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"Selective Female Infanticide as Partial Explanation for the Dearth of Women in Viking Age Scandinavia," pp. 205-221

Profile image of Nancy L. WickerNancy L. Wicker

1998, In Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West, ed. Guy Halsall. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell

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19 pages

Abstract

Paperback 2002

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  1. Selective female infanticide contributes to the scarcity of women in Viking Age Scandinavia.
  2. Historical records indicate a significant preference for male children over female ones.
  3. Archaeological evidence shows a dearth of adult female burials, with ratios as skewed as 9:1 in favor of males.
  4. Literary sources document practices of exposure as a method of infanticide, particularly for female infants.
  5. Christianization led to a societal shift against infanticide, marking a transition in cultural attitudes toward childbearing.

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About the author
Nancy L. Wicker
University of Mississippi, Faculty Member

Dr. Nancy L. Wicker is Professor of Art History at The University of Mississippi. Her research focuses the art of Scandinavia during the Early Medieval Period, from the Migration Period of the 5th and 6th centuries through the Viking Age, c. 750–1100. While on sabbatical during the 2016–2017 academic year, she was a Fellow at the National Humanities Center at Research Triangle, North Carolina. During this time, she began focusing on Viking-Age art, which in the past has been dominated by formalistic investigation of abstracted animal-style art. However, Wicker investigates the roles of people in Viking-Age art, investigating patrons and clients who sponsored or purchased the art, artists and artisans who made the works, men and women who used and viewed the objects, and also the humans and anthropomorphic deities who were the subjects depicted in Viking-Age art. For many years, Wicker has focused on the reception of Roman art by smiths, patrons, and consumers in Scandinavia during the Migration Period (AD 5th–6th century). In particular, she examines how Late Roman medallions inspired stamped golden pendants known as bracteates, which were worn by elite women across northern and central Europe. She has participated in the Getty Foundation Seminar, “The Arts of Rome’s Provinces.” In addition to her work on bracteates, she has published on gender in archaeology, female infanticide during the Viking Age, Germanic animal-style art, and runic literacy. Her Ph.D. in Ancient Studies from the University of Minnesota included interdisciplinary study of archaeology, art history, and Germanic philology. She has been co-director of an NEH Digital Humanities Start-Up Grant (HD-51640-13) to develop online integrated access to dispersed digital collections of early medieval artifacts. She has excavated in the U.S., Germany, and Sweden — including at the Viking Age trading center of Birka — and has conducted experiments to reconstruct early medieval jewelry techniques. Summary of honors, fellowships, and grants Wicker has been a Visiting Professor in the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Uppsala University in Sweden and is the first woman elected to foreign membership in the Philosophical-historical Section of the Royal Society of Humanities at Uppsala, Sweden. She also was named the first (and only) American chosen for membership in the Sachsensymposion, an international archaeological society. She is one of the very few Americans ever selected to present a paper at the Viking Congress. She was also invited to participate in the on-going project “Reading and Interpreting Runic Inscriptions: The Theory and Method of Runology” at the Centre for Advanced Studies of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo, Norway. Her research has been supported by fellowships from the National Humanities Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Getty Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, as well as grants from the American Philosophical Society, the American Numismatic Society, and the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), and several Scandinavian sources. Service to professional societies Wicker is currently a Co-Chair of the international working party, Archaeology of Gender in Archaeology, and serves on the Runic Advisory Group for the International Symposium on Runes and Runic Inscriptions. She has previously served as an Associate Editor of the journal Medieval Archaeology (London), as President of the Society of Historians of Scandinavia, on the Executive Council of The Medieval Academy of America, and on the boards of the International Center of Medieval Art and the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Study. History Before coming to Oxford, Mississippi, as Chair of the Department of Art, Wicker was Director of the Scandinavian Studies Program and Professor of Art History at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has participated in archaeological excavations in Germany and Sweden, including the Viking Age trading center of Birka. After completing an undergraduate double major in art history and three-dimensional art studio, she went to the University of Minnesota where she received her M.A. in art history and Ph.D. in interdisciplinary Ancient Studies, with an individualized program encompassing Scandinavia art history, archaeology, and philology.

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Women and Weapons in the Viking Age, a master thesis by Anna Bech Lund, 2016.pdf
Anna Lund

English: The study of women within the fields of history and archaeology has traditionally been somewhat neglected as both of these academic disciplines have been dominated by an androcentric approach to the study of the genders. Especially within the field of Viking Age studies women and children has been neglected and perceived mostly through their relation to the male gender having resulted in a quite biased approach to, and interpretation of, archaeological material. Through a critical discussion of relevant archaeological and historical academic publications from primarily the late 21st century, compared to arguments for and discussions of examples of Viking Age material culture, putting women in relation to weapons, this thesis argues the approach to objects of material culture exemplified in the social-Anthropological method of 'social biography'. This method, in relation to the principal of unbiased and equal approach to the study of archaeological material and gender as formulated within the field of feminist archaeology, is applied comparatively onto traditional interpretations of selected archaeological finds, in order to examine and discuss the development within the approach to archaeological material. The archaeological material, which in this thesis acts as primary sources to the relation between Viking Age women and weapons, is in the form of depictions from the Oseberg tapestry as well as in the form of Viking Age jewelry of women both with and without weapons; examples of female weapon graves from Denmark and Norway and the inclusion of a child weapon grave from Norway. Combined this material act as strong evidence of Viking Age weapons having not only been objects reserved for men, and it stresses the problems related to gender-automatic interpretations of Viking Age graves where weapons act as a gender marker, having resulted in a false representation of the genders within the archaeological registrations of weapon graves. Only through a continuous reevaluation and critical interpretation of the ever growing mass of archaeological material concerning the Viking Age, is it possible to approach a more accurate and reflected definition of the relations between women and weapons, free of traditional and biased auto-interpretations of gender and material culture. Dansk: Studier af kvinder indenfor både historie og arkæologi har traditionelt set været et forsømt område, da begge disse akademiske discipliner har været præget af en androcentrisk tilgang til køn. Særligt indenfor studier af vikingetiden har områder vedrørende kvinder og børn været negligeret og traditionelt set tolket udelukkende gennem deres relation til det mandlige køn, hvilket har resulteret i en meget ensidig tilgang til samt tolkning af arkæologisk materiale. Gennem en kritisk diskussion af relevant arkæologisk og historisk forskningslitteratur, primært fra sidste del af det 21. århundrede, sammenholdt med argumenter for og diskussioner af eksempler fra vikingetidens materielkultur, som sætter kvinder i relation til våben, argumenterer dette speciale for den tilgang til objekter som er eksemplificeret i den social-antropologiske metode ’social-biografi’. Denne metode, i samspil med det formulerede princip indenfor feministisk arkæologi om en upartisk tilgang til arkæologisk materiale og køn, bliver anvendt komparativt på traditionelle fortolkninger af udvalgte fund, for at undersøge og diskutere udviklingen indenfor tilgangen til arkæologisk materiale. De arkæologiske fund, der i dette speciale fungerer som primærkilder til vikingetidens kvinder og deres relationer til våben, består af afbildninger af kvinder med og uden våben fra Osebergtapetet og fra smykker, samt eksempler på kvindelige våbengrave fra Danmark og Norge og en enkelt børne-våbengrav fra Norge. Tilsammen udgører dette materiale et stærkt bevis for, at våben i vikingetiden ikke var objekter forbeholdt mænd, og viser det problematiske i at lave køns-automatiske tolkninger af grave hvor våben indgår, hvilket traditionelt set har forårsaget en skævfordeling af hh. det mandlige og kvindelige køn i forbindelse med registreringen af våbengrave. Kun gennem en kontinuerligt revurderende og kritisk tolkning af den konstant voksende totale funds-mængde fra vikingetiden, er det muligt at nærme sig en mere præcis definition af relationen mellem vikingetidens kvinder og våben, som er fri af traditionelle, ensidige automat-tolkninger af køn og materiel kultur.

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Polygyny, Concubinage, and the Social Lives of Women in Viking-Age Scandinavia
Mark Collard

Viking and Medieval Scandinavia, 2017

Some two decades ago, Stavanger Museum in Norway launched an exhibition on Den sterke kvinnen, 'The Powerful Woman' , which presented an explicitly female prehistory of Scandinavia from the Bronze Age to the Viking period. In the galleries and accompanying publication (Lundström & Adolfsson 1995, 5) the message was clear, set out in the introduction formatted as a poem: 'This is the story of the powerful woman | and her journey through history, | from the earliest times | till Christianity takes hold. | From equality to subjection'. While criticized by some as overly reductionist (e.g. Svenska Dagbladet 6-11.4.97), this

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Related topics

  • History
  • Archaeology
  • Old Norse Literature
  • Viking Age Archaeology
  • Viking Age Scandinavia
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