Viking Women Celebration: Goublot

According to a medieval Norse legend, King Thorri had a daughter named Goa 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 that month was afterwards called Goa. (Goa, it turned out, had been carried off by a suitor.) In Iceland the month of Goa, beginning in late February, still opens with konudagur, ‘women’s day,’ when husbands are expected to treat their wives with extra kindness.

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. 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.

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. These stories, however, are not considered 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 women were found among the dead of a Rus’ army in 971. 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 it was assumed to belong 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 understand of the role of women in Viking society.