What were Viking women doing while their men were on violent raids?
The lives of noble women in the Viking world were shaped by politics and logistics, and worlds apart from the lives of enslaved women – yet both groups were foundational to that milieu
With histories of the Viking Age dominated by muscular-sounding kings, warriors and adventurers – Ragnar Lothbrok, Erik the Red, Olaf Tryggvason, Harald Hardrada – it can seem as if that era was defined solely by the lives and actions of men: raiders crossing fierce seas in longships, and kings claiming power through battle.
That is, of course, only half of the story.
Underpinning that colourfully masculine image was a society sustained, organised and, in many ways, driven by Viking women. Their roles ranged from managing households and shaping political alliances, to producing the materials that made Viking expansion possible.
As historian Emily Lethbridge puts it, women were “the engine room of the Viking Age”. Those born into Norse nobility enjoyed access to influence within powerful family networks. For others – particularly those captured and enslaved during raiding – it meant a life with little autonomy, but serving and supporting the success of that society.
Noble Norse women: marriage and power
In upper-class Viking society, women played a crucial role.
“If a girl was lucky enough to grow up to become an adult in an upper-class aristocratic chieftain’s family, then really her primary function would have been socio-political,” says Lethbridge, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.
Viking society was decidedly patriarchal, with formal political and military authority held by men. But power didn’t operate through men alone. Elite families depended on networks of alliance, and women were central to maintaining these.
“Women were the social glue,” Lethbridge explains, because marriage functioned as a crucial political tool. “Daughters of chieftains were used to make alliances, and to secure a family’s social position and financial position.”
Marriage bound families together, creating mutual obligations, reducing the risk of conflict, and bringing access to land, resources or military support.
From an early age, elite girls would have been brought up with this role in mind.
“A girl would be raised with a view to her being placed somewhere, making a successful marriage and thus cementing the family’s political power,” Lethbridge says.
Through these alliances, women bound together the Norse world’s political landscapes – something that was true of high-status women across many cultures through history.
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Running the household
Alongside those roles, women were responsible for the practical management of daily life. “[Girls and young women] would have been learning really practical skills through their childhood as well,” Lethbridge explains.
“The two major spheres would have been food preparation and textile production – wool production and weaving.”
These were core economic activities. Producing food involved managing livestock, preserving supplies for winter, and coordinating labour within the household. Textile production required processing raw wool, spinning thread, weaving cloth and repairing garments.
Running a household therefore meant managing a small-scale economic unit. And some of this work had consequences far beyond the home.
Textile production, in particular, played a critical role in enabling Viking expansion.
“Some scholars have emphasised the role of women in sail-making,” Lethbridge says. “Without sails, the Viking expansion would never have happened.”
Ships depended on their sails, made from dense woollen cloth, not the kind of lightweight materials used for modern sails. Producing one called for vast quantities of wool and many hours of labour.
“And who’s making the sails? It’s the women – from spinning the wool and weaving it into material to then sewing it together.”
“That was hugely time-consuming,” she adds, “but absolutely shows how women were the powerhouse – the engine room – of the Viking Age.”
In other words, the long-distance raids and trading voyages that defined the Viking Age were possible only because of the sustained, skilled labour carried out largely by women.
Enslaved women: a different reality
At the opposite end of the social spectrum were enslaved women.
Slavery was a central pillar of Viking socio-economics. Raiding expeditions often targeted people as well as goods. Captives were transported across networks that stretched from the British Isles to Scandinavia and into the wider European and Islamic worlds.
Women were particularly vulnerable in that context. They could be forced into domestic labour, agricultural work or sexual exploitation. Their experiences are harder to reconstruct because enslaved people are often invisible within most sources, but some literary works do provide small glimpses of what this life would have been like.
One of the most striking examples appears in Laxdæla Saga, an Icelandic narrative written down in the medieval period but set during the Viking Age.
Early on in its narrative, Laxdæla notes the story of Melkorka, “a fascinating female character,” Lethbridge says. In the saga, she is captured during a raid in Ireland and sold in Scandinavia.
Melkorka is then taken as a concubine to Iceland by a powerful chieftain, and bears him a son.
Later in the story, Melkorka reveals her noble origins – an Irish princess captured during a Viking raid. Because of her position at the side of a chieftain, she is eventually given her own farm with her son. “At that point, she gains a bit more independence,” Lethbridge says.
The story shows both the violence of enslavement and the ways in which it could strip the agency and power from even those of formerly high status. It also reflects the broader role of slavery within the Viking world.
“The Viking Age was largely driven by the slave trade and huge slave markets,” Lethbridge explains. This aspect of Viking activity is often underemphasised in popular imagination, but it was fundamental to the generation and distribution of wealth.
For enslaved women, this meant lives shaped by displacement and a total lack of autonomy.
Clearly, then, the experiences of women in the Viking Age were not uniform.
At one end were elite women who played important roles in alliance-building and household management. At the other were enslaved women whose lives were defined by exploitation.
The common thread spanning these two ends of the social spectrum is the centrality of women within the Norse context. Whether through political marriage, economic management, textile production or forced labour, women were essential to the functioning of Viking society.
James Osborne was speaking to Emily Lethbridge on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
Authors
James Osborne is a senior content producer at HistoryExtra