Transcription
Viking women were not liberated and they weren't warriors. There, I've said it. For some reason that's a controversial thing to say now, but we have had a certain TV series and popular culture telling us lies, naive lies about the past. Let's put our finger in the dirt, so to speak, and be real about life during the Viking age.
Now, some people will point at the sagas and and rightly so, and they will say that well, look at this woman here, Frøydis. She led an expedition to North America, and with sword in hand, she chased away the skrælings, you know, the natives. And you have of course Bjarke who was associated with the Jomsvikings and I know these people well at least from the sagas and one of them even appears in my novels. I'm a historical novelist so I know the source material quite well. What I'm trying to say here is that this perception, this modern perception of the female Viking warrior doesn't fit with reality. Also, this notion, this idea that Viking women or rather women during the Viking age were liberated just is not true and it needs to be said. And before I continue, I'm saying "Viking". So per definition, a Viking woman would be a woman who goes Viking. So I should say Norse women during the Viking age, but there you have it. You can criticize me for that if you want to. That's fine.
We know that women during the Viking age in Scandinavia, they had certain rights at you know they had a "ting" (meeting place) where people would try to settle disputes and they would vote and use a sort of democratic system to decide upon things that concerned the local community. And if a woman became a widow she then gained the husband's vote. They could divorce and there are different accounts of the procedure so to speak. But here's the thing that we need to remember. If they divorced their husband, where would they go? What would they do? How would they survive? You see, during the Viking age, you were kind of dependent upon the people around you. So, of course, a woman who divorced her husband, she basically had only one option. She would have to go to some relatives, maybe her parents. But then again, you have another problem. During the Viking age, women were pregnant or carrying a baby, so to speak, most of the time, at least young women. So, they not only had to fend for themselves, but also one or more, probably more children, several children. And it's really difficult to just walk out into the woods like this and do that on your own. And I think also that we romanticize the past. I know I'm guilty. I do that. It's very easy to do that because we want to escape this modern life where everything seems to be gray and boring and all of that. So we romanticize the past and to some extent it's like maybe it's it's a good thing even but also we need to remember that the realities of life are the realities of life.
Tomorrow I'm traveling to Birka in Sweden and I will visit what is believed to be the grave of a Viking warrior woman, a female Viking warrior. So that will be very interesting. I think that it did happen, but it was rare. It didn't happen very often. That's my opinion, and I know it's a very I know it's a very unpopular opinion to have these days.
Now, before I continue, I just want to give you a quick message here. Of course, subscribe to the channel, if you haven't already. I know that all the little gnomes we call them "nisse" here in these woods they make life difficult for me if people don't subscribe to my channel. That's just how it is. They throw pine cones at me and and all sorts of stuff you know. So please please subscribe to the channel. But also, if YouTube is giving you a hard time, I know they are doing the age verification thing in the USA and all of that, there's a link to my website and to my Patreon. You can sign up there and and I will use alternatives if YouTube should become unbearable. And also, let me just add that you won't see any AI here. This is all real. This is all authentic. It's me out here in the woods. And this is not a green screen. Some people think that I'm standing uh in front of a green screen, but it's not. This is just nature.
I think it's quite important to understand that freedom is not to be taken for granted. If we go back to the Viking age, around the year 1000, the numbers I've seen is that about one third of the population in Scandinavia or was it Norway? Um but anyway, they were slaves. So they did not have have freedom and that that was the realities of life too back then. So I mean obviously a woman, a slave woman, back then did not really have rights at all. And as I said people were dependent on the community around them. They needed that to survive. We might just be okay living alone in an apartment because we have water, we have food, we have everything available. They didn't have that. So when we are looking at the past, we should try to remove the things that we take for granted and then look at the past. Men were not liberated either. They were also dependent on their family, their local community. So again, you know, our perception of freedom or rather the way that we take freedom for granted is quite interesting and it should be put aside when we look at the past.
Now a lot could be said about modern times and the society that we live in now. It seems like our freedoms are being taken away and that we are moving into a sort of feudalism 2.0. But I have talked about that before and I will again and I'll put it in a historical context.
What a beautiful morning this is. The wind in the treetops and it's not so hot anymore. It's basically the end, the very end of summer here in Norway. And I want to thank you for spending this time with me. You know, I will be back with another video in a few days. Probably next weekend. I tend to upload these videos on Saturdays. So until then, you can check out one of the other videos that should pop up here on the end screen and I will continue on my hike. Have a wonderful day and as always, stay strong.