Why history matters to us
Heathenry is a religion that looks to the past for guidance. That makes it very important to get the past right.
Two false pictures of early Germanic and Norse women are in wide circulation. In one, they were free and equal warrior queens in a lost golden age. In the other, they were silent housewives whose place was fixed by nature and by the gods. Both pictures are used today to tell living women what they ought to be. Neither survives contact with the evidence.
The truth is more interesting. Women in the old North lived in societies run largely by men, under laws that limited them in real ways. Within and against those limits they held property, managed great farms, commissioned monuments, composed poetry, crossed oceans, led rites, and spoke prophecies that kings obeyed. Their religious authority, above all, was real and widely respected.
How we read the evidence
Every page in this section tries to keep to three rules.
- Say who wrote it. Almost everything written about heathen women was written by men who were not heathen: Roman officers, Christian monks, and Icelandic authors working two centuries or more after conversion. Each had purposes of his own.
- Say whom it describes. The sources speak mostly of free and wealthy women. A great many women in these societies were enslaved, and their lives are almost invisible to us.
- Say what we do not know. Where the evidence is thin or disputed, we say so. An honest "probably" is worth more than a confident invention.
A word about dates
We use CE and BCE for dates. "Viking Age" here means roughly 790 to 1066 CE. "Early Germanic" covers the long period from the first Roman accounts, around 100 BCE, to the conversions.
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History
Women in Early Germanic Society
What Roman writers and the early law codes tell us about the standing of women among the early Germanic peoples, from marriage and property to holy authority.
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History
Seeresses of the Germanic World
The named seeresses of the early Germanic peoples, including Veleda, Albruna, Ganna, and Waluburg, and how their office continued in the volva of the Norse sagas.
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History
Women in the Viking Age
How women lived in the Viking Age: marriage, divorce, and property under Norse law, the work of the household, travel and settlement, poetry, and religious roles.
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History
The Oseberg Burial
The Oseberg ship burial of 834 CE: who the two women may have been, what was buried with them, and what the richest of all Viking Age graves tells us.
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History
Shield-Maidens: Legend and Evidence
Were there Viking women warriors? A careful look at shield-maidens in legend and at the archaeological evidence, including the Birka warrior grave Bj 581.
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History
Conversion, Survival, and Revival
How the old religion gave way to Christianity, what the change meant for women, what survived in law and folklore, and how modern Heathenry was revived.
Read more: Conversion, Survival, and Revival