Men did the hunting, fighting, trading and farming, while women’s lives centered around cooking, caring for the home and raising children. Like many traditional civilizations, Viking Age society at home and abroad was essentially male-dominated. In the newer study, published in late 2014, researchers used mitochondrial DNA evidence to show that Norse women joined their men for Viking Age migrations to England, the Shetland and Orkney Islands and Iceland, and were “important agents in the processes of migration and assimilation.” Especially in previously uninhabited areas such as Iceland, Norse women were vital to populating the new settlements and helping them thrive. While earlier historical research about the Vikings had theorized that the seafaring Norsemen traveled in male-only groups-perhaps due to a lack of desirable mates in Scandinavia-a more recent study tells a very different story.
They formed settlements, founded towns and cities (Dublin, for example) and left a lasting impact on the local languages and cultures of the places where they landed their ships. 800-1100.īut though these Vikings became infamous as fierce warriors and brutal raiders, they were also accomplished traders who established trade routes all over the world. As Judith Jesch, author of “Women in the Viking Age” (1991), has pointed out, the Old Norse word “vikingar” only applied to men, usually to those men who embarked from Scandinavia in their famous long boats and sailed to such far-flung places as Britain, Europe, Russia, the North Atlantic islands and North America between roughly A.D. Technically, women couldn’t even be Vikings.
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