First study examining pregnancy in the Viking Age: Pregnant women wearing martial helmets, fetuses set to avenge their fathers, but also a harsh world where not all newborns were given burial or born free
Pendant showing the only known Viking-Age depiction of a pregnant body. The artefact was found in a 10th century, Swedish burial for a woman, buried with a rich and varied artefacts assemblage as well as animals -- one interpretations is that she was a 'seeress'/ritual specialist. (Credit: O. Myrin, The Swedish History Museum/SHM)
A new, interdisciplinary study is the first focused examination of pregnancy in the Viking Age. The research draws on multidisciplinary evidence, examining words and stories used to depict pregnancy in later Old Norse sources; a singular Viking-Age figurine convincingly displaying a pregnant body wearing a martial helmet; and burial evidence for potential victims of obstetric deaths (mother and child dying during childbirth).
The study, published in Cambridge Archaeological Journal, was lead by Associate Professor Marianne Hem Eriksen at the University of Leicester.
Dr Eriksen says, “The study adds to existing research on gender, bodies, and sexuality in the Viking Age, but also to a broader discourse of how scholarship discusses what has conventionally been seen as women’s issues, belonging to the ‘natural’ or ‘private’ sphere.
It verges on the banal to say, but pregnancy is an absolute necessity for all forms of reproduction—demographic, social, economic, political. Without pregnant bodies, none of us would be here. Questions such as whether a pregnant body is one or two; how kinship works, or when personhood begins, are not devoid of politics and we don’t have to look very far into our contemporary world to recognize that.”
Dr Katherine Olley, Assistant Professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham, was a co-author of the study and examined Old Norse words, stories, and legal regulations surrounding pregnancy.
Dr Olley notes, “Using Old Norse texts to illuminate Viking-Age beliefs is difficult because the surviving manuscripts date to well after the Viking Age, but it is still fascinating to see words, concepts and memories of pregnancy in these sources that may have their roots in the earlier Viking period. Among the Norse words used for denoting pregnancy, we find rich terms such as ‘bellyfull’, ‘unlight’, and ‘to walk not a woman alone’ which provide glimpses of ways people may have conceptualised pregnancy. In one saga a fetus still in his mother’s womb is fated to avenge his father, being inscribed even before birth into complex social and political dynamics of kinship, feuds, and violence. Another saga tells the story of the woman Freydís, who in a violent encounter can’t run away due to her late-term pregnancy. Undaunted, she picks up a sword, bares her breast, and strikes the sword against her chest, scaring the assailants away.”
Dr Olley continues, “ Freydís’s behaviour is surprising but may find a parallel in the study’s examined silver figurine, where a pregnant woman, arms embracing her protruding belly, is wearing what appears to be a helmet with a noseguard. While we are careful not to present simplified narratives about pregnant warrior women, we must acknowledge that at least in art and stories, ideas were circulating about pregnant women with martial equipment. These are not passive, or pacified, pregnant bodies.”
Finally, the authors argue that pregnancy is curiously absent in the Viking-Age evidence. Dr Eriksen: “Among thousands of burials across the Viking World, we have only a handful of possible mother-infant burials from the period — at a time when obstetric death is thought to be very high. It looks as though they aren’t routinely burying mothers and infants together, and indeed infants are underrepresented in the Viking-Age burial record overall. Some infants crop up in other places, such as in domestic houses, but otherwise we’re not quite sure what is happening to the infants, or whether they were afforded burial in the same way as adults.
Together with legal legislation such as pregnancy being seen as a ‘defect’ in an enslaved woman to be bought, or children born to subordinate peoples being the property of their owners, is a stark reminder that pregnancy and infancy are transitional states that can leave bodies open for volatility, risk and exploitation.”