks necessary including perhaps carpentry work, and preparing food
and they bore children. Especially during the time when their children needed to be breastfed, women
would weave, sew and produce textiles, which was something of great importance since you'd be in
trouble without a good coat during a Scandinavian winter. Women could be brewers, and perhaps even
merchants, and overall had more autonomy among Vikings than in many other medieval societies.
From the sagas, the most famous type of female Viking warrior was the shieldmaiden,
who took up arms and fought side by side in battle with the men.
Mirroring them in the spiritual world is the Valkyries whose name literally means
"choosers of the slain." The Valkyries were supernatural warrior women that chose half the
dead from battlefields and took them to Odin's afterlife realm of Valhalla with the goddess
Freyja who presided over another afterlife realm known as Fólkvangr, taking the other half to her
great hall. Even though these tales were written down hundreds of years after the Viking Age and
the historicity of the tales has been challenged, it is clear that the Norse culture respected women
enough to elevate them to the level of great warriors and to keep them in their sagas.
Let's start off with some of the strong goddesses in the Norse pantheon; first there is Skaði, the
giant and goddess of winter, skiing, and hunting. She is the daughter of the giant Þjazi, but when
he is killed by Thor, he has no son to avenge his death and so Skaði dresses with the helmets and
weapons of war to avenge her father's death. When she appears fully armed at the gates of Asgard,
she is only placated when she is offered a husband from among the Asgardians, but she has to choose
him by his feet alone. She chooses a pair of feet that she thinks belongs to the handsome god Baldr,
but it's actually the god of the sea Njörðr. After they were married, they tried to work out
the relationship by living nine days in Skaði's mountainous residence and then nine in Njörðr dark
cave by the water, but they ultimately split. Skaði may be the mother of Freyja and Freyr,
and after her separation from Njörðr, she pursues her own interests and has multiple affairs
with the god Odin. One of the most popular goddesses from Norse mythology is Freyja,
the goddess of fertility, luck, love, lust, the afterlife, and protection.
Freyja rides on a chariot pulled by cats and was invoked by the Vikings for a number of things
due to her dominion over fertility; such as good harvest, strong children, and stable marriages.
Freyja presides over one of the five possible destinations in the afterlife, Fólkvangr,
which means 'Field of the People', and it is said that half of the fallen on any battlefield
go to her realm; which is where her association with warfare and battle comes from. Freyja
is thought to have developed from an earlier fertility deity along with a fertility goddess
Frigg, wife of Odin the king of the gods, and the greatest goddess of the Norse pantheon. Frigg's
primary attributes are clairvoyance, cleverness and prophecy, but she is also the goddess of
marriage and motherhood. Although she does not appear in many myths, she was often referenced
as a powerful goddess, and due to her clairvoyant skill, she was popular in divination rites.
One final goddess worth mentioning is Hel, the queen of the afterlife realm of the same name,
which was another of the five potential destinations after death. Hel is half-goddess
and half-entity from the realm of the giants, and her name meaning 'hidden' refers to all of
the dead, cremated or buried. She is depicted as half-beautiful woman, half-decaying corpse,
and it's widely accepted that she is a deity created by Snorri Sturluson in his 13th century
CE "Prose Edda", and didn't exist in pre-Christian Norse mythology, although it's impossible to say
for sure since before Christianity was introduced, there were no lengthy written works on gods or
anything else. Hel's realm was for those who died of sickness or old age, while the souls
of warriors were reserved for the realms of Freyja and Odin, but the souls of those who
died from other causes also wound up in Hel for reasons unknown; like the soul of the god Baldr.
One of the most famous warrior women is the Valkyrie Brynhild, who supported the wrong hero in
a contest overseen by Odin, and so was made mortal and imprisoned in a castle surrounded by a ring of
fire. She remains asleep until she is rescued by a champion and that champion is Sigurd. Sigurd gives
Brynhild a ring and promises to marry her, but first he has to go to the court of King Gjuki,
whose wife, who is a sorceress, wants Sigurd to marry their daughter Gudrun.
In order to get this done, Gjuki's wife gives Sigurd a potion which makes him forget Brynhild,
and then orchestrates her son, Gunnar, to rescue and marry Brynhild instead. One issue though,
Gunnar is afraid to cross the ring of fire, so Sigurd shape-shifts into Gunnar and rescues
Brynhild, who then marries Gunnar because she believes that he was the one who saved her. Later,
Gudrun and Brynhild have an argument and the truth about who actually saved Brynhild comes out and
she swears revenge on them all. She kills Sigurd's young son, has Sigurd himself killed in his sleep,
and as his funeral pyre is lit, she leaps into the flames and dies with him.
They go together to the afterlife of Hel, where as Brynhild says, they can live the lives they should
have while on earth. This story was popularised through the German legend of "Nibelungenlied".
The most famous shieldmaiden, not a goddess or Valkyrie, is Lagertha, and not because of her
importance in the sagas; she only features in one chapter from Saxo Grammaticus' "Gesta Danorum" or
"History of the Danes", but from the modern tv series "Vikings" in which she is portrayed by
Katheryn Winnick. In the tv series, Lagertha is the wife of the great hero Ragnar Lothbrok, and
in the old texts this is also true, though there she plays a much smaller part. According to Saxo,
Ragnar comes to Norway to avenge the death of his grandfather, and is greeted by a number of women
dressed as men who volunteer to help him fight. After they win, Ragnar specifically attributes the
victory to Lagertha and then decides he wants to marry her. Lagertha guards her house against him
with a bear and a dog, but Ragnar kills them both, marries Lagertha and has two children with her,
until he remembers that she tried to set a bear and a dog on him, so he divorces her and marries
another woman (Thora). This is all we know of Lagertha from Saxo's work, in chapter 9:
"Among them was Ladgerda, a skilled female warrior who, though a maiden, had the courage of a man
and fought in front among the bravest with her hair loose over her shoulders.
All marvelled at her matchless deeds, for her locks flying down her back betrayed
that she was a woman." Another great heroine who receives a lot more attention is Hervör,
the main character of the 13th century saga "Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks" ("The
Saga of of Hervör and Heidrek"), who goes on a quest for her father's magic sword. This sword,
Tyrfing, was buried with her father after he was killed in a duel, and so Hervör travels with her
crew to the island of Samsø, where he is buried. Hervör summons his spirit and demands the sword,
and even though her father's ghost pleads with her to give up her quest, she refuses in defiance.
Ultimately he opens his grave and Hervör takes Tyrfing for herself. Nothing but trouble comes
to her after she claims the sword, and the same can be said for her son and for her granddaughter
also named Hervör, who dies in battle. There are a number of other strong women who feature
in Norse history and legend, suggesting that the mothers, wives and daughters of the Vikings
did a lot more than tend children and quietly wait for the men to return home from their adventures.
Do you think that Viking women primarily stayed at home, or do you think that female Viking
warriors were more common than we have been led to believe? Let us know what you think in
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