Viking Women Celebration: Goublot

According to a medieval Norse legend, King Thorri had a daughter named Góa who vanished one winter. When searching failed, Thorri held a sacrifice a month after his usual midwinter feast to learn where she had gone, and people afterwards called that month Góa. (A suitor, it turned out, had carried Góa off.) That sacrifice, the Goublot, gives its name to this celebration of Viking women. In Iceland the month of Góa, beginning in late February, still opens with konudagur, “women’s day,” when custom has husbands treat their wives with extra kindness. Góa is one of the old months of the Norse calendar.

Goublot is a good time to ask what is actually known about Viking women. Much of the best evidence comes from their graves.

The Oseberg Ship

The Oseberg ship, buried in Norway in 834, held the remains of two women laid to rest with astonishing wealth: a richly carved wagon, sleighs, beds, textiles, and more than a dozen horses. Robbers had taken the precious metals long ago, but what they left behind still makes it one of the richest graves of the Viking Age. Whoever these women were, their community honored them lavishly.

Viking Women: Home and Abroad

Norse women could own property, run the farm and its business while husbands were away, and divorce. Women also traveled with Viking armies and settlers. Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir crossed the Atlantic three times. Isotope and DNA studies show Norse women were among the first generation in places like England and Iceland. Most women’s lives centered on the household, which in the Viking Age meant managing food stores, textiles, children, and often the farm’s economy. In Iceland the cloth they wove was the currency itself.

The Viking Women Warriors

The real question on everyone’s mind is, “Did Viking women fight?” The Valkyries are a group of Viking warrior women in Norse mythology. They are responsible for taking Vikings to Valhalla. There are also several legends about Viking women who did fight and obtained fame. Historians, however, do not count these stories as history.

Beyond legend, a few written sources describe women fighting. The sagas and the Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus tell of shield-maidens, and a Byzantine chronicler reported that the dead of a Rus’ army in 971 included women. None of these proves that women warriors were common, and historians debate how much to trust them.

Graves of Women Warriors

The most famous case is grave Bj 581 at Birka in Sweden, excavated in 1878. It held a full warrior’s kit (sword, axe, spears, arrows, shield), two horses, and a gaming set, and for over a century everyone assumed it belonged to a man. In 2017 a team led by Charlotte Hedenstierna-Jonson published DNA evidence that the skeleton was female. Critics, including the historian Judith Jesch, questioned whether the right bones were tested and whether weapons in a grave prove a warrior. In 2019 the team answered in the journal Antiquity, reaffirming both the sex and the military interpretation. The debate over what the grave means continues.

Viking Women of Today

Norse women had more freedom than their counterparts across the world. However, due to the lack of Viking-originated literature and gender bias built into the system, it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction. Whatever the truth is, we can celebrate the Viking women in our lives on Goublot. We look forward to future digs that support and expand our understanding of the role of women in Viking society.

Keep reading: Viking Grave Site Holds Boat, Woman, and Dog and Viking Woman Buried with Her Dog, two more graves of Viking women.