Tales of Viking Pregnancy Reveal The Fierce Side of Norse Mothers

Being pregnant within the Viking Age was once indubitably no picnic, however this enjoy has been in large part unnoticed, partially as a result of there are only a few data to move via.

A brand new research of Viking artwork and literature, led via archaeologist Marianne Hem Eriksen from the University of Leicester, lays out the patchy however attention-grabbing historical past of being pregnant within the Viking Age.

While archaeologists have exposed hundreds of Viking burials, there are only a few mother-infant, and particularly few baby, burials from this era, although birth- and pregnancy-related deaths would were excessive. This suggests babies and moms weren’t buried in combination, or that in all probability babies weren’t given the similar rites.

In literature and artwork, the authors be aware, pregnant girls have been usally unnoticed of the tale, however there are two very well-known depictions within the sagas, and neither of them are specifically passive portraits.

In Eirik the Red’s Saga, Eirik’s daughter, Freydís Eiríksdóttir, reveals herself on the heart of a fight with the indigenous peoples of Greenland and Canada whilst closely pregnant. These warriors have been provided to shield themselves with guns by no means noticed via Norsemen, described within the saga as war-slings or catapults.

While the Norsemen retreated, Freydís cried out “Let me but have a weapon, I think I could fight better than any of you,” which no one actually paid consideration to. The males persisted to escape, and the closely pregnant Freydís struggled to maintain.

Surely vexed, she picked up the sword of a lifeless Norseman, grew to become at the attackers, “let down her sark [dress] and struck her breast with the naked sword.” Apparently, this terrified the attackers right into a swift retreat. Afterwards, the Norsemen looked as if it would give little fanfare to Freydís’s uncooked braveness.

“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,” Eriksen says.

“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.”

Another tale, from The Saga of the People of Laxardal, tells how the pregnant Guðrún Ósvífrsdóttir is provoked via her husband’s killer, Helgi Harðbeinsson. Wiping his bloodied spear at the scarf protecting Guðrún’s pregnant stomach, Helgi says, “I think that under the corner of that shawl dwells my own death,” a prophecy this is discovered later within the tale, when Guðrún’s son avenges his father’s loss of life.

“The fetus is already inscribed not only into the kinship system of the elite early Icelanders, but into complex relationships of feuds, alliances, and revenge,” the authors be aware.

These tales, after all, replicate the reviews of and attitudes in opposition to being pregnant of girls with high-ranking social standing. The authors suspect attitudes could be very other relying at the pregnant individual’s place in a society that was once extraordinarily hierarchical and integrated slaves.

“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, it is a stark reminder that pregnancy can also leave bodies open for volatility, risk, and exploitation,” says Eriksen.

Politics, the authors write, don’t simplest occur on battlefields or via state formation. They argue that exploring the often-overlooked reviews of pregnant girls will lend a hand archaeologists higher perceive previous civilizations.

This analysis was once revealed within the Cambridge Archaeological Journal.